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As many as 35 persons were injured in a bus accident in Bansgadhi Municipality-3, Bardiya on Thursday. Of them, two are said to be in critical condition.

The bus (Na 5 Kha 5382) was heading towards Mahendranagar from Kalikot when the incident occurred this morning. Police said that the bus fell some 15 metres down the road.

Sitala Upadhyay (11) of Triveni Rural Minicipality-6 and Omana Upadhyay (69) of Triveni Rural Municipality-7 were critically injured the mishap, the Area Police Office, Motipur said.

Both of them have been sent to the Nepalgunj Medical College in Kohapur, Banke for treatment while others have been sent to the Kausilya Hospital.

Police have arrested a man on the charge of raping a 12-year-old girl in Morang on Wednesday.

The detainee has been identified as Ram Dev Chaudhary (53) of Bansbari, Sundarhairaincha Municipality-5, Morang, DSP Deepak Shrestha, spokesperson at the District Police Office, Morang, said.

According to a preliminary investigation, Chaudhary raped the girl at around 5:30 pm yesterday.

The Area Police Office, Belbari has started the investigation by keeping him in custody.

The girl has been taken to the Dharan-based BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences for medical check-up and treatment.

The United States is sending 2,000 additional soldiers to Europe and repositioning another 1,000 from Germany to Romania to ensure the “robust defence” of European NATO members, the Pentagon has said, amid the ongoing impasse between Russia and Ukraine, Aljazeera reported.

US Department of Defense spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday that the troop deployment would take place in the coming days. He said it is separate from, and in addition to, the 8,500 soldiers that the Pentagon put on heightened alert last week.

Kirby stressed, however, that the US forces are not going to be deployed to Ukraine, which is not a NATO member.

“These movements are unmistakable signals to the world that we stand ready to reassure our NATO allies and deter and defend against any aggression,” he said.

The White House announced Wednesday that 1,700 soldiers would deploy from Fort Bragg in the US state of North Carolina to Poland and another 300 would be sent from the base to Germany.

The Russian military has been amassing troops near the country’s border with Ukraine, sparking a diplomatic crisis and heightening US and European fears that Moscow may be preparing for an imminent invasion of its neighbour.

Russia has denied it is planning to invade, but has vehemently opposed Ukraine’s efforts to join NATO. Moscow also wants security guaranteesthat the US-led alliance will stop its expansion into former Soviet republics, but Washington and NATO have rejected the demand as a “non-starter”.

Pentagon confirms proposal to Russia

On Wednesday, Kirby confirmed media reports that Washington offered to allow Moscow to confirm there are no Tomahawk cruise missiles at bases in Romania and Poland – on the condition that Russia reciprocates with its own “transparency measures”.

Spanish newspaper El Pais had published US documents outlining the proposals earlier in the day.

Kirby said while the US did not make the documents public, they illustrate that Washington is serious about resolving the crisis diplomatically.

“If Russia actually wants to negotiate a solution as it claims it does, this document certainly makes clear that there is a path forward to do so,” he said.

The US delivered written responses addressing Russia’s security concerns last week, but senior Russian officials have responded with wariness to Washington’s position.

“It is already clear that fundamental Russian concerns ended up being ignored,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday – his first comments on the ongoing crisis in more than a month.

Putin said the Kremlin was studying a response from the US and NATO but said the replies had been far from adequate. He accused the US of using Ukraine as a “tool” in its efforts to contain Russia, but said it was still possible to find a solution to end the crisis.

“I hope that we will eventually find a solution, although we realise that it’s not going to be easy,” Putin said.

Kirby also told reporters on Wednesday that war can be avoided. “The Department of Defense will continue to support diplomatic efforts led by the White House and the State Department to press for a resolution. We do not believe conflict is inevitable,” he said.

Russia responds

Moscow denounced the US move later on Wednesday, calling it “destructive”.

The US deployments are “destructive steps, which increase military tension and reduce scope for political decision,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko told the Interfax news agency.

But US State Department spokesperson Ned Price rejected Moscow’s assertion that Washington is escalating tensions by sending additional troops to Europe, accusing Russia of attempting to turn “reality upside down”.

“These are not permanent moves; they are precisely in response to the current security environment in light of this increasingly threatening behaviour by the Russian Federation,” Price told reporters on Wednesday.

US President Joe Biden said the decision was “totally consistent” with what he had told Putin. “As long as he is acting aggressively we’re going to make sure we can reassure our NATO allies and Eastern Europe that we’re there,” Biden told a CNN reporter.

NATO welcomes US decision

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed the US decision to send additional troops to Europe.

“This is a powerful signal of US commitment, and comes on top of other recent US contributions to our shared security,” Stoltenberg said in a statement on Wednesday.

US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham also lauded the troop deployment.

“I completely support the Biden Administration’s decision to send more US troops to bolster NATO allies in the face of Russian aggression,” Graham wrote on Twitter. “It is imperative that NATO meet the moment and that we stand firmly against Putin’s efforts to divide the alliance.”

But other Republicans who favour a more reserved foreign policy denounced Biden’s move.

“I am strongly opposed to President Biden’s decision to send American troops to Eastern Europe to defend countries that should defend themselves, potentially involving us in another conflict after just ending a 20-year war,” Republican Senator Mike Braun said, referring to the Afghanistan conflict.

Al Jazeera correspondent Kimberly Halkett underscored many Americans’ “fatigue” of wars.

“In the United States, there certainly is a lot of fatigue surrounding conflict in general, particularly given the fact that there was that messy withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan just a few months back… the United States is just as a population tired after a generation of war,” Halkett said.

The world's first "human challenge" trial in which volunteers were deliberately exposed to COVID-19 to advance research into the disease was found to be safe in healthy young adults, leaders of the study said on Wednesday.

The data supports the safety of this model and lays the groundwork for future studies to test new vaccines and medicines against COVID-19 using this kind of trial by the end of this year, the team added.

Open Orphan (ORPH.L) is running the project, launched last February, with Imperial College London, Britain's vaccines task force and Orphan's clinical company  hVIVO. 

Scientists have used human challenge trials for decades to learn more about diseases such as malaria, flu, typhoid and cholera, and to develop treatments and vaccines against them.

The Imperial trial exposed 36 healthy male and female volunteers aged 18-29 years to the original SARS-CoV-2 strain of the virus and monitored them in a quarantined setting. They will be followed up for 12 months after discharge.

No serious adverse events occurred, and the human challenge study model was shown to be safe and well tolerated in healthy young adults, the company said.

"People in this age group are believed to be major drivers of the pandemic and these studies, which are representative of mild infection, allow detailed investigation of the factors responsible for infection and pandemic spread," said Chris Chiu, chief investigator on the trial and professor of infectious diseases at Imperial.

The Imperial researchers said they now planned to start a similar study using the Delta variant, and will share their framework around the globe to allow similar research.

That could provide a crucial route to testing new vaccines, antivirals and diagnostics against COVID-19 more quickly, particularly if transmission rates fall in the real world.

Imperial said it could start tests like this using human challenge trials by the end of 2022.

In April, Oxford University launched another human challenge trial which sought to reinfect people to deepen understanding about immunity.

CLINICAL INSIGHTS

The results of the Imperial study, published on a pre-print server and yet to be peer reviewed, also provide some clinical insights that could inform public health policies.

Researchers found that symptoms start to develop on average about two days after contact with the virus, Imperial said, which is earlier than the widely held view that the virus has an incubation period of around five days.

The infection first appears in the throat; infectious virus peaks about five days into infection, which is also when the most significant symptoms are usually noticed, the researchers said. At that stage, the virus is significantly more abundant in the nose than the throat.

They also found that rapid lateral flow tests were a reliable indicator of whether infectious virus was present and therefore the person was likely to be able to transmit the virus. Most people had live virus in their nose for an average of 6.5 days, they said.

Eighteen volunteers became infected, 16 of whom went on to develop mild-to-moderate cold-like symptoms, including a stuffy or runny nose, sneezing, and a sore throat, Imperial said.

Some experienced headaches, muscle/joint aches, tiredness and fever. None developed serious symptoms.

Thirteen infected volunteers temporarily lost their sense of smell, but this returned within 90 days in all but three participants – the remainder continue to show improvement after three months.

There were no changes seen in their lungs, or any serious adverse events. Only one person had any lingering symptoms by six months - a slightly reduced sense of smell which was improving.

The trial used the lowest dose necessary to infect people, although the team said it was comparable to real-world infections.

The scientists will now study other elements from the trial, including investigating why the 16 of the 34 participants in the final analysis did not get infected despite exposure. Some had detectable virus in their nose but did not go on to test positive twice on PCR tests, the threshold the team used for confirmed infection.

CPN-UML has decided to take action against those involved in betraying the party in the National Assembly elections.

Publicity Department Chief Prithvi Subba Gurung said that a Secretariat meeting of the party held on Wednesday decided to take action against those involved in betraying the party National Assembly elections.

He said that the meeting has directed the party leaders and cadres to start preparations for the local level elections.

Similarly, the party has decided to hold the province conventions after the local elections and to district conventions before the elections.

“The party has decided to organise gatherings of leaders and cadres at the central and province level focusing on the local elections and also decided to hold the national conventions of the people’s organisations on the scheduled date,” he said.

Nepal logged 3, 637 new Covid-19 cases and 12 deaths on Wednesday.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 6,499 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which 2,205 returned positive. Likewise, 5,083 people underwent antigen tests, of which 1,432 tested positive.

The Ministry said that 7,555 infected people recovered from the disease in the last 24 hours.

As of today, there are 69,291 active cases in the country. 

The debate over the MCC compact has dragged on for far too long for anyone’s good. For a controversy that has been years in the making, there are understandably strong opinions on either side. Those opposed to it remain adamant that it is a part of US military strategy and inimical to Nepal’s interest. Those in favor find not much wrong with a compact that has over the years had the support of all of Nepal’s major political forces. Moreover, as they see it, the time-bound, transmission line-and-road grant project is very much in Nepal’s interest.

We believe time has come to settle the debate once and for all. The country has been endlessly debating the MCC compact over the past five years, as if it had no more pressing issue. The longer the compact has dragged on, the more domestic political actors have been inclined to use it for partisan gains. True, the Americans did not help their own cause through their contradictory statements on the compact. But then it is up to Nepal to settle it, based on its own calculations.

The government should table it in parliament and let the sovereign body decide its fate. We are in favor of endorsing a compact that successive Nepali governments have committed to implementing. But if the parliament rejects it, so be it. At least that will be the end of the story. The compact has been so politicized and hyped up that instead of vital national issues like implementation of federalism and better preparing the country for future pandemics, the electoral debate has come to be perversely centered on a comparably innocuous bilateral agreement.

Any foreign help comes with strings attached. What Nepal has to decide is if it needs continued US support and presence. This newspaper has long argued that it is dangerous for Nepal to completely rely on its two neighbors. (Remember Lipulekh?) We will also do well to internalize that all future American help and engagement with Nepal will, in one or the other way, be linked to its strategic objective of containing China. So let us first be clear about what we want.

Disaster-hit Tonga has gone into lockdown after detecting its first community transmissions of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, Aljazeera reported.

The lockdown began at 05:00 GMT on Wednesday, days after the Pacific island nation began receiving foreign aid in the wake of a deadly volcanic eruption that also generated huge tsunami waves around the Pacific.

While the first of Tonga’s community cases were detected in two port workers in the capital, Nuku’alofa, on Tuesday, officials said the men were not on the docks being used by foreign navies to deliver aid.

Australian navy ship the HMAS Adelaide was known to have at least 23 COVID-19 cases on board when it docked at Vuna wharf last week and offloaded 250 pallets of aid to a quarantine zone.

Crew members on board aid flights from Japan and Australia also reported infections.

The workers showed no symptoms but Tongan radio station BroadcomFM reported on Wednesday another three cases had been detected among three of the workers’ family members of the workers, bringing total case numbers to five.

Tonga has previously recorded only one case – in a quarantined traveller returning from New Zealand.

“The most important issue at the moment is for us to slow down [the spread of the virus] and stop those who have been affected. That is the reason for our national lockdown,” Tonga Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni told an emergency press conference on Wednesday.

He said the COVID situation in the country would be reassessed “every 48 hours”, and the government would decide whether to end or extend the lockdown depending on the outcome.

The stay-at-home order means all businesses and schools must close, with only essential services allowed to operate.

Meanwhile, in Australia, officials played down concerns that the crew of the HMAS Adelaide may have been responsible for Tonga’s outbreak.

Tonga’s deputy head of mission in Australia, Curtis Tu’ihalangingie, told the Reuters news agency that the community cases were detected at a different wharf and “not the one that the HMAS Adelaide used”.

“The wharf that had the case is a different one, used for commercial cargoes,” he said.

The Australian Defence Force’s Chief of Joint Operations Greg Bilton also said it did not appear the HMAS Adelaide was the source and samples from the two wharf workers would be sent to Australia for testing to verify the origin of the COVID strain.

“I don’t think there’s any connection, there’s no evidence of that,” he told Sky News.

Tu’ihalangingie also told Reuters the delivery of aid would not change as a result of the COVID-19 cases but that “front-liners will need to be more careful”.

The Tongan government, in a bid to keep the virus at bay, has insisted on contactless delivery of aid, and all pallets unloaded from aircraft or ships are isolated for 72 hours before being distributed by the local emergency service.

Tonga has maintained border restrictions since March 2020, allowing it to contain the virus, while also implementing a nationwide vaccination programme.

According to the health ministry, 83 percent of the eligible population – about 77,000 people over the age of 12 – have been fully vaccinated, while 96 percent have received at least their first dose.

Tonga and several other small Pacific nations, such as Palau and Fiji, were among the last places on the planet virus outbreaks arrived in. The three island nations have also managed to ramp up their vaccination programmes in the last two years.

On Tuesday, the International Federation of Red Cross Red Crescent Societies warned that a record surge in COVID-19 cases was threatening to overwhelm hospitals and fragile health systems in some other Pacific island nations, including the Solomon Islands, where vaccination is still low.