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Three persons were burnt to death in a fire triggered by a collision between a bus and a truck at Khuniya Bridge, border of Koshi Rural Municipality and Bhokrahanarsingh Rural Municipality, in Sunsari on Friday.

The incident occurred when bus (Na 8 Kha 8593) heading towards Kathmandu from Kakadbhitta, Jhapa crashed with the truck (Na 5 Kha 2996) coming from the opposite direction at around 7:30 pm yesterday.

Both the vehicles caught fire after the incident killing all of them on the spot and injuring 28 others, police said.

Of the injured, three are said to be critical condition. Police said that the injured are undergoing treatment in various hospitals.

Police said the bus driver, truck driver and a passenger lost their lives in the incident. The identities of the deceased have not been ascertained yet.

The bodies have been sent to the Dharan-bases BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences for postmortem.

Following the incident, police with the help of locals rescued to injured.

Both the vehicles have been completely destroyed the in the incident.

Police said that the fire was taken under control with the help of a fire engine, police personnel and locals.

Police said that the incident might have occurred due to the high speed of the bus.

The birth anniversary of Kim Jong-il, father of Kim Jong Un, supreme leader of North Korea, has been celebrated in Lalitpur of Nepal on Friday.

The 81st birth anniversary of Kim Jong-il was celebrated by organising a programme at a hotel in Lalitpur today.

He was born in Russia on February 16, 1941 and died on December 17, 2011.

General Secretary of CPN (ML) CP Mainali and CPN (Unified Socialist) leader Rekha Yadav among others were present on the occasion.

Police on Wednesday arrested youtuber Chetan Karki with brown sugar and marijuana from Khurkot, Golanjor Rural Municipality, Sindhuli.

Karki (37) was heading towards Dhulikhel of Kavre from Bardibas in his mini-truck (01-003 Ka 9182) when police apprehended him during the security check.

Police said that he has been remanded in police custody for seven days for investigation.

Nepal logged 2, 526 new Covid-19 cases and 16 deaths on Friday.

With this, the country's active caseload mounted to 1,097,589. Similarly, the death toll has climbed to 11,794. 

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 6,655 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which 1,602 returned positive. Likewise, 4,418 people underwent antigen tests, of which 924 tested positive.

The Ministry said that 8,425 infected people recovered from the disease in the last 24 hours.

As of today, there are 56,457 active cases in the country. 

The Ministry said that 55,090 people are staying in home isolation while 1, 367 are in institutionalized isolation.

Among them, 243 are in Intensive Care Unit while 51 are on ventilators. 

Meanwhile, the Kathmandu Valley reported 1772 new cases today.

According to the Ministry, 1,361 cases are reported in Kathmandu, 271 in Lalitpur and 90 in Bhaktapur.

Among the new cancer patients, the BP Koirala Memorial Cancer Hospital in Chitwan has recorded more women patients than men, indicating the rising cases of cancer among women than men.

Among the total 90,571 cancer patients availing services from the Hospital in the last fiscal year 2020/21, 4,608 were new patients. Among them, over 55 per cent were women and 45 per cent men, the Hospital said.

Executive director of the Hospital Dr Dej Kumar Gautam said that 2,517 new women patients were admitted to the Hospital last fiscal year while the number of new male cancer patients remained at 2,091.

The Hospital has been providing healthcare services to around 25,000 old cancer patients. The Hospital received a lesser number of cancer patients last year compared to the previous fiscal year due to COVID-19 risk, said Dr Gautam, adding that lung cancer-related patients constitute the highest number at 12 per cent followed by cervical cancer at 10.17 per cent.

Remaining cancer patients were related to breast and mouth, according to the Hospital. Women have a higher chance of developing cancer in the uterus, gallbladder, kidney, abdominal, thyroid and colon cancer while men were prone to develop cancer in the abdominal, kidney, tongue, urinary bladder among others.

The increase in women cancer patients could be attributed to various factors, opines Dr Gautam. One among them was the rise in cases of breast and uterus cancer among women. Also, men could travel abroad for treatment for cancer but women often are treated in the nearest cancer treatment facility. This, according to Dr Gautam, could record the higher number of women cancer patients.

Nearly 25,000 new cancer cases reported in Nepal

He informed that nearly 25,000 new cancer cases were reported in Nepal. More than half of them opt for treatment abroad, the majority of them being male.

Hospital's female oncologist Dr Bijaya Acharya said one of the reasons for the high number of women suffering from cancer compared to their male counterparts maybe because most of the women have breast and cervical cancer. Another reason, he said, might be that while the males went abroad for treatment, most of the females were treated within the country.

"However, to take this statistics as the base might not be accurate since only a few patients were treated in this hospital last year. There used to be 2 to3 per cent more male than female cancer patients before," Acharya, who is also the former executive director of the hospital, said.

The hospital's ENT disease specialist Dr Anil Bikram Karki said the number of females coming for health checkups at the hospital might have increased as more and more women become aware of the disease.

"Public awareness programmes should be organized at the local level on the prevention of breast and cervix cancer. It would be easier to prevent cancer by organizing screening and health tests as well as by raising public awareness extensively," he said.

Hospital's deputy director Dr Krishna Sagar Sharma stressed that more than half of the cancer diseases could be reduced by adopting a healthy lifestyle and food. He said most of the cancer can be cured if timely treatment.RSS

The US has claimed Russia is planning to stage a fake Ukrainian attack that it would use to justify an invasion, BBC reported.

It alleged Moscow was likely to release a graphic video showing the attack on Russian territory or against Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine.

Russia denied it was planning to fabricate an attack, and the US did not provide evidence to support the claim.

The build-up of tens of thousands of Russian troops on Ukraine's borders has escalated fears of an invasion.

Moscow says they are there for military drills, but Ukraine and its Western allies remain concerned that Russia is planning to launch an assault.

"As part of this fake attack, we believe that Russia would produce a very graphic propaganda video, which would include corpses and actors that would be depicting mourners and images of destroyed locations," he said.

But senior US officials said the video was just one of several ideas Russia has to provide a pretext to invade its neighbour.

They added that the alleged plan was being revealed in an effort to dissuade Russia from invading.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to the reports later on Thursday.

"This is not the first promise of its kind [to release details about Russian provocation]," he said. "Something similar was also said before, but nothing came of it."

Russia has repeatedly denied that it is planning an attack.

News of the alleged plot came a day after the US said it was sending more troops to eastern Europe to support allies in the Nato defensive alliance.

Russia said the move was "destructive" and showed that its concerns about Nato's eastward expansion were justified.

Also on Thursday, Nato expressed concerns that Russia was likely to deploy up to 30,000 troops - including special forces, fighter jets and short-range ballistic missiles - in Belarus, Ukraine's northern neighbour.

"This is the biggest Russian deployment there since the Cold War," Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said.

Rivalry between Russia and the US, which still possess the world's biggest nuclear arsenals, dates back to the Cold War. Ukraine was then a crucial part of the communist Soviet Union.

Diplomatic moves

Russian President Vladimir Putin is currently in the Chinese capital, Beijing, for the Winter Olympics, and on Friday met his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, for their first face-to-face meeting since June 2019, because of the pandemic.

The two nations have a close relationship - President Xi has previously praised Mr Putin as his "best friend", and it is widely expected that Russia will be looking for diplomatic support from China as tensions build with Ukraine and the West.

Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron will travel to Russia and Ukraine next week to try and de-escalate the tensions. He will meet Mr Putin in the Russian capital, Moscow, on Monday, then Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky the next day.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in Ukraine earlier this week in an effort to "avoid further bloodshed".

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing on Friday for the 2022 Winter Olympics and a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, bringing with him a deal to increase natural gas supplies to China amid rising tension with the West, Reuters reported.

Putin told Xi that Russia had prepared a new deal to supply China with an additional 10 billion cubic metres of natural gas, according to a broadcast of their talks aired in Moscow.

Russia, one of the global leaders in hydrocarbon supplies, has been strengthening its ties with China, the world's top energy consumer against the backdrop of Moscow's standoff with the West over Ukraine and other issues.

The broadcast aired in Moscow showed Xi and Putin, neither one wearing a mask, sitting opposite each across a large table in a Beijing state guesthouse, surrounded by masked aides.

"I would like to thank you for the invitation to the opening of the Olympic Games," Putin told Xi. "We know firsthand that this is a huge job. I am sure that our Chinese friends have done it brilliantly, as you always do when preparing such major events."

Xi said the meeting injected new vitality into the relationship, according to the report.

The Olympics, already transformed by the coronavirus pandemic and to be held within a strictly closed loop, have also been overshadowed by the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The United States and some of its allies have announced a diplomatic boycott of the Games in protest at China's human rights record. China denies any abuses.

Earlier, China state television footage showed a jet flying with the Russian and Chinese flags. Next to it were jets with Mongolian and Serbian flags. Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic and Prime Minister L. Oyun-Erdene, of Mongolia, are expected to attend the opening ceremony later on Friday.

Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and the United Arab Emirates' Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan had also touched down, according to state media reports.

Russia and China coordinated their positions on Ukraine during a meeting between their foreign ministers, Wang Yi and Sergei Lavrov, in Beijing on Thursday, the Chinese foreign ministry said.

In response, the United States warned Chinese firms that they would face consequences if they sought to evade export controls imposed on Russia in the event of it invading Ukraine.

"We have an array of tools that we can deploy if we see foreign companies, including those in China, doing their best to backfill US export control actions, to evade them, to get around them," U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price told a regular news briefing.

Before Lavrov, Beijing had not received foreign political guests for almost two years as it tried to keep the coronavirus out.

Thousands of Russian troops have massed near the border of Ukraine, raising fears of an invasion, which Russia denies planning. Russia has asked NATO to bar Ukraine from joining and to pull out of eastern Europe.

India’s official COVID-19 death toll crossed 500,000 on Friday, a level some data analysts said was breached last year but was obscured by inaccurate surveys and unaccounted dead in the hinterlands, where millions remain vulnerable to the disease, Reuters reported.