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India registered about 475,000 more total deaths in 2020 than the previous year, government data released months ahead of schedule on Tuesday showed, as the World Health Organization readies its estimates of excess COVID-19 deaths whose methodology New Delhi has opposed, Reuters reported.

Some experts estimate India's actual COVID death toll is as high as 4 million, about eight times the official figure, especially as a record wave driven by the Delta variant killed many people in April and May of last year. The WHO's estimate will be published on Thursday.

Vinod Kumar Paul, a top health official who has overseen India's fight against the pandemic, said there was nothing "dramatic" in the total death data for 2020 and that those were "absolute, correct and counted numbers".

He said the data showing 8.1 million total deaths in India in 2020 was released by the Office of the Registrar General two to three months in advance because of the attention on the country's COVID toll, according to Reuters.

"There is a public narrative in the media, based on various modelling estimates, that India's COVID-19 deaths are many times the reported figure - that's not the case in reality," he told state TV.

"We now have actual data for 2020, there is no need to do any modelling now. We will have actual, robust data for 2021 too. Modelling can lead to overestimation, absurd estimation."

The death count grew slower in the country of 1.35 billion people in 2020 than in the previous two years, the data showed.

India officially reported 148,738 COVID-19 deaths in 2020, with the tally jumping to 523,889 on Tuesday out of more than 43 million cumulative infections. Only the United States and Brazil have recorded more deaths as of Tuesday.

Countries around the world reported only 1.83 million COVID-19 deaths in 2020 but the WHO estimates excess mortality of at least 3 million globally for that year.

India has said it does not agree with the WHO's methodology, though the scientists working on the latest estimates have defended it, Reuters reported.

Nepal Community Party (NCP) has taken action against party General Secretary Netra Bikram Chand.

A special national assembly that started in Chitwan from Wednesday decided to remove General Secretary Chand and spokesperson Khadga Bahadur Bishwokarma from the party.

An assembly of Dharmendra Bastola and party secretariat member Hemanta Prakash Oli faction decided to remove Chand from the post of party General Secretary.

A meeting of the majority of the central members has appointed Bastola as the coordinator.

Earlier, Chand had expelled Bastola and Oli from the party for carrying out activities against the party.

Bastola and Oli are in favour of boycotting the local level elections while Chand is in favour of supporting independent and nationalist candidates.

A hoax bomb call created panic at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu on Wednesday morning, promoting the airport officials to halt the flights for an hour.

Passengers were evacuated from the airport soon after the officials received a call from an unidentified person claiming that there was a bomb at the airport's domestic terminal.

Though a joint team from the Nepal Police and Nepal Army carried out a search operation following the information, they did not find any suspicious object.

Now, the situation is under control and the flights have also resumed, an airport official said.

CPN-UML cadres vandalized a vehicle carrying the candidates of Nepali Congress in Hupsekot Rural Municipality of East Nawalparasi.

Laxmi Pandey and Purna Sigh Rana, who had filed their candidacies for the post of president and vice-president respectively in Hupsekot Rural Municipality, were injured in the incident, DSP Santosh Pathak, Information Office at the District Police Office said.

The duo, who had sustained injuries on their head, have been sent to Chitwan for treatment.

The UML cadres attacked the Nepali Congress cadres along with Pandey and Rana while they were returning home after carrying out election campaign at ward no. 3, police said.

At least three cadres of UML were also injured in the clash. They are receiving treatment at the Madhyabindu Hospital.

Punjab Kings became the second team to hand Gujarat Titans a loss when they defeated the Hardik Pandya-led side by 8 wickets on Tuesday. Shikhar Dhawantop-scored for the Kings with 62 runs, The Indian Express reported.

Earlier, Gujarat Titans were restricted to 143 for eight. Opting to bat, Sai Sudharsan top-scored for the Titans with an unbeaten 64 off 50 balls, after the team was struggling at 44 for three in the seventh over. Pace spearhead Kagiso Rabada finished with excellent figures of 4/33 in four overs. 

Sandeep Sharmaconceded only 17 runs in his four overs, while Rishi Dhawan bagged a wicket for 26 runs in his full quota of four overs at the D Y Patil Stadium, according to The Indian Express.

Liverpool players stared at each other in disbelief. By the bench, manager Jürgen Klopp watched in awe.

Just like that, Liverpool had squandered its two-goal lead from the first leg of the Champions League semifinals against Villarreal, and its spot in the final was suddenly in jeopardy.

Would Liverpool be the latest powerhouse to be stunned by the modest Spanish club? Would its bid for a seventh European title end in disappointment?

Luckily for the English club, it was only a scare.

Liverpool rallied in the second half to defeat Villarreal 3-2 and reach its third Champions League final in five seasons on Tuesday. It advanced 5-2 on aggregate at the La Cerámica Stadium, Associated Press reported.

“You could see how impressed we were with them in the first half,” said Klopp, who will be making his fourth Champions League final appearance as coach, joint-most with Miguel Muñoz, Alex Ferguson, Carlo Ancelotti and Marcello Lippi. “To come back and win in the second is really impressive.”

After Boulaye Dia and Francis Coquelin put Villarreal ahead by the 41st minute, Fabinho, substitute Luis Díaz and Sadio Mané scored in the second half to propel Liverpool into the final for the first time since winning its sixth European title in 2019. It will be Liverpool’s 10th final in Europe’s top club competition.

Based in a city of 50,000 people in southern Spain, Villarreal had eliminated Juventus in the round of 16 and Bayern Munich in the quarterfinals.

Unai Emery’s team played a man down from the 86th after Étienne Capoue, who assisted on both Villarreal’s goals, was sent off with a second yellow card.

Liverpool will play the May 28 final in Paris against either Premier League rival Manchester City or 13-time European champion Real Madrid. They will meet on Wednesday in Madrid with City defending a 4-3 win from the first leg in England, according to the Associated Press.

The victory also keeps alive Liverpool’s hopes of a “ quadruple ” — winning all four major trophies in one season.

The visitors were dominant in the first leg but looked lost on Tuesday as Villarreal came out pressing early. The hosts won almost every 50-50 ball and stayed near the Liverpool area without giving up much space for counterattacks.

It didn’t take long for Villarreal to cut into the first-leg deficit as Dia opened the scoring from close range after a pass by Capoue in the third minute.

Villarreal wanted a penalty kick after Giovani Lo Celso collided with Liverpool goalkeeper Alisson Becker, but a few moments later it got the second goal with a header by former Arsenal midfielder Francis Coquelin into the top corner after a well-placed right-flank cross by Capoue.

The Liverpool defense looked flat-footed on both goals, leaving space for the Villarreal players to finish into the net.

The English club improved significantly in the second half. It nearly pulled closer when Trent Alexander-Arnold’s shot deflected on a defender and hit the crossbar in the 55th, and it got the first goal came in the 62nd with a low shot by Fabinho that went through the legs of goalkeeper Gerónimo Rulli, Associated Press reported.

Liverpool took advantage of Villarreal’s letdown and Díaz, who helped turn the game around after entering the match at halftime, equalized with a 67th-minute header. Mané got the go-ahead goal on a breakaway in the 74th after getting past Rulli outside the area and shooting into the open net.

With his goal, Mané became the top African scorer in the knockout stage in the Champions League era. He has 15, one more than Mohamed Salah and Didier Drogba.

“Their first goal hurt us a lot,” Villarreal defender Raúl Albiol said. “In the second half they were better than us. We couldn’t maintain the same rhythm than in the first half and that cost us.”

Liverpool has not been eliminated in the knockout rounds after winning the first leg since 2001-02. It has scored a club-record 139 goals in all competitions this season, according to the Associated Press.

Returning to the Champions League may be hard for Villarreal as it’s currently out of the qualification zone in the Spanish league. This was only the fourth appearance in Europe’s top club competition for the club. It had also made the semifinals in 2006, losing to Arsenal. It was a quarterfinalist in 2009, losing to Arsenal again.

The defeat also means there will be no first Champions League trophy for Emery, who had never made it past the round of 16 until now. He has four Europa League trophies on his career, including with Villarreal last season.

With Villarreal’s elimination, Shakhtar Donetsk is set to earn an automatic spot directly into the group stage next season. The berth was freed up because the winner this season will be either Liverpool, Madrid or City, who already qualified through their league’s position, according to the Associated Press.

The shockwaves from the leaked Supreme Court draft ruling are reverberating across the US - in both anti-abortion and pro-choice circles, BBC reported.

Since Roe v Wade legalised abortion nationwide in 1973, many women have fought tirelessly to overturn it, believing the life of an unborn child begins at conception.

Others have clung to the hope that America's highest court might uphold the almost fifty-year-old ruling that allows a woman the right to choose.

We asked six women - three from each side of this debate - how they felt after reading the draft majority opinion that suggests the conservative-leaning court is poised to overturn the national right to an abortion (the court has launched an investigation into the leak), according to BBC.

My first reaction to the leaked document was shock that the Supreme Court appears to be overturning Roe v Wade. As a pro-life conservative, I am used to watching the American political spectrum continuously shift farther away from my values, so I was cautiously optimistic about this apparent progress.

However, I did immediately consider the likelihood of Congress reversing this decision by pushing legislation, or states reacting by passing extreme laws in support of things like late-term abortions.

If Roe v Wade is officially overturned I will have two reactions. First, I would be pleased and grateful at the Supreme Court making a decision that upholds the law and protects the sanctity of life.

Second, I would be relieved that the leak of this document did not successfully pressure the court to change its decision, BBC reported.

That is a direct attack on the Supreme Court's credibility and impartiality. I am worried to see the Court's process infiltrated by rogue political agendas.

Personally, I don't believe in abortion, but I think people should have a right to choose. Women should have autonomy over their own bodies, and I thought that legislating abortion was relegated to the past. The people who want to legislate abortion and regulate the matter say that they are pro-life. But they are only talking about the life of the baby before it's born, and not about the life of the baby after it's born. The same people who want to regulate abortion want to defund schools. Here in Missouri, our schools are failing. If you want to be pro-life, then you need to look at life after a child is born.

Even if the decision comes down officially that Roe v Wade is overturned, there will still be people with unexpected pregnancies. 

Whether abortion is legal or illegal, there are going to be a lot of other women who, if they know that help and support are available, will happily choose life. My mission with the San Antonio Coalition for Life has always been to talk to people with an unexpected pregnancy. Our job is to make sure that we can direct them and help them by giving them the resources they need, according to BBC.

Our job doesn't change whether abortion is legal or illegal. 

We are always going to be here whether it is a life that is not quite six weeks or whether it is a life that is 13 weeks or whether it's a life at conception. Our job is to protect all innocent human life.

Growing up in a Catholic family, I thought abortion was wrong and that it was murder. 

But as an adult, I support a woman's right to have one - 100%. Abortion is healthcare. It's a personal decision about a woman's own body, BBC reported.

Russian forces Tuesday began storming the steel mill containing the last pocket of resistance in Mariupol, Ukrainian defenders said, just as scores of civilians evacuated from the bombed-out plant reached relative safety and told of days and nights filled with dread and despair from constant shelling, Associated Press reported.

Osnat Lubrani, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, said that thanks to the evacuation effort over the weekend, 101 people — including women, the elderly, and 17 children, the youngest 6 months old — were able to emerge from the bunkers under the Azovstal steelworks and “see the daylight after two months.”

One evacuee said she went to sleep at the plant every night afraid she wouldn’t wake up.

“You can’t imagine how scary it is when you sit in the bomb shelter, in a damp and wet basement, and it is bouncing and shaking,” 54-year-old Elina Tsybulchenko said upon arriving in the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles (230 kilometers) northwest of Mariupol, in a convoy of buses and ambulances.

She said if the shelter were hit by a bomb like the ones that left the huge craters she saw on the two occasions she ventured outside, “all of us would be done.”

Evacuees, a few of whom were in tears, made their way from the buses into a tent offering some of the comforts long denied them during their weeks underground, including hot food, diapers and connections to the outside world. Mothers fed small children. Some of the evacuees browsed racks of donated clothing, including new underwear.

The news for those left behind was more grim. Ukrainian commanders said Russian forces backed by tanks began storming the sprawling plant, which includes a maze of tunnels and bunkers spread out over 11 square kilometers (4 square miles), according to the Associated Press.

How many Ukrainian fighters were holed up inside was unclear, but the Russians put the number at about 2,000 in recent weeks, and 500 were reported to be wounded. A few hundred civilians also remained there, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.

“We’ll do everything that’s possible to repel the assault, but we’re calling for urgent measures to evacuate the civilians that remain inside the plant and to bring them out safely,” Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of Ukraine’s Azov Regiment, said on the messaging app Telegram.

He added that throughout the night, the plant was hit with naval artillery fire and airstrikes. Two civilian women were killed and 10 civilians wounded, he said.

The UN’s Lubrani expressed hope for further evacuations but said none had been worked out.

In his nightly video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that by storming the steel mill, Russian forces violated agreements for safe evacuations. He said the prior evacuations are “not a victory yet, but it’s already a result. I believe there’s still a chance to save other people.”

In other battlefield developments, Russian troops shelled a chemical plant in the eastern city of Avdiivka, killing at least 10 people, Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.

“The Russians knew exactly where to aim — the workers just finished their shift and were waiting for a bus at a bus stop to take them home,” Kyrylenko wrote in a Telegram post. “Another cynical crime by Russians on our land.”

Explosions were also heard in Lviv, in western Ukraine, near the Polish border. The strikes damaged three power substations, knocking out electricity in parts of the city and disrupting the water supply, and wounded two people, the mayor said. Lviv has been a gateway for NATO-supplied weapons and a haven for those fleeing the fighting in the east, Associated Press reported.