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A person died and seven others were injured when an explosion took place at the Sagarmatha Oxygen Plant in the Patan Industrial Area of Lalitpur on Thursday.

The identity of the deceased is yet to be established.

Siddha Bikram Shah, spokesperson at the Metropolitan Police Range, Lalitpur, said that the incident occurred while filling the oxygen.

The injured have been taken to the Patan Hospital for treatment, police said.

Police have arrested a man, who had been on the run after trafficking two women to India and selling them to a brothel, after 33 years.

The detainee has been identified as Bishnu Bahadur Thapa (57) of Thori Rural Municipality-9, Parsa and currently residing in Katari Municipality-3, Udayapur.

DSP Om Prakash Khanal, spokesperson at the District Police Office, Parsa said that a team deployed from the District Police Office, Parsa arrested Thapa from Katari where he had been in the area for the past few months.

According to DSP Khanal, Thapa took two women of Thori, Parsa to India on the pretext of providing decent jobs and sold them to a brothel in 1989. He had been absconding since then.

DSP Khanal said that a team from the District Police Office apprehended Thapa acting on a tip-off.

He said that Thapa will be presented before the Parsa District Court on Thursday and will be sent to the Birgunj Jail to do the time.

India will give Sri Lanka an additional $500 million in financial assistance to buy fuel, the troubled island nation's foreign minister told reporters Wednesday, adding that Bangladesh was also willing to postpone $450 million in swap repayments to ease Colombo's burden, BBC reported.

"Assistance by the IMF will take about six months to come to us and it will come in tranches," Sri Lankan Foreign Minister GL Peiris was quoted by Reuters. "During the intervening period, we need to find funds to keep our people supplied with essentials."

This will be the second $500 million India has provided in fuel credit to a Sri Lanka government battling the country's worst financial crisis in living memory.

The first line of credit was used up earlier this month after a shipment of 120,000 tons of diesel and 40,000 tons of petrol. 

So far India has provided nearly 400,000 tons of fuel.

Massive protests broke out on Tuesday after fuel reserves ran low.

Thousands of angry motorists burned tyres and blocked a major road leading into capital Colombo, news agency AFP reported citing police and local officials, according to BBC.

The protests came after the state-run Ceylon Petroleum Corporation raised the price of 92 octane to LKR 338 per litre - an increase of LKR 84, PTI reported.

That was the CPC's second price hike this month. On Monday the Lankan Indian oil company yesterday hiked its prices for a fifth time in six months.

India, meanwhile, has also extended two credit lines worth over $2 billion to help buy food - rice has already been sent - medicines and other essentials.

India on Tuesday also urged the IMF, or International Monetary Fund, to urgently provide financial assistance to Sri Lanka. 

This was as finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman met IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva on the margins of the IMF-World Bank spring meeting in the US.

Georgieva lauded the help extended by India to its neighbours and other vulnerable economies, especially the assistance provided to Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka had sought India's help in garnering international support to secure bridge financing as it enters negotiations with the IMF for a bailout deal, BBC reported.

This week there were also talks on linking electricity grids, Reuters said. This has been seen as a step to help Delhi reduce China's influence over Sri Lanka.

Crisis-hit Sri Lanka last week defaulted on its external debt - reported at over $51 billion. Officials said foreign debt payments were temporarily suspended to avoid a hard default and conserve limited reserves to import essential items, according to BBC.

The Justice Department is filing an appeal seeking to overturn a judge’s order that voided the federal mask mandate on planes and trains and in travel hubs, officials said Wednesday, Associated Press reported.

The notice came minutes after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked the Justice Department to appeal the decision handed down by a federal judge in Florida earlier this week.

A notice of appeal was filed in federal court in Tampa. 

The CDC said in a statement Wednesday that it is its “continuing assessment that at this time an order requiring masking in the indoor transportation corridor remains necessary for the public health.” 

It remained unclear whether the Biden administration would ask the appeals court to grant an emergency stay to immediately reimpose the mask mandate on public transit. An emergency stay of the lower court’s ruling would be a whiplash moment for travelers and transit workers. Most airlines and airports, many public transit systems and even ride-sharing company Uber lifted their mask-wearing requirements in the hours following Monday’s ruling, according to the Associated Press.

federal judge in Florida had struck down the national mask mandate for mass transit on Monday, leading airlines and airports to swiftly repeal their requirements that passengers wear face coverings. The Transportation Security Administration said Monday that it would it will no longer enforce the mask requirement.

The CDC had recently extended the mask mandate, which was set to expire Monday, until May 3 to allow more time to study the BA.2 omicron subvariant, which is now responsible for the vast majority of US cases. But the court ruling Monday had put that decision on hold. 

The CDC said it will continue to monitor public health conditions to determine if a mandate would remain necessary. It said it believes the mandate is “a lawful order, well within CDC’s legal authority to protect public health.” 

Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley said Wednesday night that the department was filing the appeal “in light of today’s assessment by the CDC that an order requiring masking in the transportation corridor remains necessary to protect the public health.” 

Biden’s administration has offered mixed messages in the wake of the Monday ruling. While officials said Americans should heed the CDC’s guidance even if it was no longer a requirement, Biden himself suggested they had more flexibility on masking-up during transit, Associated Press reported.

“That’s up to them,” Biden declared during a Tuesday visit to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The White House nonetheless continues to require face coverings for those traveling with him on Air Force One, citing guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that Biden still is encouraging Americans to wear masks when traveling and that he had been “answering the question quite literally” a day before. 

People are not legally bound to wear masks,” she said, after the court order. “So, it is a point in time where it is up to people — it is their choice, in that regard.

After a winter surge fueled by the omicron variant that prompted record hospitalizations, the US has seen a significant drop in virus spread in recent months, leading most states and cities to drop mask mandates.

But several Northeast cities have seen a rise in hospitalizations in recent weeks, leading Philadelphia to bring back its mask mandate.

The appeal drew criticism from the US Travel Association, which along with other industry groups had been pressuring the Biden administration for months to end the mask mandate for travel, according to the Associated Press.

“Masks were critically important during the height of the pandemic,” said Tori Emerson Barnes, the group’s executive vice president of public affairs and policy, “but with low hospitalization rates and multiple effective health tools now widely available, from boosters to therapies to high-quality air ventilation aboard aircraft, required masking on public transportation is simply out of step with the current public health landscape.”