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A rape case has been filed against actor Paul Shah at the Tanahun District Court on Tuesday.

The District Government Attorney’s Office filed the case this afternoon, District Attorney Ram Chandra Sharma said.

Earlier, the rape case was filed against actor Shah in the Nawalpur District Court.

The Attorney’s Office has demanded 12-14 years of imprisonment against Shah and six to seven years against his manager Krishna Joshi.

Actor Shah, who has been accused of raping a minor girl, turned himself in to police on February 27.

Sharing the similar vision of sustainability and commitment to climate change, Annapurna Media Network and Khaalisisi have joined hands together in a campaign, ‘Unity for Sustainability’.

The two-year campaign will be a collaborative effort of AMN and climate stakeholders through green partnership. With this partnership, they hope that they will fight against the effects of climate change and foster sustainable development, read a statement.

Khaalisisi is a tech driven social enterprise that integrates the informal waste sector into the formal system to solve the growing crisis of improper waste management.

With the vision to build Nepal as the world’s top recycler, Khaalisisi primarily connects the waste entrepreneurs with waste sellers through their digital platform.

By not disrupting the existing value chain, khaalisisi has been working with a network of more than 300 Khaalisisi friends.

They collect all kinds of dry waste including plastic, electronic waste, books and newspapers.

They have partnered with student groups who design waste management programs and raise awareness on the matter. They have also initiated campaigns to showcase waste as a sustainable resource by employing single women to make school supplies out of waste cloth.

There is a possibility of light rain with thunder and lightning in some of the hilly areas of the country due to the influence of the western low pressure system.

According to the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, there is a possibility of thunder and light rainfall in some of the hilly areas of the Gandaki Province and Province 1.

The Department has requested all to take necessary precaution as there is a possibility of thunder and lightning in some of the places of hilly areas.

According to the Meteorological Forecasting Division, the minimum temperature in Kathmandu Valley today is 14.6 degrees Celsius and the maximum temperature is 29.3 degrees Celsius.

Similarly, the lowest temperature of Jumla is 4.1 degrees Celsius and the maximum temperature of Nepalgunj is 37.0 degrees Celsius. RSS

An understanding has been reached between Nepal and Qatar to renew the bilateral labour agreement. 

The understanding to this effect was reached at a meeting held between Minister for Labour, Employment and Social Security, Krishna Kumar Shrestha, and Labour Minister of Qatar, Dr Ali bin Samikh Al Marri. 

Minister Shrestha is now on a visit to Qatar.

Minister Shrestha briefed his Qatari counterpart about the draft sent by the Government of Nepal for the renewal of the labour agreement between Nepal and Qatar. 

According to Minister Shrestha’s Secretariat, the agreement was reached to give a final shape to the draft soon by holding discussions on it and hosting an agreement-signing ceremony in Nepal.  

Both the countries had signed the agreement in 2005 in a bid to make labour migration safe and orderly and regular. 

On the occasion, both the ministers held discussions on the implementation of decisions made by the fourth meeting of the Nepal-Qatar Joint Committee organised in Kathmandu in December 2021. Nepal and Qatar had agreed to revise the labour agreement. 

Various issues including social security of Nepali workers, safety at workplace, health facility and arrangement of 24-hour insurance were also discussed, it is said.  There are more than 300,000 Nepali workers in Qatar. 

Similarly, Quatari Minister Marri expressed his interest to recruit Nepali workers in the FIFA World Cup being held in Qatar in 2022. 

Secretary Yek Narayan Aryal, Joint-Secretary Rajeev Pokharel, Under-Secretary Dr Thaneshwor Bhusal, officers of Nepali Embassy and Secretary at Labour Ministry of Qatar, Mohammed Hassan Al Obaidli, were present on the occasion. RSS

Not a single country managed to meet the World Health Organization’s (WHO) air quality standard in 2021, a survey of pollution data in 6,475 cities showed on Tuesday, and smog even rebounded in some regions after a COVID-related dip, Reuters reported.

The WHO recommends that average annual readings of small and hazardous airborne particles known as PM2.5 should be no more than 5 micrograms per cubic metre after changing its guidelines last year, saying that even low concentrations caused significant health risks.

But only 3.4% of the surveyed cities met the standard in 2021, according to data complied by IQAir, a Swiss pollution technology company that monitors air quality. As many as 93 cities saw PM2.5 levels at 10 times the recommended level.

“There are a lot of countries that are making big strides in reduction,” said Christi Schroeder, air quality science manager with IQAir. “China started with some very big numbers and they are continuing to decrease over time. But there are also places in the world where it is getting significantly worse.”

India’s overall pollution levels worsened in 2021 and New Delhi remained the world’s most polluted capital, the data showed. Bangladesh was the most polluted country, also unchanged from the previous year, while Chad ranked second after the African country’s data was included for the first time, according to Reuters.

China, which has been waging war on pollution since 2014, fell to 22nd in the PM2.5 rankings in 2021, down from 14th place a year earlier, with average readings improving slightly over the year to 32.6 micrograms, IQAir said.

Hotan in the northwestern region of Xinjiang was China’s worst performing city, with average PM2.5 readings of more than 100 micrograms, largely caused by sandstorms.

It fell to third on the list of the world’s most polluted cities after being overtaken by Bhiwadi and Ghaziabad, both in India, Reuters reported.

Shelling hit a Kyiv shopping centre late on Sunday, killing at least eight people, wrecking nearby buildings and leaving smoking piles of rubble and the twisted wreckage of burned-out cars spread over several hundred metres, Reuters reported.

As day broke on Monday, firefighters were putting out small blazes around the smouldering carcass of a building in the shopping centre car park in the Podil district of the city and looking for possible survivors.

The force of the explosion obliterated one structure in the shopping centre car park and gutted an adjacent 10-storey building, shattering windows in the surrounding residential tower blocks.

Six bodies were lain out on the pavement as emergency services combed through the wreckage to the sound of distant artillery fire. Ukraine’s Prosecutor General said at least eight people had been killed.

Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said areas near the shopping centre were used to store rocket munitions and for reloading multiple rocket launchers.

“High-precision long-range weapons on the night of March 21 destroyed a battery of Ukrainian multiple rocket launchers and a store of ammunition in a non-functioning shopping center,” he told reporters.

Russian forces have pounded some suburbs of the Ukrainian capital, but defenders have so far managed to prevent Kyiv from coming under the kind of full-scale assault that has devastated eastern cities such as Mariupol and Kharkiv.

However dozens of civilians have been killed in Kyiv since Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24, many in residential buildings hit by missile strikes or debris from missiles shot down by Ukrainian anti-aircraft fire, according to Reuters.

“Russia fired at our shopping centre. The mall and the residential buildings around it have suffered terrible damage,” Mykola Medinskiy, an army chaplain, told Reuters, adding there were no strategic military objects in the area.

Reuters was not immediately able to verify that comment. Russia denies targeting civilians.

“It is hard for me to speak because my child worked here. She was at work just yesterday. And then this thing happened last night,” said tearful onlooker Valentina Timofeevna.

After a relatively quiet weekend in Kyiv, the sound of heavy bombardment could be heard to the north of the city, where much of the most intense fighting has taken place.

The bulk of Russian forces remain more than 25 km (15 miles) from the centre of Kyiv, British military intelligence said on Monday.

Thousands of people have been killed in the fighting and about 10 million displaced, including nearly 3.5 million who have fled abroad, mostly to neighbouring European countries such as Poland.

Russian President Vladimir Putin describes the action as a “special military operation” to disarm Ukraine and halt the “genocide” of Russian-speaking people by Ukraine. Kyiv and the West say this is a false pretext for an unprovoked war to subdue a country, Reuters reported.

Sri Lankan police said on Sunday two men collapsed and died while waiting in separate queues to secure fuel amid sky-rocketing prices leading to record inflation, The Economic Times reported.

The men, in their seventies, died while they were waiting for petrol and kerosene oil in two different parts of the country, said police spokesman Nalin Thalduwa in commercial capital Colombo.

For weeks people have been queuing up at pumps, often for hours, and the country has been under rolling powercuts.

"One was a 70-year-old three-wheeler driver who was a diabetic and heart patient while the second was a 72-year-old, both had been waiting in line for about four hours for fuel oil," Thalduwa said.

On Sunday Sri Lanka suspended operations at its only fuel refinery after crude oil stocks ran out, said Ashoka Ranwala the president of the Petroleum General Employees' Union, according to The Economic Times.

The energy ministry could not be immediately reached for a comment.

Use of kerosene oil has increased after low-income families began shifting away from cooking gas due to price increases. On Sunday Laugfs Gas, the country's second largest supplier raised prices by 1,359 rupees ($4.94) for a 12.5 kg cylinder, the company said in a statement.

Sri Lanka has been struggling to find dollars to pay for increasingly expensive fuel shipments since January, with its foreign currency reserves dipping to $2.31 billion in February, The Economic Times reported.

15.1 percent, among the highest in Asia, with food inflation soaring to 25.7 percent, latest government data showed.

Earlier this month Sri Lanka's central bank floated the rupee causing the currency to plummet by more than 30 percent to trade at about 275 rupees per US dollar.

Milk powder prices increased by 250 rupees ($0.90) for a 400g pack on Saturday, prompting restaurant owners to raise the cost of a cup of milk tea to 100 rupees, according to The Economic Times.