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The 10th day of the 15-day Dashain festival, Vijaya Dashami, is being celebrated across Nepal and other countries where Nepalis live on Wednesday. This is the most important day of the biggest festival of Nepali Hindus which they celebrate every year. Today, on this occasion, people receive tika on their foreheads and jamara on their heads from seniors in the family as blessings from goddess Durga. According to the Nepal Calendar Determination Committee (NCDC), the most auspicious time to receive tika and jamara today was 11:51 am. President Bidya Devi Bhandari, Vice-President Nanda Bahadur Pun, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, and top political leaders among others have extended their greetings for Vijaya Dashami to the public. President Bhandari is also offering tika and jamara to the public from 3 to 5 pm at Sheetal Niwas. People also travel to their relatives’ places in the next five days, until the full moon day (Kojagrat Purnima) to receive tika, jamara and blessings. Although the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted Dashain for the last two years, the infection rate has now significantly decreased. People hence are set to travel to their relatives. Two million people have already left Kathmandu valley for Dashain.

Nepal is under the influence of a low pressure area formed in South-West Bay of Bengal. Due to this, the weather forecast division said that there will be normal to complete change in weather across the country. Chance of light to moderate rain with thunder and lightning at many places of Gandaki Province, Lumbini Province and Karnali Province, few places of Province 1 and Bagmati Province, and few places of Madhes Province and Sudurpaschim Province. Also, there is a possibility of heavy to very heavy rain at some places of Gandaki and Lumbini and one or two places of Madhes and Bagmati. Similarly, there will be normal change in Province 1 and Madhes province and normal to complete change in other provinces tonight. Light to moderate rain with thunderstorms is likely at many places in Gandaki, Lumbini, Karnali and Sudurpaschim provinces and few places in the rest of the provinces. Also, there is a possibility of heavy to very heavy rain at some places of Sudurpaschim and Karnali and few places of Lumbini.

The United Nations on Tuesday launched the revised flash appeal of $816m to respond to the needs of people affected by climate-induced floods in Pakistan.  The revised '2022 Pakistan Floods Response Plan' (FRP) was shared with UN member states and humanitarian organizations today in Geneva, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).  "The revised appeal urgently seeks USD 816 million to respond to the growing life saving needs of the people—a jump of $656m from the initial appeal of $160m," the OCHA said in a press statement.  This increase reflects the rising needs and the unprecedented scale of destruction caused by the current climate-induced disaster which has affected a population of 33m, cost 1,600 lives and threatens hundreds of thousands more as a second disaster looms within the first one.  Over 2m homes have been destroyed or damaged, forcing people to live under open skies exposed to threats of dengue, malaria, and the biting cold of the fast-approaching winter.  The focus of this appeal is on the provision of urgent and lifesaving humanitarian assistance and protection to 9.5m people until 31 May 2023, with a focus on the 34 most affected districts in Balochistan, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab.  "This prioritization is based on the number of houses damaged and destroyed, available projections of water level changes, and the population of displaced people in the districts. It aims to enable a more cohesive response for people in areas that have been most severely affected, and to foster a focused, multi-sectoral approach," the UN agency said. Pakistan Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman headlined the unimaginable scale of loss and damage caused by unprecedented climate-induced floods in Pakistan. She highlighted that the scale of catastrophe had gone beyond all previous climate disasters, affecting a population larger than the size of many countries.  She referred to the continued inundation of large swathes of the country in pestilent water, pointing to the health risks such flooding posed. The Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths in his remarks said, "People in Pakistan are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis, where catastrophic flooding has taken a devastating toll on the most vulnerable.  We are now in a race against time ahead of the winter season and funding is now urgently needed so humanitarians can prepare to respond to rising health, hunger and other debilitating needs." The WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, "The water has stopped rising, but the danger has not, we are on the verge of a public health disaster.  Many more lives than were lost in the floods could be lost in the coming weeks if we don't mobilize greater support for Pakistan." "WHO will do everything we can to support the people of Pakistan now, and in the coming months and years as you recover and rebuild. And even as we respond to the emergency in Pakistan, we must remember that unless we address the existential threat of climate change, we will be responding to emergencies like this and worse more often," the WHO chief added.  An initial $160m flash appeal was made to address immediate needs based on estimates just a month ago. The international community's support to the initial appeal allowed the humanitarian community to respond to immediate life-saving needs.  However, the results of the recent needs assessments, that led to up-scaling of the flash appeal to $816m, revealed that much more was needed to save those struggling to survive the aftermath of the floods. (ANI)

According to the Epidemiology and Disease Control Division, Ministry of Health and Population, there were two more deaths from Dengue on Tuesday. With this, the total death toll reached 41 since July 2022. The mosquito-prone disease is active in 76 districts of Nepal. 31,103 people have been infected with it to date.