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India will give Sri Lanka an additional $500 million in financial assistance to buy fuel, the troubled island nation's foreign minister told reporters Wednesday, adding that Bangladesh was also willing to postpone $450 million in swap repayments to ease Colombo's burden, BBC reported.

"Assistance by the IMF will take about six months to come to us and it will come in tranches," Sri Lankan Foreign Minister GL Peiris was quoted by Reuters. "During the intervening period, we need to find funds to keep our people supplied with essentials."

This will be the second $500 million India has provided in fuel credit to a Sri Lanka government battling the country's worst financial crisis in living memory.

The first line of credit was used up earlier this month after a shipment of 120,000 tons of diesel and 40,000 tons of petrol. 

So far India has provided nearly 400,000 tons of fuel.

Massive protests broke out on Tuesday after fuel reserves ran low.

Thousands of angry motorists burned tyres and blocked a major road leading into capital Colombo, news agency AFP reported citing police and local officials, according to BBC.

The protests came after the state-run Ceylon Petroleum Corporation raised the price of 92 octane to LKR 338 per litre - an increase of LKR 84, PTI reported.

That was the CPC's second price hike this month. On Monday the Lankan Indian oil company yesterday hiked its prices for a fifth time in six months.

India, meanwhile, has also extended two credit lines worth over $2 billion to help buy food - rice has already been sent - medicines and other essentials.

India on Tuesday also urged the IMF, or International Monetary Fund, to urgently provide financial assistance to Sri Lanka. 

This was as finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman met IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva on the margins of the IMF-World Bank spring meeting in the US.

Georgieva lauded the help extended by India to its neighbours and other vulnerable economies, especially the assistance provided to Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka had sought India's help in garnering international support to secure bridge financing as it enters negotiations with the IMF for a bailout deal, BBC reported.

This week there were also talks on linking electricity grids, Reuters said. This has been seen as a step to help Delhi reduce China's influence over Sri Lanka.

Crisis-hit Sri Lanka last week defaulted on its external debt - reported at over $51 billion. Officials said foreign debt payments were temporarily suspended to avoid a hard default and conserve limited reserves to import essential items, according to BBC.

A Russian oligarch has lambasted the country's "massacre" in Ukraine and called for an end to the "crazy war".

Oleg Tinkov wrote in a profanity-littered Instagram post that he did not see "any beneficiary" of the conflict, BBC reported.

Mr Tinkov is one of Russia's most well-known entrepreneurs and founded the global online bank Tinkoff Bank and owned the cycling team Tinkoff-Saxo.

He is also one of the most high profile Russians to publicly condemn President Vladimir Putin's actions.

Two of the country's most prominent oligarchs Mikhail Fridman and Oleg Deripaska have made separate calls for peace, but have stopped short of direct criticism.

Mr Fridman, a billionaire banker, has said any personal remarks could be a risk not just to himself but also staff and colleagues.

However, the businessman Boris Mints, who worked for the Russian government in the 1990s but was discharged of his political roles four days after Mr Putin took office, has joined Mr Tinkov in voicing direct criticism of the president.

Mr Mints, who lives in the UK, is the subject of current legal action by the Kremlin. He told the BBC "every right-thinking person has a duty to speak out against this appalling war and Vladimir Putin's growing authoritarianism".

"All of us must do what we can to support Ukrainians suffering from this vicious onslaught, whether in Ukraine or as refugees beyond its borders," he added, according to BBC.

The UK government has sanctioned Mr Tinkov along with many other Russians identified as having close links to the Kremlim. Mr Mints has not been sanctioned.

Mr Tinkov has previously denied having any close relationship with President Putin or the Kremlin.

In his Instagram post, Mr Tinkov said 90% of Russians were against the war in Ukraine and added "morons in any country are 10%".

"I don't see a SINGLE beneficiary of this insane war! Innocent people and soldiers are dying," Mr Tinkov added.

"Waking up with a hangover, the generals realised that they have a shit army.

"And how will the army be good, if everything else in the country is shitty and mired in nepotism, sycophancy and servility?"

Before Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, Mr Tinkov's wealth had been estimated at more than $4.4bn (£3.4bn).

But he has since lost his billionaire status as shares in his bank have plummeted, Forbes reported last month.

Switching to English in his post, Mr Tinkov wrote: "Dear 'collective West' please give Mr Putin a clear exit to save his face and stop this massacre. Please be more rational and humanitarian."

In a statement, Tinkoff Bank said it would not comment on the "private opinion" of its founder, who stepped down as chairman in 2020, saying he no longer made decisions for the brand started in 2006, BBC reported.

Mr Tinkov, who is not currently in Russia, owns about 35% of Cyprus-based TCS Group Holding, whose stable of companies under the Tinkoff brand span sectors from banking and insurance to mobile services. 

He has been described as a "serial entrepreneur" whose career has seen him go from bike racing, to importing electronics, flogging frozen food, brewing beer, issuing credit cards and then back to bike racing as owner of cycling's Tinkoff-Saxo team, according to BBC.

The Justice Department is filing an appeal seeking to overturn a judge’s order that voided the federal mask mandate on planes and trains and in travel hubs, officials said Wednesday, Associated Press reported.

The notice came minutes after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked the Justice Department to appeal the decision handed down by a federal judge in Florida earlier this week.

A notice of appeal was filed in federal court in Tampa. 

The CDC said in a statement Wednesday that it is its “continuing assessment that at this time an order requiring masking in the indoor transportation corridor remains necessary for the public health.” 

It remained unclear whether the Biden administration would ask the appeals court to grant an emergency stay to immediately reimpose the mask mandate on public transit. An emergency stay of the lower court’s ruling would be a whiplash moment for travelers and transit workers. Most airlines and airports, many public transit systems and even ride-sharing company Uber lifted their mask-wearing requirements in the hours following Monday’s ruling, according to the Associated Press.

federal judge in Florida had struck down the national mask mandate for mass transit on Monday, leading airlines and airports to swiftly repeal their requirements that passengers wear face coverings. The Transportation Security Administration said Monday that it would it will no longer enforce the mask requirement.

The CDC had recently extended the mask mandate, which was set to expire Monday, until May 3 to allow more time to study the BA.2 omicron subvariant, which is now responsible for the vast majority of US cases. But the court ruling Monday had put that decision on hold. 

The CDC said it will continue to monitor public health conditions to determine if a mandate would remain necessary. It said it believes the mandate is “a lawful order, well within CDC’s legal authority to protect public health.” 

Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley said Wednesday night that the department was filing the appeal “in light of today’s assessment by the CDC that an order requiring masking in the transportation corridor remains necessary to protect the public health.” 

Biden’s administration has offered mixed messages in the wake of the Monday ruling. While officials said Americans should heed the CDC’s guidance even if it was no longer a requirement, Biden himself suggested they had more flexibility on masking-up during transit, Associated Press reported.

“That’s up to them,” Biden declared during a Tuesday visit to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The White House nonetheless continues to require face coverings for those traveling with him on Air Force One, citing guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that Biden still is encouraging Americans to wear masks when traveling and that he had been “answering the question quite literally” a day before. 

People are not legally bound to wear masks,” she said, after the court order. “So, it is a point in time where it is up to people — it is their choice, in that regard.

After a winter surge fueled by the omicron variant that prompted record hospitalizations, the US has seen a significant drop in virus spread in recent months, leading most states and cities to drop mask mandates.

But several Northeast cities have seen a rise in hospitalizations in recent weeks, leading Philadelphia to bring back its mask mandate.

The appeal drew criticism from the US Travel Association, which along with other industry groups had been pressuring the Biden administration for months to end the mask mandate for travel, according to the Associated Press.

“Masks were critically important during the height of the pandemic,” said Tori Emerson Barnes, the group’s executive vice president of public affairs and policy, “but with low hospitalization rates and multiple effective health tools now widely available, from boosters to therapies to high-quality air ventilation aboard aircraft, required masking on public transportation is simply out of step with the current public health landscape.”

New Delhi authorities on Wednesday made the wearing of masks compulsory again after COVID-19 infections rose in the Indian capital in recent days, Reuters reported.

"In view of the rise in COVID positive cases recently and as advised by the experts, it was decided to enhance testing, focus on vaccination coverage of targeted population and ensure strict enforcement of COVID appropriate behaviour," Delhi's Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal said on Twitter.

Hospitalisations have remained under 1%. But Baijal said:

"It was decided to make the wearing of masks mandatory in public places."

Delhi accounted for more than 30% of the 2,067 new infections that India reported on Wednesday, taking the country's running total to more than 43 million. Deaths nationwide rose by 40, mostly from the southern state of Kerala, lifting the total to 522,006, Reuters reported.

The actual toll is believed to be as high as 4 million. 

The tally of daily infections has hovered around a month-high in recent days after most precautions, including penalties for not wearing masks, were dropped a few weeks ago. Several northern districts neighbouring New Delhi have made masks compulsory again, according to Reuters.

Periodic elections give the electorate a chance to choose between candidates who offer a competing set of competencies and ideologies. Or so we would like to believe. But people’s right to make informed choices in the upcoming local polls could be curtailed after the five parties in the ruling coalition fought among themselves to get their candidates on the ballot paper. The brawl was particularly intense in major cities like Kathmandu, Lalitpur, Pokhara and Janakpur. Coalition partners were also fighting tooth and nail over other candidacies. 

But isn’t competition the essence of all elections? Yes and no. It would have been wonderful to see the parties fighting on behalf of competent candidates. What we rather saw was that the argument was not at all over the merits of individual contestants but rather over whether the wife or brother or financier of this or that top political leader should have been picked. These disputes had become so bitter that many in the ruling coalition were in favor of putting off local polls if they could not agree on common candidates.

Even if elections are now a near certainty, those who win important mayorships are likely to be chosen based on their party affiliation rather than competence. Most of the Nepali electorate is still not mature enough to vote for candidates from outside the major parties. So even as we all like to blame the major parties for robbing us of our right to have good mayors and municipal heads, a little introspection might also be warranted.

Of course, people also consider that if they elect, say, an independent mayor, he or she will not be allowed to work freely in the politically-steeped post-election milieu. Yet that is a poor excuse to keep voting for those who time and again disappoint—and this applies to the parties now in the ruling coalition as well as the opposition. If people vote for clean and competent folks irrespective of their political affiliations, the parties in the future will also be bound to select better candidates.

Nepal reported 13 new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 2, 528 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which nine returned positive. Likewise, 1, 349 people underwent antigen tests, of which four were tested positive.

The Ministry said that no one died of virus in the last 24 hours. The Ministry said that 25 infected people recovered from the disease.

As of today, there are 318 active cases in the country.

The ruling parties have finally reached an agreement on the mayor and deputy mayor of the six metropolitan and 11 sub-metropolitan cities for the local level elections slated for May 13.

During the meeting held at the Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s official residence in Baluwatar on Wednesday, Nepali Congress, CPN (Maoist Centre), CPN (Unified Socialist), Janata Samajbadi Party and Rastriya Janamorcha have made a written agreement on the mayor and deputy mayor of the metropolitan and sub-metropolitan cities. 

According to the agreement, Nepali Congress will take the post of mayor in Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Biratnagar and the post of deputy mayor in Pokhara, Birgunj and Bharatpur Metropolitan Cities.

CPN (Maoist Centre) will get the post of mayor in Bharatpur Metropolitan City and the post of deputy mayor in Lalitpur. 

Similarly, CPN (Unified Socialist) will get the post of mayor in Pokhara Metropolitan City and the post of deputy mayor in Kathmandu Metropolitan City. 

Janata Samajbadi Party will get the post of mayor in Birgunj and deputy mayor in Biratnagar. 

Meanwhile, Nepali Congress will take the post of mayor in Dharan, Itahari, Kalaiya, Butwal, Tulsipur, Nepalgunj and Dhangadhi Sub-Metropolitan Cities and the post of deputy mayor in Jitpur Simara, Ghorahi and Hetauda.

Likewise, CPN (Maoist Centre) will take the post of mayor in Jitpur Simara and Ghorahi Sub-Metropolitan Cities and the post of deputy mayor in Dharan and Dhangadhi.

CPN (Unified Socialist) will take the post of mayor in Hetauda and deputy mayor Itahari, Butwal and Tulsipur. 

Similarly, Janata Samajbadi Party will take the post of mayor in Janakpur and deputy mayor in Kalaiya and Nepalgunj Sub-Metropolitan Cities.