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The Maiti Nepal has rescued around 500 women and children from the Nepalgunj border point. Maiti Nepal is an organization actively working in the prevention and control of women trafficking.  

Maiti Nepal, Nepalgunj coordinator Keshav Raj Koirala said that in the last one year they have rescued 499 women and children who were entering India through the Jamunaha transit at Nepalgunj and who were at risk of being trafficked.  

Similarly, 10 women have been rescued from India and Gulf countries during this period. Koirala said Maiti Nepal, Nepalgunj received applications to find and rescue 526 persons during the last one year and among them, 213 have been found. 

The Maiti Nepal's Nepalgunj coordinator informed that they have provided counseling in 18 incidents related to domestic violence. 

Maiti Nepal has set up an information and counseling center at the Jamunaha transit. It has been rescuing women and children at risk of trafficking, those women and children subjected to sexual and labour exploitation in various countries, including India, and providing accommodation, psycho-social counseling, legal assistance and health services.  

On the occasion of its 30th anniversary, Maiti Nepal held various public awareness raising programs in Nepalgunj. RSS

A team of the Armed Police Force (APF) on Thursday nabbed three persons for possessing a gun and its cartridge from Birgunj.

The arrestees have been identified as Prem Thakur (41) Rahul Thakur (16) and Ramji Thakur (55) of Parsagadhi Municipality-5.

SP Nepal Tej Prasad Pokharel said that they were nabbed with a long-range gun and its cartridge from Nahar Chowk area of Bindabasini Rural Municipality-3 of Birgunj.

Police said that they have also impounded a bike from the detainees. 

British rock band Pink Floyd will release a new song on Friday to raise money for humanitarian relief in Ukraine, featuring the vocals of a Ukrainian singer who quit an international tour to fight for his country and was wounded, Reuters reported.

The single "Hey Hey, Rise Up" - Pink Floyd's first original new music in almost 30 years - was recorded last week and highlights singing by Andriy Khlyvnyuk from Ukrainian band Boombox, which was taken from a social media post.

Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour said he learned that Khlyvnyuk - with whom he had previously performed - left a US tour with Boombox and returned to Ukraine to join the Territorial Defence Forces.

"Then I saw this incredible video on Instagram, where he stands in a square in Kyiv with this beautiful gold-domed church and sings in the silence of a city with no traffic or background noise because of the war," Gilmour said on Pink Floyd's website.

"It was a powerful moment that made me want to put it to music."

Gilmour said he spoke with Khlyvnyuk while he was in a hospital in Kyiv recovering from a mortar shrapnel injury, according to Reuters.

"I played him a little bit of the song down the phone line and he gave me his blessing. We both hope to do something together in person in the future," he said.

Gilmour said he had a Ukrainian daughter-in-law and grandchildren and he was feeling "the fury and the frustration" of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Moscow has said it is engaged in a special operation to degrade Ukraine's military capabilities and root out nationalists.

The track, which samples Khlyvnyuk singing a World War One protest song, also features Nick Mason, a founding member of Pink Floyd, as well as Gilmour and other musicians, Reuters reported.

Police have arrested a 43-year-old man for his alleged involvement in raping a 13-year-old girl in Syangja.

The arrestee has been identified as Yam Bahadur Kunwar.

Rajendra Prasad Adhikari, spokesperson at the District Police Office, Syangja, said that they apprehended Kunwar based on a complaint filed by the victim's family.

Police said that they are looking into the case.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan could face removal from office this weekend, after the country's top court ruled his move to block a no-confidence vote was unconstitutional, BBC reported.

Last Sunday, Mr Khan's ruling party blocked a no-confidence vote which he was widely expected to lose.

His government then dissolved parliament and called a snap election.

Furious opposition members launched an appeal with the Supreme Court to decide the legality of the blocked vote. 

The Supreme Court said in a ruling late on Thursday that the vote should go ahead, according to BBC.

In response to this, Mr Khan announced that he had called a cabinet meeting and would address the nation on Friday evening. 

"My message to the nation is that I have always fought for Pakistan and will continue to fight till the last ball," he wrote in a Twitter post.

It was a brilliant show by South Africa's Quinton de Kock, who slammed 80 off just 52 balls as Lucknow Super Giants registered their third-successive win of the season, defeating Delhi Capitals by six wickets, Hindustan Times reported.

Chasing a 150-run target, LSG made a bright start -- thanks largely to De Kock, whose 19-run over against Anrich Nortje turned the tide in LSG's favour.

Even as KL Rahul (24) and Evin Lewis (3) were dismissed in quick succession, De Kock continued on his strong outing and steered the side in the run-chase.

When he fell, LSG required 28 runs off 25 deliveries and even as Mustafizur Rahman and Shardul Thakur conceded only 9 runs in the next two overs, Ayush Badoni kept his calm to steer the LSG to win, according to Hindustan Times. 

Earlier, Prithvi Shaw slammed 61 but the rest of the batting lineup failed to step up as LSG restricted DC to 149/3.

Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa has constituted an expert panel to bail his country out of an unprecedented economic crisis characterised by shortage of essential commodities and widespread protests, The Times of India reported.

The panel of eminent economists has been mandated to address the $8. 6 billion of debt and the soaring inflation by engaging with IMF and other probable lenders.

The Presidential Advisory Group on Multilateral Engagement and Debt Sustainability would include Indrajit Coomaraswamy, former governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka and former director of the economic affairs division of the commonwealth secretariat, said a statement issued by the president’s office late on Wednesday. The other members of the panel include Shanta Devarajan, a former senior director of development economics at the World Bank, and Sharmini Coorey, a former director of IMF’s Institute of Capacity Development.

The statement said “among the responsibilities that the Presidential Advisory Group will undertake are to engage in discussions with relevant Sri Lankan institutions and officials engaging with the IMF, and to provide guidance that will address the present debt crisis and lead towards sustainable and inclusive recovery for Sri Lanka. ” After Ali Sabry resigned on Tuesday, a day after he was appointed, the president is yet to appoint a new finance minister, according to The Times of India.

In a bid to garner some quick revenue, the Sri Lanka parliament on Thursday passed, without voting, a retrospective surcharge tax bill with amendments. This would enable the government to impose a 25% windfall tax on groups of companies, individual companies, partner- ships and individuals who earned more than 2 billion Sri Lankan rupees in the financial year 2020-21. The government estimates a revenue of 100 billion rupees through this tax. Former finance minister Basil Rajapaksa had proposed the bill to increase government revenue.

With public protest picking up pace, a special security arrangement would be ensured at important places like the president’s house, presidential secretariat, prime ministerMahinda Rajapaksa’s residence-cum-office and parliament, Colombo police said, The Times of India reported.

The United States has sharply increased the number of Ukrainians admitted to the country at the Mexican border as even more refugees fleeing the Russian invasion follow the same circuitous route, Associated Press reported.

A government recreation center in the Mexican border city of Tijuana grew to about 1,000 refugees Thursday, according to city officials. A canopy under which children played soccer only two days earlier was packed with people in rows of chairs and lined with bunk beds.

Tijuana has suddenly become a final stop for Ukrainians seeking refuge in the United States, where they are drawn by friends and families ready to host them and are convinced the US will be a more suitable haven than Europe. 

Word has spread rapidly on social media that a loose volunteer coalition, largely from Slavic churches in the western United States, is guiding hundreds of refugees daily from the Tijuana airport to temporary shelters, where they wait two to four days for US officials to admit them on humanitarian parole. In less than two weeks, volunteers worked with US and Mexican officials to build a remarkably efficient and expanding network to provide food, security, transportation and shelter, according to the Associated Press.

US officials began funneling Ukrainians Wednesday to a pedestrian crossing in San Diego that is temporarily closed to the public, hoping to process 578 people a day there with 24 officers, said Enrique Lucero, the city of Tijuana’s director of migrant affairs.

Vlad Fedoryshyn, a volunteer with access to a waiting list, said Thursday that the US processed 620 Ukrainians over 24 hours, while about 800 others are arriving daily in Tijuana. Volunteers say the US was previously admitting a few hundred Ukrainians daily.

CBP didn’t provide numbers in response to questions about operations and plans over the last two days, saying only that it has expanded facilities in San Diego to deal with humanitarian cases. 

On Thursday, Ukrainians steadily arrived and left the bustling recreation center, wheeling large suitcases. Some wore winter coats in unseasonably warm weather.

A Tijuana camp that had held hundreds of Ukrainians near the busiest border crossing with the US was dismantled. Refugees dispersed to the recreation center, churches and hotels to wait, Associated Press reported.

The volunteers, who wear blue and yellow badges to represent the Ukrainian flag but have no group name or leader, started a waiting list on notepads and later switched to a mobile app normally used to track church attendance. Ukrainians are told to report to a US border crossing as their numbers approach, a system organizers liken to waiting for a restaurant table.

“We feel so lucky, so blessed,” said Tatiana Bondarenko, who traveled through Moldova, Romania, Austria and Mexico before arriving in San Diego with her husband and children, ages 8, 12, and 15. Her final destination was Sacramento, California, to live with her mother, who she hadn’t seen in 15 years.

Another Ukrainian family posed nearby for photos under a US Customs and Border Protection sign at San Diego’s San Ysidro port of entry, the busiest crossing between the US and Mexico. Volunteers under a blue canopy offered snacks while refugees waited for family to pick them up or for buses to take them to a nearby church.

At the Tijuana airport, weary travelers who enter Mexico as tourists in Mexico City or Cancun are directed to a makeshift lounge in the terminal with a sign in black marker that reads, “Only for Ukrainian Refugees.” It is the only place to register to enter the US, according to the Associated Press.

The waiting list stood at 973 families or single adults Tuesday.

“We realized we had a problem that the government wasn’t going to solve, so we solved it,” said Phil Metzger, pastor of Calvary Church in the San Diego suburb of Chula Vista, where about 75 members host Ukrainian families and another 100 refugees sleep on air mattresses and pews. 

Metzger, whose pastoral work has taken him to Ukraine and Hungary, calls the operation “duct tape and glue,” but refugees prefer it to overwhelmed European countries, where millions of Ukrainians have settled.

The Biden administration has said it will accept up to 100,000 Ukrainians, but Mexico is the only route producing big numbers. Appointments at US consulates in Europe are scarce, and refugee resettlement takes time, Associated Press reported.