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The Madhes Province government on Wednesday decided to provide Rs 1 million to carry out relief and rescue operations in eight districts of the province.

A meeting of the Province Disaster Management Executive Committee presided over by Province Minister for Home, Communications and Law Mohammad Samim decided to provide the money to distribute relief to the flood survivors.

Minister Samim said that the province took the decision to immediately send the relief amount to the district administration office in all eight districts to purchase relief and rescue materials.

"There is a problem of flooding and inundation in all eight districts of the province. Keeping this in mind, a decision has been made to immediately provide the relief amount to the disaster management committees headed by chief district officers,” he said.

"Besides, the provincial mechanism has also decided to collect and distribute relief through one door system", Minister Samim shared.

The meeting also discussed the measures to make relief and rescue works effective and establish good coordination among security agencies and stakeholders.

The incessant rain for the past couple of days has affected normal life in Madhes. 

Police have recovered six home-made guns in Baglung.

A team deployed from the Hatiya Police Post seized five home-made guns while another team from the Narethanti Police Post recovered one on Wednesday.

Information Officer at the District Police Office, DSP Madan KC said that a patrol police team recovered a gun from Janaekata Community Forest at Galkot Municipality-1 and five unaccounted guns in a den at Bhagawatisthan-3.

Police said that they are looking into the case.

Saraswoti Nepali, who has been pitching for the rights of the marginalized communities in Nepal, has received the United States Department of State's 'Global Anti-Racism Champions Award (GARC)' for this year.

The Kathmandu-based US Embassy said that the award has been conferred on Nepali as the Chairperson of Dalit Samaj Bikas Munch in recognition of her more than two-decade advocacy for the human rights of excluded groups, poor and people with disability in Nepal.

It has been learnt that many Dalit families of rural western districts of Nepal have obtained legal right over the land ownership as a result of her efforts.

Chairperson Nepali has won several cases against the caste-based discrimination in the pursuit of justice.

Her contribution to the campaign of dignity and equality is an epitome of courage and dedication.

The death toll from recent flooding in and around China’s capital Beijing has risen to 33, including five rescuers, while 18 other people remain missing, officials said, as much of the country’s north remains threatened by ongoing heavy rainfall, Aljazeera reported.

Record downpours have hit China’s capital in recent weeks, damaging infrastructure and deluging swaths of the city’s suburbs and surrounding areas.

Officials said on Wednesday that 33 people had died and 18 others were missing after the recent bad weather in Beijing, mainly due to flooding and buildings collapsing.

Days of heavy rain hit areas in Beijing’s mountainous western outskirts especially hard, causing the collapse of 59,000 homes, damage to almost 150,000 others and flooding of more than 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres) of cropland, the city’s government said on Wednesday.

Many roads were also damaged, along with more than 100 bridges, Xia Linmao, a Beijing vice mayor, said at a news conference, according to Aljazeera.

“I would like to express my deep condolences to those who died in the line of duty and the unfortunate victims,” Linmao told reporters, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

Al Jazeera’s Katrina Yu, reporting from Beijing, said Typhoon Doksuri hit China more than a week ago but the extent of the devastation brought by flooding and building collapses is emerging only now.

“This is the worst natural disaster to high the capital in years. The last time a storm of this scale occurred was in 2012,” Yu said, noting that areas hit hardest more than a decade ago – when almost 80 people died – were against the worst affected by the recent typhoon.

“Difficult questions are now being raised as to why lessons from that previous storm were not learned, and why buildings and roads were not reinforced, and why this damage has happened yet again,” Yu said.

Other parts of China have also seen heavy flooding, with many reported killed by flood waters across northern China, which has been battered by heavy rain since late July, disrupting the lives of millions.

Officials in Beijing said last week that 147 deaths or disappearances last month were caused by natural disasters. Of those, 142 were caused by flooding or other geological calamities, China’s Ministry of Emergency Management said, Aljazeera reported.

In Hebei province, which neighbours Beijing, 15 were reported to have died and 22 were missing. And in northeastern Jilin, 14 died and one person was reported missing on Sunday.

Further north in Heilongjiang, state media reported that dozens of rivers had seen water levels rise above “warning markers” in recent days.

China’s deadliest and most destructive floods in recent history were in 1998, when 4,150 people died, most of them along the Yangtze River.

In 2021, more than 300 people died in the central province of Henan. Record rainfall inundated the provincial capital of Zhengzhou in July of that year, turning streets into rushing rivers and flooding at least part of a subway line.

Other areas in China are also suffering from the scorching summer heat and drought, which is threatening residents’ health and crop harvest.