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A man died after a truck hit a motorbike he was riding on in Ilam.

The deceased has been identified as Dhan Bahadur Rai (35) of Yangrup Rural Municipality-4, Panchthar.

The incident occurred when the motorbike (Me 1 Pa 6544) tried to overtake the truck (Na 4 Kha 5669).

Ganga Bahadur Thapa, Information Officer at the District Police Office, said that Rai died on the spot after being hit by the truck.

The truck driver fled the scene after the incident.

Police said that they are looking into the case.

A Shree Airlines plane made an emergency landing at the Kathmandu airport on Wednesday due to a technical glitch.

Tek Nath Sitaula, spokesperson at the Civil Aviation Authority Office at the Tribhuvan International Airport, said that the aircraft en route to Dhangadhi from Kathmandu landed a few minutes after the take off. 

"The plane that took off for Dhangadi landed safely at the Tribhuvan International Airport at around 12: 08 after it lost power to its left engine," he said. All the passengers onboard are safe.

There were 80 passengers on board the aircraft.

Elon Musk says if his bid to buy Twitter is successful he will reverse Donald Trump's ban from the platform, BBC reported.

The richest man in the world agreed a $44bn (£34.5bn) takeover bid with the Twitter board last month.

But he said it was not a done deal and that ideally it would be completed in the next two to three months.

Twitter's decision to ban the former US president was "morally wrong and flat-out stupid", Mr Musk told the Financial Times Future of the Car summit, according to BBC.

In January 2021, Twitter said Mr Trump's account was "permanently suspended... due to the risk of further incitement of violence" following the storming of the Capitol.

But the Tesla owner said: "I would reverse the permanent ban but I don't own Twitter yet so this is not a thing that will definitely happen."

He said the ban had not silenced Mr Trump, but by making him move onto his own Truth Social site, it had amplified his voice among the far right.

He pointed out that Mr Trump had previously said he would not return to Twitter even if his account was reinstated, BBC reported.

World Trade Organization (WTO) members said that the outcome document emerging from the informal process conducted with the Quad (European Union, India, South Africa and the United States) opens the prospect for text-based negotiations on an intellectual property response to COVID-19.

At a General Council meeting on 10 May, members welcomed the proposal as a positive development and thanked Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Deputy Director-General Anabel González, as well as the four members of the Quad, for their efforts in trying to find a way forward on this long-standing issue.

DG Okonjo-Iweala thanked delegations for the "constructive spirit" shown during the General Council meeting.

"Everyone is ready to pitch in together to get an outcome based on this," she said. "To me, it's pretty amazing. There's a lot of work still to be done, but I think if we put our minds to it, we can do it." 

Following an impasse of more than a year in the Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), the text was forwarded by DG Okonjo-Iweala and shared immediately by TRIPS Council Chair Ambassador Lansana Gberie (Sierra Leone) with all delegations, who had the opportunity to express their initial views about the proposal at a formal meeting on the TRIPS Council on 6 May. 

In their discussions facilitated by DG Okonjo-Iweala and working with Deputy Director-General Anabel González, the Quad adopted a problem-solving approach aimed at identifying practical ways to clarify, streamline and simplify how governments can override patent rights, under certain conditions, to enable diversification of production of COVID-19 vaccines.

While acknowledging that the proposal sets out a solid basis for further discussion and could lead to a long-awaited and urgently needed outcome, many delegations said more time was needed to review the document internally before they could engage in substantive discussions. Some members noted that further engagement is needed to assess specific issues, such as which members are eligible to benefit from the new proposal. 

China announced at the meeting that it will not avail itself of the flexibilities under the Quad waiver text provided that language is used opening benefits of the waiver to all developing members while encouraging those with capacity to export vaccines to opt out. China and several other members rejected a second option in the text that would restrict waiver eligibility to those developing countries that exported more than 10 per cent of the world’s vaccine doses in 2021.

A CPN-UML cadre was murdered after abduction in Rukum East.

Police said that they have apprehended three CPN (Maoist Centre) cadres including a people's representative for their alleged involvement in the incident.

The arrestees have been identified as Ward Chairman Jaya Kumar Buda of Putha Uttarganga Rural Municipality-11 of Rukum East, his brother Arjun Buda and ward chairman candidate Kumar Singh Buda.

The Maoist Centre cadres abducted Jung Maya Buda (39) following a dispute over the election campaign in Taksera Village on May 2.

Police found the body of Buda at a jungle four kilometers away from Taksera on Tuesday.

The body of Buda has been brought to the Lumbini Provincial Hospital in Butwal for postmortem.

UML Politburo member Madhav Sharma said that Buda was murdered after rape by the Maoist cadres.

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Government of Bangladesh have signed a USD200-million on-lending facility to Infrastructure Development Co. Ltd (IDCOL) to finance infrastructure projects in Bangladesh, marking AIIB’s first investment through a financial institution into infrastructure in the country.

IDCOL is a government-owned nonbanking financial institution established for infrastructure financing in Bangladesh. AIIB’s investment will provide IDCOL with financing that it will further onlend to private companies to support infrastructure projects.

The large infrastructure deficit in Bangladesh is one of the most critical development challenges facing the country.

Bangladesh’s Perspective Plan 2041 highlights the need for an annual investment of USD10 billion in infrastructure over the next two decades. Despite the impressive development achievements, Bangladesh faces several development challenges that were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The project will support Bangladesh’s goal to bridge its infrastructure deficit and achieve sustainable growth, as highlighted by the government’s both short-term and long-term plans.

The project will make long-term financing available for infrastructure subprojects in power generation, renewable and low-carbon electricity, information and communications technology infrastructure, cross-regional transportation and others, thereby enhancing economic activity and creating employment opportunities.

“By providing long-term financing to the private sector in Bangladesh, AIIB will promote infrastructure investment, help alleviate the funding constraints faced by private sponsors, and help mobilize private capital by attracting additional financing,” said AIIB Vice President, Investment Operations (Region 1) Urjit R. Patel.

“This project also aligns with AIIB’s thematic priority to finance green infrastructure. Aside from further strengthening the partnership between AIIB and Bangladesh to promote sustainable infrastructure development, this will also help facilitate the country’s economic and financial recovery amid the pandemic.”

As of today, AIIB has approved 15 projects amounting to over USD2.8 billion in Bangladesh, in which more than half of the projects are focusing on energy, transport and water sector.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv’s military has made small gains in the east, pushing Russian forces out of four villages near Kharkiv, as his country’s foreign minister suggested Ukraine could go beyond just forcing Russia back to areas it held before the invasion began 11 weeks ago, Associated Press reported.

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba voiced what appeared to be increasing confidence — and expanded goals — amid Russia’s stalled offensive in the east, telling the Financial Times that Ukraine initially believed victory would be the withdrawal of Russian troops to positions they occupied before the Feb. 24 invasion. But that’s no longer the case.

“Now if we are strong enough on the military front, and we win the battle for Donbas, which will be crucial for the following dynamics of the war, of course the victory for us in this war will be the liberation of the rest of our territories,” Kuleba said.

Russian forces have made advances in the Donbas and control more of it than they did before the war began. But Kuleba’s statement — which seemed to reflect political ambitions more than battlefield realities — highlighted how Ukraine has stymied a larger, better-armed Russian military, surprising many who had anticipated a much quicker end to the conflict.

One of the most dramatic examples of Ukraine’s ability to prevent easy victories is in Mariupol, where Ukrainian fighters holed up at a steel plant have denied Russia full control of the city. The regiment defending the plant said Russian warplanes continued bombarding it, striking 34 times in 24 hours, according to the Associated Press.

In recent days, the United Nations and the Red Cross organized a rescue of what some officials said were the last civilians trapped at the plant. But two officials said Tuesday that about 100 were believed to still be in the complex’s underground tunnels. Donetsk regional Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said those who remain are people “that the Russians have not selected” for evacuation.

Kyrylenko and Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupol’s mayor, did not say how they knew civilians were still in the complex — a warren of tunnels and bunkers spread over 11 square kilometers (4 square miles). Others said their statements were impossible to confirm.

Fighters with the Azov regiment released photos of their wounded comrades inside the plant, including some with amputated limbs. They said the wounded were living in unsanitary conditions “with open wounds bandaged with non-sterile remnants of bandages, without the necessary medication and even food.”

In its statement on Telegram, the regiment appealed to the UN and Red Cross to evacuate the wounded servicemen to Ukrainian-controlled territories.

The photos could not be independently verified.

Ukraine said Tuesday that Russian forces fired seven missiles at Odesa a day earlier, hitting a shopping center and a warehouse in the country’s largest port. One person was killed and five wounded, the military said, Associated Press reported.

Images showed a burning building and debris — including a tennis shoe — in a heap of destruction in the city on the Black Sea. Mayor Gennady Trukhanov later visited the warehouse and said it “had nothing in common with military infrastructure or military objects.”

Since President Vladimir Putin’s forces failed to take Kyiv early in the war, his focus has shifted to the eastern industrial heartland of the Donbas. But one general has suggested Moscow’s aims also include cutting Ukraine’s maritime access to both the Black and Azov seas.

That would also give Russia a swath of territory linking it to both the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized in 2014, and Transnistria, a pro-Moscow region of Moldova.

Even if Russia falls short of severing Ukraine from the coast — and it appears to lack the forces to do so — continuing missile strikes on Odesa reflect the city’s strategic importance. The Russian military has repeatedly targeted its airport and claimed it destroyed several batches of Western weapons.

Odesa is also a major gateway for grain shipments, and its blockade by Russia already threatens global food supplies. Beyond that, the city is a cultural jewel, dear to Ukrainians and Russians alike, and targeting it carries symbolic significance.

With Russian forces struggling to gain ground in the Donbas, military analysts suggest that hitting Odesa might serve to stoke concern about southwestern Ukraine, thus forcing Kyiv to put more forces there. That would pull Ukrainian units away from the eastern front as Ukraine’s military stages counteroffensives near the northeastern city of Kharkiv in an attempt to push the Russians back across the border there, according to the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, Kharkiv and the surrounding area have been under sustained Russian attack since the early in the war. In recent weeks, grisly pictures testified to the horrors of those battles, with charred and mangled bodies strewn in one street.

The bodies of 44 civilians were found in the rubble of a five-story building that collapsed in March in Izyum, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) from Kharkiv, said Oleh Synehubov, the head of the regional administration, said Tuesday.

Liverpool has ensured the Premier League’s thrilling title race will stretch into the final week of the season, Associated Press reported.

A come-from-behind 2-1 win at Aston Villa, sealed by a 65th-minute header by Sadio Mane, showed Liverpool’s heart for the fight and moved Jürgen Klopp’s team level on points with Manchester City on Tuesday.

“It’s about digging in, keeping going and finding a way to win,” Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson said.

City still leads thanks to its superior goal difference of 3 to Liverpool. The defending champions play their game in hand against Wolverhampton on Wednesday, after which the two title rivals will have only two more league games to play.

The earliest City could now clinch the league is on Tuesday, when Liverpool plays its next league game — at Southampton. Before that, City plays twice, against Wolves then West Ham on Sunday.

“We cannot do more than win,” Klopp said. “A lot of people thought this could be a banana skin, that it could be a struggle for us, and how the boys sorted that was absolutely outstanding.”

The Reds, who drew 1-1 with Tottenham on Saturday, avoided having their title bid further derailed by a Villa team managed by one of their greatest players, according to the Associated Press.

Steven Gerrard, a boyhood Liverpool fan and former star midfielder, insisted his focus was purely on winning the game for Villa and saw midfielder Douglas Luiz — who was once on Man City’s books — give his team the lead in the third minute. The Brazilian forced the ball in from close range after his initial header was only parried out by Liverpool goalkeeper Alisson Becker.

Villa held the lead for less than three minutes, with Joel Matip equalizing by converting into an unguarded empty net after fellow center back Virgil van Dijk had a shot saved by goalkeeper Emi Martinez.

Liverpool lost Fabinho in the 30th minute to a hamstring injury that could potentially rule the holding midfielder out of the FA Cup final against Chelsea on Saturday.

The injury might actually have helped Liverpool. Fabinho had been struggling up to that point — he was lucky to avoid getting a yellow card for repeated fouls — and his replacement, Henderson, used his experience to calm the game down.

Liverpool had regained control by the time Mane twisted his neck to meet a cross from the left from Luis Diaz with a header into the bottom corner, Associated Press reported.

Now playing more as a central striker following Diaz’s arrival, Mane has become a pivotal player in recent months for Klopp, who gave the Senegal international a big hug after the fulltime whistle that came as Liverpool’s away contingent sang the club’s anthem, You’ll Never Walk Alone.

“He’s a machine. A massive player,” Klopp said of Mane. “When everyone has yards in their legs, you can’t see it with him.”

Ahead of the FA Cup final at Wembley Stadium, Klopp chose to leave out left back Andrew Robertson from the squad entirely and begin with Mohamed Salah and Thiago Alcantara on the bench.

Liverpool finishes the league campaign with games against Southampton and Wolverhampton next week.

As for City, Pep Guardiola’s team might need to claim seven points from its remaining three games to win a sixth title in 11 years. The last match is against Villa on the final day of the season, so Gerrard can still have a massive say in the title race — but now by helping his old club.

“In terms of commitment, heart and application, the lads gave me all I could ask for,” Gerrard said, according to the Associated Press.

“Against one of the top sides in the league, we’ve been done in moments.”