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A speeding bus veered off a narrow mountain road and plummeted into a ravine in a remote area of southwest Pakistan on Wednesday, killing 22 passengers including women and children, a government official said, Associated Press reported.

The accident happened in the district of Qilla Saifullah in Baluchistan province.

Deputy District Administrator Mohammad Qasim said rescuers transported the bodies to a nearby hospital. There were apparently no survivors, he added. Qasim initially said 18 people died in the accident but later added that rescuers retrieved four more bodies from the badly destroyed wreckage of the bus.

He said relatives of passengers who died in the crash were arriving at a hospital to receive their bodies.

The exact cause of the crash was not immediately known.

Authorities said the weather was fine at the time of the crash, and that police officers were looking into possible mechanical problems or human error as witnesses said the bus appeared to be speeding when it lost control and fell into a ravine.

Eyewitness Abdul Ali told The Associated Press by phone that he was traveling on the same road on motorcycle when he saw a small bus going faster, skidding and falling into a ravine, according to Associated Press.

Ali said that after the bus fell people from a nearby village alerted police, who rushed to the scene. He said he then joined rescuers who were transporting bodies to the hospital in ambulances.

Qillah Saifullah is located about 200 kilometers (120 miles) north of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province.

Pakistan's President Arif Alvi and other government officials expressed sorrow over the tragic accident, and ordered authorities to make arrangements to deliver the bodies of passengers to their families.

Deadly road accidents such as this one are common in Pakistan due to poor road infrastructure and disregard for traffic laws, as well as poorly maintained vehicles.

In July of last year, a jam-packed bus carrying mostly laborers traveling home for a major Muslim holiday rammed into a container truck on a busy highway in central Pakistan, killing at least 33 people, Associated Press reported.

The Biden administration unveiled a new proposed US economic partnership with Latin America on Wednesday (Jun 8) as regional leaders gathered for a US-hosted summit whose agenda has been undermined by discord over the guest list, Reuters reported.

Seeking to counter China's growing clout, a senior administration official said President Joe Biden is offering America's neighbours to the south an alternative that calls for increased US engagement, including stepped-up investment, strengthening supply lines and building on existing trade deals.

However, Biden's "Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity," which still appears to be a work in progress, stops short of offering tariff relief and, according to the US official, will initially focus on "like-minded partners" that already have US trade accords. Negotiations are expected to begin in early fall, the official added.

Biden was due to outline his plan in a speech later on Wednesday to formally open the summit, which was originally conceived as a platform to showcase US leadership in reviving Latin American economies and tackling migratory pressures.

But Biden's agenda has been marred by a partial boycott by leaders upset at Washington's decision to exclude Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from the summit, according to Reuters.

US officials hope the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles and a parallel gathering of top business executives can pave the way for greater economic cooperation as regional nations grappling with higher inflation work to bring supply chains stretched by the Covid-19 pandemic closer to home.

"It's much better for us ... to have a supply chain here in the Americas than it is for us to be dependant on a supply chain that comes from China," US ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar told Reuters.

Biden is seeking to press the administration's competitive goals against China with the launch of the new partnership for the region, the US official said.

Washington, which already has a combined trade pact with Canada and Mexico, a collective one with Central America and a series of bilateral agreements in the region, will attempt to develop new customs, digital trade, labour, environmental and corporate accountability standards, according to the official.

The plan would also aim to mobilise investments, revitalise the Inter-American Development Bank, create clean energy jobs and strengthen supply chains whose weakness were exposed by the pandemic.

Still, the Biden administration appeared to be moving cautiously, mindful an initiative that promotes jobs abroad could face US protectionist pushback, Reuters reported.

Sri Lanka's prime minister says the country needs at least $5bn (£4bn) over the next six months to pay for essential goods as it faces its worst economic crisis in more than 70 years, BBC reported.

Ranil Wickremesinghe told parliament the money is needed for basic items such as food, fuel and fertiliser.

In May, Sri Lanka defaulted on its debts with international lenders for the first time in its history.

The country has held bailout talks with the International Monetary Fund.

On Tuesday, Mr Wickremesinghe, who is also the country's finance minister, told parliament that more money was required this year to meet Sri Lanka's basic needs.

He said the island nation, which has a population of around 22 million, requires $3.3bn for fuel imports, $900m for food, $600m for fertiliser, and $250m for cooking gas, according to BBC.

It comes as Sri Lankan lawmakers accepted a $55m loan for fertilisers from India's Exim Bank.

The United Nations also plans to make a worldwide appeal for Sri Lanka, and has pledged $48m for food, agriculture and healthcare, Mr Wickremesinghe added.

He also warned of a slowdown in government payments to businesses and workers across the country, as funds are redirected to pay for food supplies.

"A lot of people will be without food, so the food programme we are initiating will ensure that all families, even if they have no income, they will have food," Mr Wickremesinghe said.

"We can have community kitchens in temples [and] churches to supply the food. The community has to get involved," he added.

The South Asian nation will also try to renegotiate a $1.5bn financial support deal with China, Mr Wickremesinghe said, BBC reported.

Sri Lanka is struggling with its worst economic crisis since gaining independence from the UK in 1948.

The country's economy has been hit hard by the pandemic, rising energy prices, and populist tax cuts.

A shortage of medicines, fuel and other essentials has also helped to push the cost of living to record highs.

Sri Lanka's official rate of inflation, the pace at which prices rise, rose by 39.1% year-on-year in May. At the same time, food prices in its largest city Colombo increased by 57.4%.

Mr Wickremesinghe is set to unveil an interim budget next month, as he faces the challenge of slashing overall government spending while still providing social welfare payments.

Last week, Sri Lanka's agriculture minister called on farmers to grow more rice as he said the country's "food situation is becoming worse".

The government also announced an immediate increase to value added tax (VAT) from 8% to 12%. The move was expected to boost revenue by 65bn Sri Lankan rupees ($181m; £144m). It also said corporate tax would rise in October from 24% to 30%, according to BBC.

People in Thailand can now grow cannabis plants at home and sell the crop after the nation removed marijuana from its banned narcotics list, BBC reported.

The nation is the first to advance such a move in South-East Asia, a region known for its stringent drug laws.

But recreational use is still banned, even though advocates say the easing effectively decriminalises marijuana.

The government is hoping that developing a local cannabis trade will boost agriculture and tourism.

It's even giving away one million cannabis seedlings to citizens to encourage pick-up.

"It is an opportunity for people and the state to earn income from marijuana and hemp," said Anutin Charnvirakul, deputy prime minister and health minister, on his social media accounts last month, according to BBC.

He shared a photo on Facebook of a chicken dish cooked with cannabis, adding that anyone could sell the dish if they followed the rules - the main one being that products must contain less than 0.2% of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the compound that gives users that "high" feeling.

From Thursday, households will be able to cultivate up to six cannabis pot plants at home if they register with authorities, and companies can also farm the plant with a permit. 

Diners will also be able to order cannabis-infused dishes and drinks at restaurants.

Clinics across the country can also more freely offer cannabis as a treatment. Thailand was the first in Asia to legalise medicinal cannabis use in 2018.

However, using the drug for personal use is still illegal. Officials have warned people against smoking in public, saying it's considered a public nuisance and offenders risked arrest, BBC reported.

Under the plan the government says it also aims to release about 4,000 prisoners convicted of cannabis-related offences.

Thailand, with its year-round tropical climate, has long had a history with cannabis which many locals commonly used in traditional medicines.

A wider draft law on cannabis control is currently being considered in Thai parliament. Advocates believe that coming years could see a gradual relaxing on the rules governing use, according to BBC.

Scientists have for the first time found microplastics in freshly fallen Antarctic snow, BBC reported.

Researchers from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand collected samples from 19 sites in Antarctica and each contained tiny plastic fragments.

Microplastics stem from the erosion of plastic materials and are smaller than a grain of rice - sometimes even invisible to the naked eye.

The researchers found an average of 29 particles per litre of melted snow, according to BBC.

They identified 13 different types of plastics and the most common was polyethylene terephthalate (PET), mostly used in soft-drink bottles and clothing. This was found in 79% of the samples.

Workers pulled scores of bodies from smashed buildings in an “endless caravan of death” inside the devastated city of Mariupol, authorities said Wednesday, while fears of a global food crisis escalated over Ukraine’s inability to export millions of tons of grain through its blockaded ports, Associated Press reported.

At the same time, Ukrainian and Russian forces battled fiercely for control of Sievierodonestk, a city that has emerged as central to Moscow’s grinding campaign to capture Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, known as the Donbas.

As the fighting dragged on, the human cost of the war continued to mount. In many of Mariupol’s buildings, workers are finding 50 to 100 bodies each, according to a mayoral aide in the Russian-held port city in the south.

Petro Andryushchenko said on the Telegram app that the bodies are being taken in an “endless caravan of death” to a morgue, landfills and other places. At least 21,000 Mariupol civilians were killed during the weeks-long Russian siege, Ukrainian authorities have estimated.

The consequences of the war are being felt far beyond Eastern Europe because shipments of Ukrainian grain are bottled up inside the country, driving up the price of food.

Ukraine, long known as the “bread basket of Europe,” is one of the world’s biggest exporters of wheat, corn and sunflower oil, but much of that flow has been halted by the war and a Russian blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast. An estimated 22 million tons of grain remains in Ukraine. The failure to ship it out is endangering the food supply in many developing countries, especially in Africa, according to Associated Press.

Russia expressed support Wednesday for a UN plan to create a safe corridor at sea that would allow Ukraine to resume grain shipments. The plan, among other things, calls for Ukraine to remove mines from the waters near the Black Sea port of Odesa.

But Russia is insisting that it be allowed to check incoming vessels for weapons. And Ukraine has expressed fear that clearing the mines could enable Russia to attack the coast. Ukrainian officials said the Kremlin’s assurances that it wouldn’t do that cannot be trusted.

European Council President Charles Michel on Wednesday accused the Kremlin of “weaponizing food supplies and surrounding their actions with a web of lies, Soviet-style.”

While Russia, which is also a major supplier of grain to the rest of the world, has blamed the looming food crisis on Western sanctions against Moscow, the European Union heatedly denied that and said the blame rests with Russia itself for waging war against Ukraine.

“These are Russian ships and Russian missiles that are blocking the export of crops and grain,” Michel said. “Russian tanks, bombs and mines are preventing Ukraine from planting and harvesting.”

The West has exempted grain and other food from its sanctions against Russia, but the U.S. and the EU have imposed sweeping punitive measures against Russian ships. Moscow argues that those restrictions make it impossible to use its ships to export grain, and also make other shipping companies reluctant to carry its product, Associated Press reported.

Turkey has sought to play a role in negotiating an end to the war and in brokering the resumption of grain shipments. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu met on Wednesday with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov. Ukraine was not invited to the talks.

Much of the recent controversy over the proposed Nijgadh International Airport in Bara district could have been avoided. Successive governments pushed the ‘national pride project’ without a clear understanding of the trade-offs of building an airport smack-dab in the middle of a dense biodiversity-rich forest. Nor was there much of a plan on the resettlement of the villages that would be uprooted during its construction. As a part of a highly ambitious plan, 80 sq. km of land was cordoned off. It was three to four times the area covered by even the biggest airports in the world. Besides an international airport, the plan was also to build a smart city from the ground-up–with the whole enterprise expected to cost around an eye-watering $6.5bn.  

Most aviation experts reckon a fourth of the area being proposed is enough to build a world-class airport. This would not only dramatically lower project cost but also pose less of an environmental challenge. On the other hand, if the airport and surrounding structures were to sprawl over 80 sq. km, a whopping 2.4m trees would have to be felled. The idea of the smart city was also rather daft: there are plenty of nearby cities that can be easily upgraded to service the new airport. No wonder the Supreme Court had to intervene and ask the government to stop building the proposed airport that didn’t seem to be making any rhyme or reason.  

But there is also no alternative to Nijgadh. After a decade and half, the three airports purpose-built for international air-traffic–TIA, Pokhara and Bhairahawa–between them won’t be able to handle half the volume of expected air-traffic. Of all the proposed sites for an alternative international airport, Nijgadh is also the only place where international flights will be able to start their descent in Nepali airspace–a huge consideration given India’s reluctance to allow third-country carriers in its airspace.       

As many aviation experts have pointed out, a top-notch international airport can be built at Nijgadh for around $3bn, and with minimal environmental damage and disturbance to the lives and livelihoods of those living in the vicinity. Time then to go back to the drawing board.  

India’s Minister for External Affairs S Jaishankar has said that India’s neighborhood first policy is clearly associated with a generous and non-reciprocal approach to our immediate proximity.

Addressing an event organized to mark 8 years of Modi government in New Delhi, he said: “If you consider Neighborhood First, for example, it is now clearly associated with a generous and non-reciprocal approach to our immediate proximity.”

“We envisage India as a larger lifting tide for the entire region. Our investments in connectivity, expansion of contacts, and promotion of cooperation have also been noteworthy. Whether it was during Covid or the current economic challenges, India has gone the extra mile for its neighbors and will continue to do so,” he said.

The Indian Minister said the support that we received from Ukraine’s neighbors during neighbors Ganga was also very valuable. On our part, it is by now established tradition that any rescue and relief effort also covers citizens of other countries, he said.

I hope that you also share my belief that Indian foreign policy thinking is displaying greater conceptual and operational clarity, he said.