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Lucknow Super Giants beat Mumbai Indians by 18 runs in their IPL match on Saturday, The Indian Express reported.

Skipper KL Rahul scored his maiden century of the season to guide LSG to 199 for 4 after being invited to bat first. In reply, MI were restricted to 181 for nine.

LSG’s Avesh Khan finished with excellent figures of 3/30 in four overs.

Rahul smashed 103 off 60 balls, and his unbeaten innings was laced with nine fours and five sixes. Manish Pandey (38) and Quinton de Kock (24) also played useful knocks, according to The Indian Express.

For MI, medium pacer Jaydev Unadkat snared two wickets (2/32), while spinner Murugan Ashwin (1/33) and all-rounder Fabian Allen (1/46) took a wicket apiece.

Royal Challengers Bangalore beat Delhi Capitals by 16 runs in their Indian Premier League match here on Saturday, The Indian Express reported.

Dinesh Karthik smashed an unbeaten 66 off only 34 balls as Royal Challengers Bangalore scored 189 for five after being asked to bat first.

In reply, DC were restricted to 173 for seven after David Warner top-scored with a 66 off 38 balls. Among RCB’s bowlers, Josh Hazlewood finished with excellent figures of 3/29 in four overs, according to the Indian Express.

Karthik’s innings contained five fours and five sixes after being dropped on five by Rishabh Pant off Kuldeep Yadav’s delivery. Glenn Maxwell (55 off 34 balls) and Shahbaz Ahmed (32 not out off 21 balls) were the other notable scorers.

 Axar Patel, Shardul Thakur, Khaleel Ahmed and Kuldeep Yadav all got a wicket apiece, Indian Express reported.

Ten people were shot and two others injured in a shooting at a busy shopping mall in South Carolina’s capital that authorities do not believe was a random attack, Associated Press reported.

Three people who had firearms have been detained in connection with the Saturday afternoon shooting at Columbiana Centre, Columbia Police Chief W.H. “Skip” Holbrook said. He said at least one of those three people fired a weapon.

“We don’t believe this was random,” Holbrook said. “We believe they knew each other and something led to the gunfire.”

Authorities said no fatalities have been reported but that eight of the victims were taken to the hospital. Of those eight, two were in critical condition and six were in stable condition, Holbrook said. The victims ranged in age from 15 to 73, he said.

Daniel Johnson said he and his family were visiting from Alabama and were eating in the food court when they first heard shots ring out and started seeing people running.

Johnson said people were screaming for their children and spouses, knocking over tables in the food court as they fled, according to the Associated Press.

“Everybody was trying to get outside,” Johnson said. “When I was coming out, you could see baby strollers turned over, people’s phones and left keys. It was kind of a hectic situation.”

Johnson said he gathered his wife, daughter and son and began heading toward the exit after letting the crowd clear out for a bit.

“My biggest thing was — and not to sound selfish — was to make sure that our family was OK and to get them out safely because this is not something that we love to do for Easter weekend.”

Heavy police presence continued in the area hours after the shooting, though officers began letting more traffic through the streets surrounding the shopping centers and strip malls that are usually packed on weekends. Officers were also stationed outside a nearby hotel designated as a reunification area for people at the scene of the shooting and their families.

Workers from a couple of stores remained clustered in the mostly empty parking lot Saturday evening, waiting for police to let them back inside to retrieve their car keys and personal belongings so they could leave. They said they did not hear or see anything during the shooting but followed the mall’s alert system and were evacuated by police shortly after. They declined to give their names, citing company policies, Associated Press reported.

“Today’s isolated, senseless act of violence is extremely upsetting and our thoughts are with everyone impacted,” Columbiana Centre said in a statement. “We are grateful for the quick response and continued support of our security team and our partners in law enforcement.”

The shooting is the latest in a rash of shootings at or near malls across the country.

A 15-year-old boy was shot in the head Wednesday outside Brooklyn’s Atlantic Terminal Mall. His injuries were not believed to be life-threatening. Officials said he was with a group of boys when they got into a dispute with a second group.

On Tuesday, a Southern California shoe store owner mistakenly shot a 9-year-old girl while firing at two shoplifters at the Mall of Victor Valley, police said, according to the Associated Press.

And earlier this month, police said six people were killed and 12 others wounded in Sacramento, California, during a gunfight between rival gangs as bars closed in a busy area near the Downtown Commons shopping mall and the state Capitol.

Russian forces accelerated scattered attacks on Kyiv, western Ukraine and beyond Saturday in an explosive reminder to Ukrainians and their Western supporters that the whole country remains under threat despite Moscow’s pivot toward mounting a new offensive in the east, Associated Press reported.

Stung by the loss of its Black Sea flagship and indignant over alleged Ukrainian aggression on Russian territory, Russia’s military command had warned of renewed missile strikes on Ukraine’s capital. Officials in Moscow said they were targeting military sites, a claim repeated — and refuted by witnesses — throughout 52 days of war.

The toll reaches much deeper. Each day brings new discoveries of civilian victims of an invasion that has shattered European security. As Russia prepared for the anticipated offensive, a mother wept over her 15-year-old son’s body after rockets hit a residential area of Kharkiv, a city in northeast Ukraine. An infant and at least eight other people died, officials said.

In the towns and villages just outside Kyiv, authorities have reported finding the bodies of more than 900 civilians, most shot dead, since Russian troops retreated two weeks ago. Smoke rose from the capital again early Saturday as Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported a strike that killed one person and wounded several, according to the Associated Press.

The mayor advised residents who fled the city earlier in the war not to return.

“We’re not ruling out further strikes on the capital,” Klitschko said. “If you have the opportunity to stay a little bit longer in the cities where it’s safer, do it.” 

It was not immediately clear from the ground what was hit in the strike on Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district. The sprawling area on the southeastern edge of the capital contains a mixture of Soviet-style apartment blocks, newer shopping centers and big-box retail outlets, industrial areas and railyards.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said an armored vehicle plant was targeted. He didn’t specify where the factory was located, but there is one in the Darnytskyi district.

He said the plant was among multiple Ukrainian military sites hit with “air-launched high-precision long-range weapons.” As the US and Europe send new arms to Ukraine, the strategy could be aimed at hobbling Ukraine’s defenses ahead of what’s expected to be a full-scale Russian assault in the east.

It was the second strike in the Kyiv area since the Russian military vowed this week to step up missile strikes on the capital. Another hit a missile plant Friday, Associated Press reported.

The Russian missiles hit the city just as residents were emerging for walks, foreign embassies planned to reopen and other tentative signs of the city’s prewar life started resurfacing, following the failure of Russian troops to capture Kyiv and their withdrawal. 

Kyiv was one of many targets Saturday. The Ukrainian president’s office reported missile strikes and shelling over the past 24 hours in eight regions across the country.

The governor of the Lviv region in western Ukraine, which has been only sporadically touched by the war’s violence, reported airstrikes on the region by Russian Su-35 aircraft that took off from neighboring Belarus.

In apparent preparations for its assault on the east, the Russian military has intensified shelling of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, in recent days. Friday’s attack killed civilians and wounded more than 50 people, the Ukrainian president’s office reported.

On Saturday an explosion believed to be caused by a missile sent emergency workers scrambling near an outdoor market in Kharkiv, according to AP journalists at the scene. One person was killed, and at least 18 people were wounded, according to rescue workers.

“All the windows, all the furniture, all destroyed. And the door, too,” recounted stunned resident Valentina Ulianova.

Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said Saturday’s toll was three dead and 34 wounded. 

Nate Mook, a member of the World Central Kitchen NGO run by celebrity chef José Andrés, said in a tweet that four workers in Kharkiv were wounded by a strike. José Andrés tweeted that staff members were unnerved but safe, according to the Associated Press.

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who met with Vladimir Putin this past week in Moscow — the first European leader to do so since the invasion began Feb. 24 — said the Russian president is “in his own war logic” on Ukraine.

In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Nehammer said he thinks Putin believes he is winning the war and “we have to look in his eyes and we have to confront him with that, what we see in Ukraine.”

Global COVID-19 cases surpassed 500 million on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally, as the highly contagious BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron surges in many countries in Europe and Asia, Reuters reported.

The rise of BA.2 has been blamed for recent surges in China as well as record infections in Europe. It has been called the “stealth variant” because it is slightly harder to track than others.

South Korea leads the world in the daily average number of new cases, reporting more than 182,000 new infections a day and accounting for one in every four infections globally, according to a Reuters analysis.

New cases are rising in 20 out of more than 240 countries and territories tracked, including Taiwan, Thailand and Bhutan.

Shanghai is fighting China’s worst COVID-19 outbreak since the virus first emerged in Wuhan in late 2019, with almost 25,000 new local cases reported, although the city’s quarantine policy is criticized for separating children from parents and putting asymptomatic cases among those with symptoms, according to Reuters.

“Shanghai’s epidemic prevention and control is at the most difficult and most critical stage,” Wu Qianyu, an official with the municipal health commission, told a briefing.

EUROPE, US STILL AFFECTED

Some European countries are now seeing a slower uptick in new cases, or even a decline, but the region is still reporting over 1 million cases about every two days, according to the Reuters tally.

In Germany, the seven-day average of new infections has fallen and is now at 59% of its previous peak in late March. New cases are also falling in the United Kingdom and Italy, while they are holding steady in France.

Overall, COVID-19 cases in the United States have dropped sharply after hitting record levels in January, but the resurgence of cases in parts of Asia and Europe has raised concerns that another wave could follow in the United States, Reuters reported.

The US national public health agency said on Monday the BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron was estimated to account for nearly three of every four coronavirus variants in the country.

The BA.2 variant now makes up about 86% of all sequenced cases globally, according to the World Health Organization. It is known to be more transmissible than the BA.1 and BA.1.1 Omicron sub-variants. Evidence so far, though, suggests BA.2 is no more likely to cause severe disease.

Scientists continue to emphasize vaccines are critical for avoiding the devastation the virus can cause.

Roughly 64.8% of the world population has received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine, although only 14.8% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose, according to figures from Our World in Data.

While cases have flared in Europe and Asia recently, the United States still has the highest total COVID infections since the start of the pandemic with 80.41 million, followed by India with 43.04 million and Brazil with 30.14 million, according to Reuters.

Nepal reported 14 new Covid-19 cases on Friday.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 3, 030 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which 14 returned positive. Likewise, 873 people underwent antigen tests, of which no one were tested positive.

The Ministry said that no one died of virus in the last 24 hours. The Ministry said that 54 infected people recovered from the disease.

As of today, there are 1, 438 active cases in the country.

Netra Bikram Chand-led Communist Party of Nepal has urged the government to postpone the local level elections.

The party urged the government to postpone the May 13 elections to ensure their participation.

Party spokesperson and Standing Committee member Khadga Bahadur Bishwokarma held a meeting with Home Minister Bal Krishna Khand and said that they also wanted to take part in the local polls.

"We have urged the Home Minister to postpone the elections. He has taken our request seriously," Bishwokarma said. 

He further said that they have demanded the government to implement the three-point agreement signed with the government.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, is arriving in Nepal on April 21.

He is arriving in Nepal at the invitation of the Ministry of Health and Population.

During his visit, the Director General is scheduled to pay a courtesy call on Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba.

He will also hold separate meetings with Foreign Minister Narayan Khadka and Health Minister Birodh Khatiwada.