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One person was killed and another one injured in a communal clash in Khambhat city of Gujarat during a procession taken out on the occasion of Ram Navami on Sunday, while Himmatnagar city in the state also witnessed violence between members of two communities during a similar event, police said, The Economic Times reported.

The clashing groups indulged in stone-pelting and arson at both the places and the police had to lob tear gas shells to bring the situation under control, officials said.

While Khambhat city is located in Anand district, Himmatnagar lies in Sabarkantha district, according to The Economic Times.

“The body of an unidentified man, who appears to be around 65 years old, was recovered from the spot in Khambhat, where two groups pelted each other with stones after a clash broke out between them during a Ram Navami procession late this afternoon,” Superintendent of Police Ajeet Rajyan said.

Another person was injured and a few shop cabins were set on fire by the miscreants during the incident, he said.

Three persons died after being hit by a car near BP Chowk in Nepalgunj on Sunday. 

The deceased have been identified as Samina Idrisi (65) of Nepalgunj-11, Ali Idrisi and five-year-old Kasim Idrisi, said Police Inspector Himalaya Shah Chief of Banke District Traffic Police Office.

Inspector Shah further said that the car (Province 3-01-23 Cha 8481) hit the pedestrians last night. 

The car driver had taken all the critically injured pedestrians to the Teaching Hospital Nepalgunj. 

The hospital pronounced them dead after 15 minutes of their arrival. 

Police arrested car driver Indra Bahadur Thapa (28) of Nepalgunj sub-metropolitan city-10 and started an investigation into the incident, Inspector Shah said. RSS

The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority held chief of Land Reform and Land Revenue Office with bribe amount Rs 500,000 in Dhanusha.

The arrestee has been identified as Sunil Kumar Jha.

A team deployed from the CIAA Office in Bhanuchowk, Janakpur nabbed Jha while taking kickback from a service seeker in Bardibas.

Jha had allegedly demanded the bribe for settling the land dispute case.

Sri Lanka’s doctors have warned they are almost out of life-saving medicines and say the country’s economic crisis threatened a worse death toll than the coronavirus pandemic, The Guardian reported.

Weeks of power blackouts and severe shortages of food, fuel and pharmaceuticals have brought widespread misery to Sri Lanka, which is suffering its worst downturn since independence in 1948.

The Sri Lanka Medical Association (SLMA) said all hospitals in the country no longer had access to imported medical tools and vital drugs.

Several facilities have already suspended routine surgeries since last month because they were dangerously low on anaesthetics, but the SLMA said that even emergency procedures might not be possible very soon.

"We are made to make very difficult choices. We have to decide who gets treatment and who will not,” the group said on Sunday, after releasing a letter it had sent President Gotabaya Rajapaksa days earlier to warn him of the situation. “If supplies are not restored within days, the casualties will be far worse than from the pandemic.”

Mounting public anger over the crisis has seen large protests calling for Rajapaksa’s resignation, according to The Guardian.

Thousands of people braved heavy rains to keep up a demonstration outside the leader’s seafront office in the capital of Colombo for a second day.

Business leaders joined calls for the president to step down on Saturday and said the island nation’s chronic fuel shortages had seen their operations haemorrhage cash.

Rajapaksa’s government is seeking an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout to help extricate Sri Lanka from the crisis, which has seen skyrocketing food prices and the local currency collapse in value by a third in the past month, The Guardian reported.

Finance ministry officials have said sovereign bond-holders and other creditors may have to take a haircut as Colombo seeks to restructure its debt.

The new finance minister, Ali Sabry, told parliament on Friday that he expected $3bn from the IMF to support the island’s balance of payments in the next three years.

A critical lack of foreign currency has left Sri Lanka struggling to service its ballooning $51bn foreign debt, with the pandemic torpedoing vital revenue from tourism and remittances.

Economists say Sri Lanka’s crisis has been exacerbated by government mismanagement, years of accumulated borrowing and ill-advised tax cuts, according to the Guardian.