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Manchester United have appointed Ajax coach Erik ten Hag as their next manager, BBC reported.

The Dutchman, 52, will take over from interim boss Ralf Rangnick at the end of this season on a three-year deal which can be extended by a year.

Rangnick, who replaced the sacked Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in November, is set to move into a consultancy role.

Ten Hag will become United's fifth permanent manager since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013.

"It is a great honour to be appointed manager of Manchester United and I am hugely excited by the challenge ahead," said Ten Hag. 

"I know the history of this great club and the passion of the fans, and I am absolutely determined to develop a team capable of delivering the success they deserve."

United are sixth in the Premier League with five games remaining this season, three points behind Tottenham, who occupy the fourth Champions League spot, according to BBC.

Ajax are top of the Dutch Eredivisie - four points clear of PSV Eindhoven - with five matches left, although they lost to their rivals in the Dutch Cup final.

Ten Hag, who took over as Ajax head coach since December 2017, led them to the league and cup double in 2018-19 and 2020-21.

They reached the semi-finals of the 2018-19 Champions League and were within a minute of making the final, only to be denied by a remarkable Tottenham comeback.

United's choice had narrowed to Ten Hag and Paris St-Germain boss Mauricio Pochettino, after Sevilla coach Julen Lopetegui had also been spoken to about the role.

Ten Hag is expected to bring in a former United coach or player as part of his backroom team, given it is unlikely the remaining link to the Solskjaer era, Mike Phelan, will remain at the club, BBC reported.

Ten Hag joined Ajax after two and a half years at Utrecht, having previously coached Bayern Munich's second team, where he worked with Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola.

Solskjaer was sacked following a 4-1 defeat at Watford that left United seventh in the table.

Since Rangnick officially took charge on 3 December, United have a record of nine wins, six draws and four defeats in 19 league games.

They were knocked out of the Champions League in the last 16 by Atletico Madrid and lost to Championship side Middlesbrough in the FA Cup fourth round.

After Tuesday's 4-0 league defeat by Liverpool, Rangnick said United might need as many as 10 new players this summer.

Ten Hag wants ex-England coach and Ferguson's former assistant Steve McClaren to work with him.

McClaren worked with Ten Hag at FC Twente and it is understood Ten Hag feels he can provide invaluable insight into the workings of United and English football in general.

On Wednesday it was announced that chief scout Jim Lawlor and head of global scouting Marcel Bout had United, according to BBC.

United won 38 trophies during Ferguson's 26-year reign at Old Trafford, including 13 league titles, two Champions Leagues, five FA Cups and four League Cups.

However, since his departure United have won only the FA Cup under Louis van Gaal, the League Cup, Europa League and Community Shield under Jose Mourinho, and the Charity Shield under David Moyes.

Moyes, originally earmarked as Ferguson's long-term successor and given a six-year contract, was sacked in his first season in charge, BBC reported.

Satellite images released Thursday showed what appeared to be mass graves near Mariupol, and local officials accused Russia of burying up to 9,000 Ukrainian civilians there in an effort to conceal the slaughter taking place in the siege of the port city, Associated Press reported.

The images emerged hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed victory in the battle for the Mariupol, despite the presence of an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian fighters who were still holed up at a giant steel mill. Putin ordered his troops not to storm the stronghold but to seal it off “so that not even a fly comes through.”

Satellite image provider Maxar Technologies released the photos, which it said showed more than 200 mass graves in a town where Ukrainian officials say the Russians have been burying Mariupol residents killed in the fighting. The imagery showed long rows of graves stretching away from an existing cemetery in the town of Manhush, outside Mariupol.

Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko accused the Russians of “hiding their military crimes” by taking the bodies of civilians from the city and burying them in Manhush.

The graves could hold as many as 9,000 dead, the Mariupol City Council said Thursday in a post on the Telegram messaging app, according to the Associated Press.

Boychenko labeled Russian actions in the city as “the new Babi Yar,” a reference to the site of multiple Nazi massacres in which nearly 34,000 Ukrainian Jews were killed in 1941.

“The bodies of the dead were being brought by the truckload and actually simply being dumped in mounds,” an aide to Boychenko, Piotr Andryushchenko, said on Telegram.

There was no immediate reaction from the Kremlin. When mass graves and hundreds of dead civilians were discovered in Bucha and other towns around Kyiv after Russian troops retreated three weeks ago, Russian officials denied that their soldiers killed any civilians there and accused Ukraine of staging the atrocities.

In a statement, Maxar said a review of previous images indicates that the graves in Manhush were dug in late March and expanded in recent weeks, Associated Press reported.

After nearly two lethal months of bombardment that largely reduced Mariupol to a smoking ruin, Russian forces appear to control the rest of the strategic southern city, including its vital but now badly damaged port.

But a few thousand Ukrainian troops, by Moscow’s estimate, have stubbornly held out for weeks at the steel plant, despite a pummeling from Russian forces and repeated demands for their surrender. About 1,000 civilians were also trapped there, according to Ukrainian officials.

Instead of sending troops to finish off the defenders in a potentially bloody frontal assault, Russia apparently intends to maintain the siege and wait for the fighters to surrender when they run out of food or ammunition.

Boychenko rejected any notion that Mariupol had fallen into Russian hands.

“The city was, is and remains Ukrainian,” he declared. “Today our brave warriors, our heroes, are defending our city.”

The capture of Mariupol would represent the Kremlin’s biggest victory yet of the war in Ukraine. It would help Moscow secure more of the coastline, complete a land bridge between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized in 2014, and free up more forces to join the larger and potentially more consequential battle now underway for Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, the Donbas, according to the Associated Press.

Putin expressed concern for the lives of Russian troops in deciding against sending them in to clear out the sprawling Azovstal steel plant, where the die-hard defenders were hiding in a maze of underground passageways.

At a joint appearance with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Putin declared, “The completion of combat work to liberate Mariupol is a success,” and he offered congratulations to Shoigu.

Shoigu predicted the steel plant could be taken in three to four days, but Putin said that would be “pointless.”

“There is no need to climb into these catacombs and crawl underground through these industrial facilities,” the Russian leader said. “Block off this industrial area so that not even a fly comes through.”

The plant covers 11 square kilometers (4 square miles) and is threaded with some 24 kilometers (15 miles) of tunnels and bunkers.

“The Russian agenda now is not to capture these really difficult places where the Ukrainians can hold out in the urban centers, but to try and capture territory and also to encircle the Ukrainian forces and declare a huge victory,” retired British Rear Adm. Chris Parry said.

Russian officials for weeks have said capturing the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas is the war’s main objective. Moscow’s forces opened the new phase of the fighting this week along a 300-mile (480-kilometer) front from the northeastern city of Kharkiv to the Azov Sea, Associated Press reported.

While Russia continued heavy air and artillery attacks in those areas, it did not appear to gain any significant ground over the past few days, according to military analysts, who said Moscow’s forces were still ramping up the offensive.

The leaders of the rival Koreas exchanged letters expressing hope for improved bilateral relations, which plummeted in the past three years amid a freeze in nuclear negotiations and North Korea’s accelerating weapons development, Associated Press reported.

North Korea’s state media said leader Kim Jong Un on Wednesday received a personal letter from outgoing South Korean President Moon Jae-in and replied on Thursday with his own letter appreciating Moon’s peace efforts during his term. 

Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency said Friday their exchange of letters showed their “deep trust.”

Moon in his letter to Kim acknowledged setbacks in inter-Korean relations but insisted that their aspirational vows for peace during their summits in 2018 and an accompanying military agreement aimed at defusing border area clashes remain relevant as a foundation for future cooperation. 

Moon also expressed hope for a resumption of nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang and for Kim to pursue cooperation with Seoul’s next government led by conservative President-elect Yoon Suk Yeol, Moon’s spokesperson Park Kyung-mee said, according to the Associated Press. 

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have risen since a series of North Korean weapons tests this year, including its first flight-test of an intercontinental ballistic missile since 2017 in March, reviving the nuclear brinkmanship aimed at forcing the US to accept it as a nuclear power and to remove crippling sanctions. 

South Korea’s military has also detected signs that North Korea is rebuilding tunnels at a nuclear testing ground it partially dismantled weeks before Kim’s first meeting with then-President Donald Trump in June 2018, a possible indicator that the country is preparing to resume nuclear explosive tests. 

Staking his single presidential term on inter-Korean rapprochement, Moon met Kim three times in 2018 and lobbied hard to help set up Kim’s meetings with Trump. But the diplomacy never recovered from the collapse of the second Kim-Trump meeting in 2019 in Vietnam, where the Americans rejected North Korea’s demands for major sanctions relief in exchange for dismantling an aging nuclear facility, which would have amounted to a partial surrender of its nuclear capabilities.

Kim has since vowed to bolster his nuclear deterrent to counter “gangster-like” US pressure and sped up his weapons development despite limited resources and pandemic-related difficulties. 

North Korea also severed all cooperation with Moon’s government while expressing anger over the continuation of US-South Korea military exercises, which were curtailed in recent years to promote diplomacy with the North, and Seoul’s inability to wrest concessions from Washington on its behalf, Associated Press reported.

KCNA said Moon wrote in his letter to Kim that he will continue to support efforts for Korean reunification based on their joint declarations for inter-Korean peace issued after their meetings in 2018.

Kim and Moon shared views that “inter-Korean relations would improve and develop as desired and anticipated by the (Korean) nation if the (North and the South) make tireless efforts with hope,” KCNA said. 

South Korea’s next leader could take a harder line toward Pyongyang. Yoon, who takes office May 10, has rejected pursuing “talks for talks’ sake” with North Korea and vowed to bolster Seoul’s alliance with Washington and resume their full-scale military exercises to counter the North’s nuclear threat. 

Analysts say North Korea is also likely to escalate its weapons demonstrations in coming weeks or months to force a reaction from the Biden administration, which has been focused on Russia’s war on Ukraine and a rivalry with China. 

The administration’s actions on North Korea have so far been limited to largely symbolic sanctions imposed over a series of missile tests this year and offers of open-ended talks that were quickly turned down by Pyongyang’s leadership.

There are views in Seoul that Washington is slipping back to the Obama administration’s “strategic patience” policy of ignoring North Korea until it demonstrates seriousness about denuclearization, although that approach was criticized for neglecting a gathering nuclear threat, according to the Associated Press.

Biden’s special envoy for North Korea, Sung Kim, traveled to Seoul this week for meetings with senior South Korean officials and said they agreed on the need for a strong response to counter North Korea’s “destabilizing behavior.”

After maintaining a conciliatory tone for years, Moon’s government objected more strongly to North Korea’s weapons tests this year, criticizing Kim’s government for ending its self-imposed suspension of long-range missile testing and urging a return to diplomacy. 

Seoul has also accused North Korea of destroying South Korean-owned facilities at the North’s Diamond Mountain resort where they ran tours together until 2008. Kim in 2019 called the South Korean facilities there “shabby” and ordered them destroyed, though the work was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, Associated Press reported.

Question

I'm an 18-year-old female student from a middle-class family. I live with my parents and my older brother. As the youngest family member, my parents always tell me to compromise and understand things. I have to agree with everyone and if I mess up, I get reprimanded. It feels like my family think of me as an incompetent person. Nothing I do is good enough. There are frequent arguments in my family on my account. I am finding it increasingly difficult to stay at home. I want to escape. What should I do? —A.K. 

Answer by Kapil Sharma, Counseling Psychologist at HUDEC Nepal

I appreciate you sharing what you have been going through emotionally. It seems like you're struggling with emotional dysregulation, and there’s a problem with the association and coping with your family. You're apparently struggling to regulate your own emotions. If you can regulate your emotions, you can communicate and cope with things better.

One of the causes for your current thinking could be negative self-talk, which may in turn lead to low self-esteem. You may be feeling that the reason behind your parents expecting you to compromise is because you’re the younger one. The other reason could be mental filtering. You may only be getting the negative parts of your parents’ remarks. Or it could be your habit of jumping to a negative conclusion. 

I advise you to start by making a list of things your parents have called you out for. Find out what particular instances or things have made you feel incompetent and belittled. Make a self-inquiry and figure out whether the things you have included in your list are valid concerns. Are you really incompetent and someone who can never do things right? Ask yourself.

If the answer is yes, then you need to work to be better at the things you do. 

If the answer is no, you should change the way you think of yourself. Communicate your feelings with your family, or a family member you feel the closet to—your brother, mother, or father. You can also talk to your close friends, cousins or relatives. 

You can also work on self-care. Proper eating, sleeping, journaling, meditating, anything that you love doing can also help. Doing things you love leads to self-love, and self-love leads to self-worth. You can keep a journal to track your progress. Practice positive affirmation with yourself and your achievements. 

If you have already  tried communicating and it didn’t work, you can seek help from a therapist. 

Film South Asia 2022, an exhibition of documentaries produced in the South Asian countries, kicked off at the Yalamaya Kendra in Lalitpur on Thursday.

The festival will showcase 71 films that were selected from more than 3, 000 submissions.

The films will be screened for four days, the organizer said.

As many as nine documentaries will be screened on the first day of the festival.

Likewise, 23 documentaries will be screened on Friday while 19 and 20 documentaries will be screened on Friday and Saturday respectively.

The CPN-UML has decided to finalize the mayoral candidates of metropolitan and sub-metropolitan cities by Saturday.

Party Publicity Department Chief Prithvi Subba Gurung said that the meeting to be held in Balkot would decide the mayoral candidates of metropolitan and sub-metropolitan cities.

The list received from the district was studied at the Central Secretariat meeting on Thursday.

The UML said that it has finalized the names of Bijay Subedi in Bharatpur, Bijay Sarawagi in Birgunj and Hari Krishna in Lalitpur so far.

Gurung said that the party has received the names of 12 persons from Pokhara alone.

The UML is issuing an election manifesto tomorrow.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is trying to set aside his political troubles and focus on economic ties and the war in Ukraine during a long-delayed official trip to India, Associated Press reported.

Johnson landed in the western state of Gujarat on Thursday, kicking off a two-day visit that will see him meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Friday.

Johnson hopes to strike new economic deals between Britain and its huge former colony, and to coax India away from Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

Modi has called the situation in Ukraine “very worrying” and has appealed to both sides for peace. But India has stood back from international efforts to criticize President Vladimir Putin, abstaining when the U.N. General Assembly voted this month to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council, Associated Press reported.

Modi has so far responded coolly to pressure from President Joe Biden and others to curb imports of Russian oil and gas.

India receives little of its oil from Russia, but has ramped up its purchases and bought 3 million barrels of crude last month, just as other democracies tried to isolate Putin with economic sanctions. India is also a major customer for Russian weapons, and recently bought advanced Russian air defense systems.

Johnson’s spokesman, Max Blain, said Britain would “work with other countries to provide alternative options for defense procurement and energy for India to diversify its supply chains away from Russia.”

But he stressed that the U.K. wouldn’t “lecture other democratically elected governments on what course of action was best for them.”

Johnson’s office said the two countries will announce new deals on defense, green energy, jobs and science partnerships during the prime minister’s trip, Associated Press reported.

In Gujarat, Johnson plans to announce a series of commercial agreements, including more than 1 billion pounds ($1.3 billion) in investments and export deals in sectors like software engineering and health that are expected to create almost 11,000 jobs in the U.K., according to a press release from the British High Commission in New Delhi.

“As I arrive in India today, I see vast possibilities for what our two great nations can achieve together,” Johnson was quoted as saying in the release.

“Our powerhouse partnership is delivering jobs, growth and opportunities for our people, and it will only go from strength-to-strength in the coming years,” Johnson added.

Britain is seeking to tighten ties with Asian nations as part of an “Indo-Pacific tilt” to its foreign policy following its departure from the European Union in 2020. Johnson hopes to nudge forward negotiations on a post-Brexit trade deal between Britain and India, one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

Talks started in January, but the prime minister’s spokesman played down chances of a quick deal, saying “we don’t want to sacrifice quality for speed.”

The trip may also provide the British prime minister with a brief respite from a scandal over lockdown-breaching government parties during the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Associated Press.

Johnson was fined by police last week for attending his own surprise birthday party in 10 Downing St. in June 2020, when people in Britain were barred from meeting with friends and family outside the home. It is one of a dozen gatherings in government buildings being investigating by police for possible lockdown breaches in a scandal that has become known as “partygate.”

Nepal reported 15 new Covid-19 cases on Thursday.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 2, 083 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which 12 returned positive. Likewise, 1, 464 people underwent antigen tests, of which three were tested positive.

The Ministry said that no one died of virus in the last 24 hours. The Ministry said that 32 infected people recovered from the disease.

As of today, there are 298 active cases in the country.