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An understanding has been reached between Nepal and Qatar to renew the bilateral labour agreement. 

The understanding to this effect was reached at a meeting held between Minister for Labour, Employment and Social Security, Krishna Kumar Shrestha, and Labour Minister of Qatar, Dr Ali bin Samikh Al Marri. 

Minister Shrestha is now on a visit to Qatar.

Minister Shrestha briefed his Qatari counterpart about the draft sent by the Government of Nepal for the renewal of the labour agreement between Nepal and Qatar. 

According to Minister Shrestha’s Secretariat, the agreement was reached to give a final shape to the draft soon by holding discussions on it and hosting an agreement-signing ceremony in Nepal.  

Both the countries had signed the agreement in 2005 in a bid to make labour migration safe and orderly and regular. 

On the occasion, both the ministers held discussions on the implementation of decisions made by the fourth meeting of the Nepal-Qatar Joint Committee organised in Kathmandu in December 2021. Nepal and Qatar had agreed to revise the labour agreement. 

Various issues including social security of Nepali workers, safety at workplace, health facility and arrangement of 24-hour insurance were also discussed, it is said.  There are more than 300,000 Nepali workers in Qatar. 

Similarly, Quatari Minister Marri expressed his interest to recruit Nepali workers in the FIFA World Cup being held in Qatar in 2022. 

Secretary Yek Narayan Aryal, Joint-Secretary Rajeev Pokharel, Under-Secretary Dr Thaneshwor Bhusal, officers of Nepali Embassy and Secretary at Labour Ministry of Qatar, Mohammed Hassan Al Obaidli, were present on the occasion. RSS

Shelling hit a Kyiv shopping centre late on Sunday, killing at least eight people, wrecking nearby buildings and leaving smoking piles of rubble and the twisted wreckage of burned-out cars spread over several hundred metres, Reuters reported.

As day broke on Monday, firefighters were putting out small blazes around the smouldering carcass of a building in the shopping centre car park in the Podil district of the city and looking for possible survivors.

The force of the explosion obliterated one structure in the shopping centre car park and gutted an adjacent 10-storey building, shattering windows in the surrounding residential tower blocks.

Six bodies were lain out on the pavement as emergency services combed through the wreckage to the sound of distant artillery fire. Ukraine’s Prosecutor General said at least eight people had been killed.

Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said areas near the shopping centre were used to store rocket munitions and for reloading multiple rocket launchers.

“High-precision long-range weapons on the night of March 21 destroyed a battery of Ukrainian multiple rocket launchers and a store of ammunition in a non-functioning shopping center,” he told reporters.

Russian forces have pounded some suburbs of the Ukrainian capital, but defenders have so far managed to prevent Kyiv from coming under the kind of full-scale assault that has devastated eastern cities such as Mariupol and Kharkiv.

However dozens of civilians have been killed in Kyiv since Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24, many in residential buildings hit by missile strikes or debris from missiles shot down by Ukrainian anti-aircraft fire, according to Reuters.

“Russia fired at our shopping centre. The mall and the residential buildings around it have suffered terrible damage,” Mykola Medinskiy, an army chaplain, told Reuters, adding there were no strategic military objects in the area.

Reuters was not immediately able to verify that comment. Russia denies targeting civilians.

“It is hard for me to speak because my child worked here. She was at work just yesterday. And then this thing happened last night,” said tearful onlooker Valentina Timofeevna.

After a relatively quiet weekend in Kyiv, the sound of heavy bombardment could be heard to the north of the city, where much of the most intense fighting has taken place.

The bulk of Russian forces remain more than 25 km (15 miles) from the centre of Kyiv, British military intelligence said on Monday.

Thousands of people have been killed in the fighting and about 10 million displaced, including nearly 3.5 million who have fled abroad, mostly to neighbouring European countries such as Poland.

Russian President Vladimir Putin describes the action as a “special military operation” to disarm Ukraine and halt the “genocide” of Russian-speaking people by Ukraine. Kyiv and the West say this is a false pretext for an unprovoked war to subdue a country, Reuters reported.

As Mariupol’s defenders held out Monday against Russian demands that they surrender, the number of bodies in the rubble of the bombarded and encircled Ukrainian city remained shrouded in uncertainty, the full extent of the horror not yet known, Associated Press reported.

With communications crippled, movement restricted and many residents in hiding, the fate of those inside an art school flattened on Sunday and a theater that was blown apart four days earlier was unclear.

More than 1,300 people were believed to be sheltering in the theater, and 400 were estimated to have been in the art school.

Perched on the Sea of Azov, Mariupol has been a key target that has been relentlessly pounded for more than three weeks and has seen some of the worst suffering of the war. The fall of the southern port city would help Russia establish a land bridge to Crimea, seized from Ukraine in 2014.

But no clear picture emerged of how close its capture might be.

“Nobody can tell from the outside if it really is on the verge of being taken,” said Keir Giles, a Russia expert at the British think tank Chatham House, according to the Associated Press.

Over the weekend, Moscow had offered safe passage out of Mariupol — one corridor leading east to Russia, another going west to other parts of Ukraine — in return for the city’s surrender before daybreak Monday. Ukraine flatly rejected the offer well before the deadline.

Mariupol officials said on March 15 that at least 2,300 people had died in the siege, with some buried in mass graves. There has been no official estimate since then, but the number is feared to be far higher after six more days of bombardment.

For those who remain, conditions have become brutal. The assault has cut off Mariupol’s electricity, water and food supplies and severed communication with the outside world, plunging residents into a fight for survival. Fresh commercial satellite images showed smoke rising from buildings newly hit by Russian artillery.

“What’s happening in Mariupol is a massive war crime,” European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said.

Mariupol had a prewar population of about 430,000. Around a quarter were believed to have left in the opening days of the war, and tens of thousands escaped over the past week by way of a humanitarian corridor. Other attempts have been thwarted by the fighting.

Those who have made it out of Mariupol told of a devastated city, Associated Press reported.

“There are no buildings there anymore,” said 77-year-old Maria Fiodorova, who crossed the border to Poland on Monday after five days of travel.

Olga Nikitina, who fled Mariupol for the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, where she arrived Sunday, said gunfire blew out her windows, and her apartment dropped below freezing.

“Battles took place over every street. Every house became a target,” she said.

A long line of vehicles lined a road in Bezimenne, Ukraine, as Mariupol residents sought shelter at a temporary camp set up by Russian-backed separatists in the Donetsk region. An estimated 5,000 people from Mariupol have taken refuge in the camp. Many arrived in cars with signs that said “children” in Russian.

A woman who gave her name as Yulia said she and her family sought shelter in Bezimenne after a bombing destroyed six houses behind her home.

“That’s why we got in the car, at our own risk, and left in 15 minutes because everything is destroyed there, dead bodies are lying around,” she said. “They don’t let us pass through everywhere — there are shootings.”

Francesco Rocca, president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, urged Russia to abide by the Geneva Convention and allow humanitarian aid into the city, according to the Associated Press.

In all, more than 8,000 people escaped to safer areas Monday through humanitarian corridors, including about 3,000 from Mariupol, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.

Russian shelling of a corridor wounded four children on a route leading out of Mariupol, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

State Councilor and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China Wang Yi is arriving in Nepal for a three-day visit on Friday.

He is visiting Nepal at the invitation of his Nepali counterpart Narayan Khadka from March 25-27, read a statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday.

During the visit, Minister Wang Yi will pay a courtesy call on President Bidya Devi Bhandari and Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba.

Khadka and Wang Yi will hold bilateral talks, leading their respective delegations, on 26 March, according to the Ministry.

Minister Wang Yi will also hold separate meetings with former Prime Minister and CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli and former Prime Minister and CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal.