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The United States and Western allies plan to pile additional sanctions on Russia on Wednesday after the emergence of troubling new evidence of war crimes in Ukraine, according to the White House. The new penalties will include a ban on all new investment in Russia, Associated Press reported.

Among the other measures being taken against Russia are greater sanctions on its financial institutions and state-owned enterprises, and sanctions on government officials and their family members, according to White House press secretary Jen Psaki.

“The goal is to force them to make a choice,” she said. “The biggest part of our objective here is to deplete the resources that Putin has to continue his war against Ukraine.”

Separately, the Treasury Department moved Tuesday to block any Russian government debt payments with US dollars from accounts at US financial institutions, making it harder for Russia to meet its financial obligations, according to Associated Press.

The Biden administration also announced Tuesday night that it was sending an additional $100 million worth of military assistance to Ukraine. Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said the new equipment will meet “an urgent Ukrainian need for additional Javelin anti-armor systems.”

President Joe Biden and US allies have worked together to levy a crippling of economic penalties against Russia for invading Ukraine more than a month ago, including the freezing of central bank assets, export controls and the seizing of property, including yachts, that belong to Russia’s wealthy elite. But calls for increased sanctions intensified this week in response to the attacks, killings and destruction in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.

The sanctions are intended to further Russia’s economic, financial and technological “isolation” from the rest of the world as a penalty for its attacks on civilians in Ukraine, Psaki said. That isolation is a key aspect of the US strategy, which is premised on the idea that Russia will ultimately lack the resources and equipment to keep fighting a prolonged war in Ukraine.

Psaki said the administration is assessing “additional consequences and steps we can put in place” but underscored that Biden is not weighing any military action.

An increasingly desperate Russia has engaged in military tactics that have outraged much of the wider global community, leading to charges that it is committing war crimes and causing other sanctions. 

Still, almost all of the EU has refrained from an outright ban on Russian oil and natural gas that would likely crush the Russian economy. The US has banned fossil fuels from Russia, while Lithuania blocked natural gas from that country on Saturday, becoming the first of the 27-member EU to do so. The EU executive branch on Tuesday proposed a ban on Russian coal, while Germany’s government intends to end its use of Russian natural gas over the next two years, Associated Press reported.

On Monday, Biden called for his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to be tried for war crimes and face new sanctions because of the atrocities and abuses seen around Kyiv after Russian forces pulled back from the Ukrainian capital. The corpses of what appeared to be civilians were seen strewn in yards, many of them likely killed at close range.

Biden said the US and its allies would gather details for a war crimes trial, stressing that Putin has been “brutal” and his actions “outrageous.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused the Russians of gruesome atrocities in Ukraine and told the UN Security Council on Tuesday that those responsible should immediately be brought up on war crimes charges in front of a tribunal like the one established at Nuremberg after World War II, Associated Press reported.

Over the past few days, grisly images of what appeared to be intentional killings of civilians carried out by Russian forces in Bucha and other towns before they withdrew from the outskirts of Kyiv have caused a global outcry and led Western nations to expel scores of Moscow’s diplomats and propose further sanctions, including a ban on coal imports from Russia.

Zelenskyy, speaking via video from Ukraine to U.N. diplomats, said that civilians had been tortured, shot in the back of the head, thrown down wells, blown up with grenades in their apartments and crushed to death by tanks while in cars.

“They cut off limbs, cut their throats. Women were raped and killed in front of their children,” he said. He asserted that people’s tongues were pulled out “only because their aggressor did not hear what they wanted to hear from them.”

Zelenskyy said that both those who carried out the killings and those who gave the orders “must be brought to justice immediately for war crimes” in front of a tribunal similar to what was used in postwar Germany.

Moscow’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said that while Bucha was under Russian control, “not a single local person has suffered from any violent action.” Reiterating what the Kremlin has contended for days, he said that video footage of bodies in the streets was “a crude forgery” staged by the Ukrainians, according to the Associated Press.

“You only saw what they showed you,” he said. “The only ones who would fall for this are Western dilettantes.”

As Zelenskyy spoke to the diplomats, survivors of the monthlong Russian occupation took investigators to body after body of townspeople allegedly shot down by troops. Others simply surveyed the destruction.

In Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv, 25-year-old, Dmitriy Yevtushkov searched the rubble of apartment buildings and found that only a photo album remained from his family’s home. In the besieged southern city of Mykolaiv, a passerby stopped briefly to look at the bright blossoms of a shattered flower stand lying among bloodstains, the legacy of a Russian shell that killed nine. The onlooker sketched out the sign of the cross in the air, and moved on.

Associated Press journalists in Bucha have counted dozens of corpses in civilian clothes and interviewed Ukrainians who told of witnessing atrocities. Also, high-resolution satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies showed that many of the bodies had been lying in the open for weeks, during the time that Russian forces were in the town.

The dead in Bucha included a pile of six charred bodies, as witnessed by AP journalists. It was not clear who they were or under what circumstances they died. One body was probably that of a child, said Andrii Nebytov, head of police in the Kyiv region. A gunshot wound to the head was visible on one, Associated Presa reported.

The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court at The Hague opened an investigation a month ago into possible war crimes in Ukraine.

Zelenskyy stressed that Bucha was only one place and that there are more with similar horrors — a warning echoed by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

Stoltenberg, meanwhile, warned that in pulling back from the capital, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military is regrouping its forces in order to deploy them to eastern and southern Ukraine for a “crucial phase of the war.” Russia’s stated goal currently is control of the Donbas, the largely Russian-speaking industrial region in the east that includes the shattered port city of Mariupol, according to the Associated Press.

President Bidya Devi Bhandari issued five ordinances on Tuesday.

She issued the ordinances as per the recommendation of the Cabinet, assistant spokesperson to the President's office Keshav Prasad Ghimire said.

He said that ordinance to amend some acts against sexual violence, ordinance to amend some acts related to criminal offenses and criminal procedure, social security (first amendment) ordinance, ordinance to regulate acid and other harmful chemicals and Nepal Police and State Police (Operation, Supervision and Coordination) first amendment ordinance.

The Ministry of Health and Population is to innoculate 7.5 million children against typhoid. 

Addressing a press meet organized here today, Chief of the Child Health and Vaccination Section at the Department of Health, Sagar Dahal, said children between the age of one year three months to 15 years would be administered the vaccines against typhoid.

The vaccination program will be conducted from April 8 to May 1. He said the typhoid vaccine would be administered for one time. 

GAVI, the global alliance for vaccines, has provided typhoid vaccines free of cost. Nepal is the first country in South Asia to administer the vaccine against typhoid and the World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended vaccination against typhoid in other countries with typhoid prevalence along with Nepal. 

The vaccines will be administered at 56,429 vaccination centres and schools throughout the country. Ten thousand health workers and 112 thousand 858 volunteers will be mobilized for this. 

Section chief Dahal said that going by the data for the last five years, typhoid infection has been found in over 450 thousand people in Nepal. According to him, it was estimated that there were 82 thousand 449 typhoid patients in 2019. Although typhoid infection is seen in people of all age groups, it is more prevalent among children below 15 years.

The Director-General of the Department of Health Services, Dr Dipendra Raman Singh pledged to eliminate typhoid through sanitation and vaccinations. One thousand sixty-two people per 100,000 tests have been infected with the infection, according to a study. 

Stating that the vaccine had been put to use only after its clinical trial, the director of the Family Welfare Division, Dr Bibek Lal said it requires only one dose and it is 85 percent effective. The typhoid conjugate vaccine being administered in Nepal has been approved by the World Health Organisation. 

Common side effects post-vaccination include fever, headache, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, stomach pain and skin rash among others. However, the Department has urged parents to take their children to vaccination centres nearby for the vaccine not being afraid of such common side effects. RSS

Nepal reported 24 new Covid-19 cases on Tuesday.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 3, 278 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which 21 returned positive. Likewise, 2, 309 people underwent antigen tests, of which three were tested positive.

The Ministry said that no one died of virus in the last 24 hours. The Ministry said that 51 infected people recovered from the disease.

As of today, there are 812 active cases in the country.

The Nepal Stock Exchange (NEPSE) plunged by 46. 46 points to close at 2,452.06 points on Tuesday.

Similarly, the sensitive dropped by 8. 34 points to close at 458. 22 points.

A total of 5,841,998 units of the shares of 2268companies were traded for Rs 2. 67 billion.

Meanwhile, Rastra Utthan Laghubitta Sanstha Limited was the top gainer today with its price surging by 10 percent. Likewise, Emerging Nepal Limited was the top loser with its price dropped by 10 percent.

At the end of the day, the total market capitalization stood at Rs 3. 48 trillion.

Representatives of the political parties have expressed their commitment to fully abide by the election code of conduct.

The Election Commission had summoned the representatives of the parties registered with the poll body on Tuesday.

The Commission urged the representatives of the political parties not to violate the election code of conduct.

At least 79 parties have been registered at the Election Commission. The Election Commission has already issued the election code of conduct.

Nepali Congress Vice-President Purna Bahadur Khadka on behalf of his party expressed his commitment to fully adhere to the election code of conduct issued by the Election Commission.

Beduram Bhusal, General Secretary of the CPN (Unified Socialist), said that his party would effectively implement the poll code.

Nepal Cancer Relief Society in Association  with Nepal Research Development Institute organized a one day interactive workshop titled “Commitment for Tobacco Tax increment in Local Government Election Manifesto” at Akama Hotel, Dhumbarahi on March 31st, 2022.

The main objective of the event was to interact and gather political commitment from major political parties of Nepal to include tobacco taxation in their  manifesto for the upcoming election, read a statement issued by the Nepal Cancer Relief Society.

The event was organized to sensitize the political parties about the harm caused by tobacco use and urge them to take initiatives to control tobacco in Nepal.

The taxation in tobacco will help ensure the right to health as stated in Chapter 3 of the Constitution of Nepal. It should be a political agenda of every political parties to increase tobacco tax and ensure the optimal health of their voters, the statement read.