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The Indian rupee hit a seventh straight session of record lows on Tuesday as weakness in domestic shares and currencies weighed, but dollar selling intervention by the central bank helped limit further losses, Reuters reported.

The US dollar hovered just above a one-week low reached overnight versus major peers as markets reduced the odds of a percentage-point Federal Reserve rate hike this month.

The partially convertible rupee was trading at 79.93/94 per dollar after hitting a record low of 80.05. The unit had ended at 79.97 on Monday, according to Reuters.

Spain's Health Ministry has said that 510 people died from heat-related causes in the first week of a heatwave when the mercury reached 45 degrees Celsius in some parts of the country, Xinhua reported.

The fatalities were reported by the Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII) on Monday, which forms part of the Ministry, between July 10 and 16, with Saturday the deadliest to date with 150 victims.

According to the ISCIII System of Monitorisation of Daily Mortality, the number of heat-related deaths increased sharply as the heatwave escalated, Xinhua news agency reported.

It said deaths quadrupled from 15 to 60 in the four days from July 10 to 13. The figure then jumped further to 93 last Thursday and 123 on Friday, before reaching a climax of 150 on Saturday.

The toll is feared to rise even further when new figures are published for Sunday.

The heat is especially affecting the elderly, with 321 of the 510 victims aged 85 years or above, 121 between 75 and 84 years of age, and 44 between 65 and 74 years of age.

However, deaths were also reported among the younger population, including two municipal workers in Madrid who died of heatstroke. This prompted the city hall to adopt more flexible working hours, so that workers could avoid working outdoors during the hottest hours of the day.

Among the younger victims were also a fireman and a shepherd, who died in the wildfires that are engulfing Spain as well as some other areas in Southern Europe, according to Xinhua.

This is Spain's second heatwave of the summer. The previous one, from June 11 to 17, caused 829 deaths, according to ISCIII.

The price of gold has dropped by Rs 200 per tola in the domestic market on Tuesday.

According to the Federation of Nepal Gold and Silver Dealers' Association, the yellow bullion is being traded at Rs 93, 800 per tola today.

Meanwhile, tejabi gold is being traded at Rs 93, 300 per tola.

The yellow metal was traded at Rs 94, 000 per tola on Monday. 

Similarly, the price of silver has decreased by Rs 5 and is being traded at Rs 1,160 per tola today.

A man died after being hit by a bus near Chaumala Multiple Campus in -Gauriganga Municipality-1 of Kailali on Tuesday.

According to the District Police Office, Kailali, the deceased has been identified as Khadak Thapa (46) of Katan, Gauriganga-2.

Police said that the incident occurred when the bus (Na 6 Kha) hit a bicycle Thapa was riding on today.

Critically injured in the incident, Thapa breathed his last during the course of treatment at the Dhangadhi-based Nisarga Hospital.

Police said that they have impounded the bus and arrested its driver for investigation.

The special probe committee of the House of Representatives concluded that the CCTV footage of the day when the then Finance Minister Janardan Sharma had invited two outsiders to tweak tax rates a day before he presented the budget in Parliament on May 29 was deleted in a premeditated manner.

The plan to grill Sharma has also been postponed after the probe committee could not find the CCTV footage.

According to an official of the committee, the Finance Ministry sent the CCTV footage twice but could not find the video where the then Finance Minister Sharma invited two unauthorized persons to tweak the tax rates.

The Finance Ministry handed over the hard drive of the CCTV footage on Friday. However, the footage came out to be of June not of May. Therefore, the committee sent a letter, urging the Ministry to send the footage of May.

Though the Ministry sent the whole system on Monday, the committee could not find the actual footage it had been looking for, a source at the committee said.

“Now, the committee has decided to start the process to retrieve the footage,” the source said.

The committee has planned to take the statement of the then Minister Sharma after completing the process of CCTV footage, the source said.

The committee has already taken the statements of the finance secretary and revenue secretary. Both of them strongly denied the allegations leveled against them.

The probe committee was formed on June 6, the day when then Finance Minister Sharma resigned from his post.

Annapurna Post, the sister publication of the Annapurna post, had first reported that the then Minister Sharma had invited a pair of outsiders into his chamber to tweak the tax rates.

A bystander’s decision to shoot a man who opened fire at an Indiana mall was a rare occurrence of someone stepping in to try to prevent multiple casualties before police could arrive, Associated Press reported.

Police on Monday praised the quick actions of 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken, an armed shopper who killed 20-year-old Jonathan Sapirman after Sapirman killed three people and wounded two others at a mall in the Indianapolis suburb of Greenwood.

“Many more people would have died last night if not for a responsible armed citizen,” police Chief Jim Ison said Monday, repeatedly calling Dicken a “good Samaritan” and his response “heroic.”

It isn’t common for mass shootings to be stopped in such fashion. From 2000 to 2021, fewer than 3% of 433 active attacks in the U.S. ended with a civilian firing back, according to the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University. The researchers define the attacks as one or more people targeting multiple people.

It was far more common for police or bystanders to subdue the attacker or for police to kill the person, according to the center’s national data, which were recently cited by The New York Times.

In a quarter of the shootings, the attacker stopped by leaving the area, similar to what happened during the July 4 parade in Highland Park, Illinois, where seven people were killed, according to Associated Press.

“There’s been this statement: ‘The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.’ That’s factually inaccurate because of the word ‘only,’” said Adam Lankford, a criminal justice expert at the University of Alabama who has written books and research papers about mass shootings.

Nonetheless, gun-rights advocates, including the National Rifle Association, used that phrase on social media to draw attention to what happened in Indiana. 

Since July 1, Indiana has allowed anyone 18 or older to carry a handgun in public, though private property owners can prohibit firearms. The Greenwood mall has a ban on weapons, according to its conduct code.

Gun Owners of America hopes the mall reconsiders, saying gun-free zones create a false sense of security.

The Greenwood Park Mall, which is owned by Simon Property Group, didn’t reply to a request for comment but released a statement commending first responders and the “heroic actions of the good Samaritan who stopped the suspect.”

Lankford believes it would be a mistake to think armed civilians can be relied upon to regularly stop mass shootings.

“While it’s certainly a good thing in this mall shooting that someone was able to stop it before it went any further, let’s not think we can substitute that outcome in all past and future incidents,” Lankford said. “If everyone’s carrying a firearm, the risk that something bad happens just gets much larger.”

There have been other examples of armed people defending large groups. In May, a woman fatally shot a man in Charleston, West Virginia, after he fired an AR-15-style rifle into a crowd at an outdoor party. She was praised by police, not charged.

In 2017, Devin Patrick Kelley crashed his car and killed himself after bystanders, including one who was armed, chased him after he massacred 26 people at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, Associated Press reported.

The Media Action Nepal said that only 0.30 percent of the news stories published in Nepali media had bylines of female journalists.

Out of 21,919 news items published in 20 media outlets, only 76 had bylines of female journalists, read a report published by the Media Action Nepal on Monday.

Aimed at measuring the level of gender sensitivity and determining how much and what kind of news content about women and people with different sexual orientations are published in Nepali media, the Media Action Nepal assessed a total of 23,515 media contents published by a total of 20 media outlets.

Out of the total number of media materials published in those media over the period of two months, only 388 or 1.67 percent news stories are about women and people belonging to different sexual orientations.

Of those 388 about women and people with different sexual orientations, 386 are on women’s issues and only two about sexual minorities.

The reported stated that Nepali media give less priority to issues of women and people with different sexual orientations.

Sri Lanka is in the midst of a deep and unprecedented economic crisis that has sparked huge protests and seen its president quit after fleeing the country - but other countries could be at risk of similar troubles, according to the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), BBC reported.

"Countries with high debt levels and limited policy space will face additional strains. Look no further than Sri Lanka as a warning sign," said IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva on Saturday.

She said developing nations had also been experiencing sustained capital outflows for four months in a row, putting their dreams of catching up with advanced economies at risk.

Sri Lanka is struggling to pay for crucial imports like food, fuel and medicine for its 22 million people as it battles a foreign exchange crisis. Inflation has soared about 50%, with food prices 80% higher than a year ago. The Sri Lankan rupee has slumped in value against the US dollar and other major global currencies this year.

Many blame ex-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa for mishandling the economy with disastrous policies whose impact was only exacerbated by the pandemic. 

Over the years, Sri Lanka had built up a huge amount of debt - last month, it became the first country in the Asia Pacific region in 20 years to default on foreign debt.

Officials had been negotiating with the IMF for a $3bn (£2.5bn) bailout. But those talks are currently stalled amid the political chaos.

But the same global headwinds - rising inflation and interest rate hikes, depreciating currencies, high levels of debt and dwindling foreign currency reserves - also affect other economies in the region, according to BBC.

China has been a dominant lender to several of these developing nations and therefore could control their destinies in crucial ways. But it's largely unclear what Beijing's lending conditions have been, or how it may restructure the debt.

Where China is at fault, according to Alan Keenan from International Crisis Group, is in encouraging and supporting expensive infrastructure projects that have not produced major economic returns. 

"Equally important has been their active political support for the ruling Rajapaksa family and its policies... These political failures are at the heart of Sri Lanka's economic collapse, and until they are remedied through constitutional change and a more democratic political culture, Sri Lanka is unlikely to escape its current nightmare."

Worryingly, other countries appear to be on a similar trajectory, BBC reported.