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Two persons died and seven others sustained injuries in separate road accidents in Mugu district on Sunday.

Police said that two persons lost their lives when a tractor and jeep met with an accident.

According to police, Ganesh Lawad (25) of Chhayanath Rara Municipallity-13 died when the tractor (Lu 4 Cha 6762) heading towards Karnali from Ruga Village of Chayanath Rural Municipality-13 fell some 25 meters down the road at around 9 am today.

Five persons including the tractor driver were injured in the incident.

DSP Subash Hamal of the District Police Office said that they are undergoing treatment at the District Hospital.

Similarly, Deepak Tiruwa (25) of Chhayanath Rara Municipality-2 died on the spot when the jeep (Lu 1 Ja 3754) en route to Mugu from Jumla met with an accident at Bulbule in Kanaka Sundari Rural Municipality-1 of Jumla.

The jeep driver and one another were injured in the accident.

They have been sent to the Karnali Academy of Health Sciences in Jumla for treatment.

Chinese rocket debris has crashed to Earth over the Indian and Pacific oceans, US and Chinese officials say, BBC reported.

China's space agency said most remains of the Long March 5 burnt in the atmosphere, identifying the Sulu Sea in the Pacific as the re-entry location. 

Earlier, space experts had said the probability of the rocket landing in a populated area was extremely low.

The uncontrolled return of rocket's core stage has raised questions about responsibility for space junk.

There have previously been calls by Nasa for the Chinese space agency to design rockets to disintegrate into smaller pieces upon re-entry, as is the international norm.

In a tweet, the US Space Command said the Long March 5 "re-entered over the Indian Ocean at approx 10:45 am MDT [16:45 GMT] on 7/30".

It referred its readers to the Chinese authorities for more details.

Meanwhile, China's space agency gave re-entry co-ordinates as 119 degrees East longitude and 9.1 degrees North latitude. This corresponds to an area in the Sulu Sea - east of the Philippine island of Palawan in the north Pacific.

Recent rockets heading to China's unfinished space station, known as Tiangong, have lacked the capability for a controlled re-entry, according to BBC.

The latest launch was last Sunday, when the Long March 5 rocket carried a lab module to the Tiangong station. The Chinese government said on Wednesday that the rocket's re-entry would pose little risk to anyone on the ground because it would most likely land in the sea. 

However, there was the possibility for pieces of the rocket to come down over a populated area, as they did in May 2020 when properties in Ivory Coast were damaged.

Before crashing, the empty rocket body was in an elliptical orbit around Earth where it was being dragged toward an uncontrolled re-entry.

Designing objects to disintegrate upon atmospheric re-entry is becoming a priority for satellite operators. It's done partly by using materials which have low-melting point temperatures, such as aluminium. 

In the case of rockets, this can be expensive, as historically the materials used for housing fuel, such as titanium, require very high temperatures to burn up. The sheer size of such objects is also an issue, especially in the case of the Long March 5, weighing over 25 tonnes. 

The same Long March 5 configuration has launched twice before, once in May 2020 and again in May 2021, carrying different elements of the Tiangong station. 

On both occasions debris from the rocket's "core stage" were dumped back on Earth, in Ivory Coast and the Indian Ocean. These followed a prototype that crashed into the Pacific Ocean back in 2018, BBC reported.

None of these incidents caused injury but did garner criticism from a range of space agencies. On Tuesday, Chinese state-run newspaper Global Times accused Western media of a US-led smear campaign against the Long March 5. 

This latest launch carried the second of three modules to China's space station. The Wentian lab module at 17.9m in length will be the first of two labs to join the station. China began constructing the space station in April 2021 with the launch of the Tianhe module, the main living quarters. 

China hopes Tiangong will be complete by the end of 2022, according to BBC.

The death of a migrant who was attacked in broad daylight in central Italy has sparked outrage, BBC reported.

The assault on the Nigerian street trader by another man in Civitanova Marche town centre was captured on video on Friday.

The recording, reportedly made by onlookers without any attempt to intervene, shows the victim being held to the ground by a white man.

A 32-year-old Italian has been arrested on suspicion of murder and robbery, according to BBC.

The video of the attack - which has been widely circulated on Italian news websites and social media - has shocked the community, with many highlighting the "indifference" of witnesses.

The circumstances of the incident are unclear.

Russian energy giant Gazprom says it has suspended gas supplies to Latvia - the latest EU country to experience such action amid tensions over Ukraine, BBC reported.

Gazprom accused Latvia of violating conditions of purchase, but gave no details of that alleged violation.

Latvia relies on neighbouring Russia for natural gas imports, but its government says it does not expect Gazprom's move to have a major impact.

Meanwhile, Ukraine says it killed 170 Russian troops in the past 24 hours.

Ukraine's military also said its forces had destroyed two Russian arms dumps in the Kherson area.

Ukraine has stepped up efforts to push the Russians out of Kherson, a major strategic city in the south. The BBC was unable to verify the latest Ukrainian claims.

The UK Ministry of Defence says Russian forces have probably established two pontoon bridges and a ferry system to enable them to resupply Kherson, after Ukrainian rockets damaged key bridges in recent days.

EU states accuse Russia of weaponising gas exports in retaliation for far-reaching Western sanctions imposed over its invasion of Ukraine. 

In Latvia, gas forms only 27% of energy consumption. Edijs Saicans, a senior Latvian economics ministry official quoted by Reuters news agency, said Gazprom's move on Saturday was not expected to have a major impact, according to BBC.

Nato has bolstered forces in Latvia and its Baltic neighbours Estonia and Lithuania, as the region has long been seen as a potential flashpoint with Russia. 

Ethnic Russians form large minorities in the Baltic states. Those states - formerly part of the Soviet Union - plan to stop importing Russian gas next year.

Gazprom sharply cut gas deliveries to Europe via the Nord Stream pipeline on Wednesday to about 20% of its capacity. 

The EU rejects Russia's demand that member states pay for Gazprom gas in roubles, not euros. The EU says there is no contractual condition for rouble payments.

On Thursday the Latvian gas utility Latvijas Gaze said it was buying Russian gas but paying in euros.

Since Russia's February invasion of Ukraine and the tightening of Western sanctions, Gazprom has suspended gas deliveries to Bulgaria, Finland, Poland, Denmark and the Netherlands over non-payment in roubles. Russia has also halted gas sales to Shell Energy Europe in Germany, BBC reported.

The EU is now striving to boost gas imports from elsewhere, including liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Norway, Qatar and the US.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has ordered all civilians still living in parts of eastern Donetsk region under Ukrainian control to evacuate, BBC reported.

Speaking during a late-night address from Kyiv, Mr Zelensky warned of an intensification of fighting. 

"The more people leave Donetsk region now, the fewer people the Russian army will have time to kill," he said.

The region has seen heavy clashes amid a slow advance by Russian forces, who already control large parts of it. 

"The more people leave Donetsk region now, the fewer people the Russian army will have time to kill," the Ukrainian leader said. "We will use all available opportunities to save as many lives as possible and to limit Russian terror as much as possible."

Mr Zelensky's intervention comes as Russia invited UN and Red Cross officials to investigate the deaths of 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) in another part of Donetsk region held by Russian-backed separatists. 

The troops were killed in unclear circumstances during an attack on a prison in Olenivka, with both sides trading blame. 

Speaking on Saturday evening, Russian defence officials said Moscow would welcome an "objective investigation" into the incident.

The Red Cross said on Friday it was asking for access to the Russian-run detention facility and to surviving prisoners - but no permission was immediately forthcoming, according to BBC.

Its deputy head of delegation in Ukraine, Daniel Bunnskog, said granting access to POWs was an obligation under the Geneva Conventions.

The Olenivka prison camp is controlled by the Russian-backed self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DNR).

What happened there on Friday remains unclear. Unverified Russian video footage of the aftermath shows a tangle of wrecked bunk beds and badly charred bodies.

On Saturday, Russia published a list of what it said were the 50 POWs killed in the strike. Moscow says the attack was carried out by Ukraine using a US-made HIMARS artillery system. 

Kyiv denies carrying out the strike and has alleged that Russia fired on the facility to cover up evidence of war crimes. 

Elsewhere, Ukrainian officials labelled Russia a "terrorist state" after Moscow's UK embassy tweeted that Ukrainian Azov battalion soldiers deserved a "humiliating death" by hanging. 

Twitter acknowledged that the post from the Russian embassy violated the social media company's "rules about hateful conduct" - but added that it might be in the public interest to keep it accessible.

The tweet sent out on Friday night said that Azov "militants deserve execution, but death not by firing squad but by hanging, because they're not real soldiers. They deserve a humiliating death".

The tweet included a video clip showing a couple in a wrecked building, accusing Azov troops of having shelled their home. The embassy's call for execution repeats what the man in the video says, BBC reported.

Azov troops were forced to lay down weapons in May after fiercely defending for weeks Azovstal, a giant steelworks in the south-eastern port of Mariupol that was eventually captured by Russia.

The Azov Regiment is a nationalist group with far-right links when it was set up in 2014. It was later incorporated into Ukraine's National Guard.

Russia has long accused the regiment of being neo-Nazis and war criminals, as part of the Kremlin's propaganda campaign to justify its invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, according to BBC.

A strong tremor was felt in Kathmandu and surrounding areas on Sunday.

According to the Nepal Seismological Center, Lainchaur, the earthquake of local magnitude 6.0 was recorded at 8: 13 am.

The epicenter was close to Khotang district.

A tremor was felt in various parts of Kathmandu Valley at 8: 15 am on Sunday.

US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Affairs Donald Lu paid a courtesy call on Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba in Baluwatar on Friday.

According to the US Embassy in Kathmandu, the duo discussed the ties between Nepal and the United States.

They also discussed the 75th year of diplomatic relations between Nepal and the US and the people-to-people relationship among other issues in the meeting, the Embassy said.

Earlier this afternoon, Lu held a meeting with Minister for Foreign Affairs Naryan Khadka.