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Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC), the state-owned monopoly, hiked the prices of petroleum products on Tuesday.

The NOC has decided to increase Rs5 per litre each in petrol, diesel and kerosene.

As per the new revised rate, the petrol will now cost Rs160 per litre and diesel and kerosene will cost Rs143per litre.

Likewise, the cooking gas will cost Rs1600 per cylinder.

The NOC has also decided to increase the price of aviation fuel for domestic airlines by Rs5 and international carriers by $50 per kilo liter.

Now, the aviation fuel for domestic airlines and foreign companies will cost Rs156per litre and $1.545 per kilo litre.

The United States and Western allies plan to pile additional sanctions on Russia on Wednesday after the emergence of troubling new evidence of war crimes in Ukraine, according to the White House. The new penalties will include a ban on all new investment in Russia, Associated Press reported.

Among the other measures being taken against Russia are greater sanctions on its financial institutions and state-owned enterprises, and sanctions on government officials and their family members, according to White House press secretary Jen Psaki.

“The goal is to force them to make a choice,” she said. “The biggest part of our objective here is to deplete the resources that Putin has to continue his war against Ukraine.”

Separately, the Treasury Department moved Tuesday to block any Russian government debt payments with US dollars from accounts at US financial institutions, making it harder for Russia to meet its financial obligations, according to Associated Press.

The Biden administration also announced Tuesday night that it was sending an additional $100 million worth of military assistance to Ukraine. Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said the new equipment will meet “an urgent Ukrainian need for additional Javelin anti-armor systems.”

President Joe Biden and US allies have worked together to levy a crippling of economic penalties against Russia for invading Ukraine more than a month ago, including the freezing of central bank assets, export controls and the seizing of property, including yachts, that belong to Russia’s wealthy elite. But calls for increased sanctions intensified this week in response to the attacks, killings and destruction in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.

The sanctions are intended to further Russia’s economic, financial and technological “isolation” from the rest of the world as a penalty for its attacks on civilians in Ukraine, Psaki said. That isolation is a key aspect of the US strategy, which is premised on the idea that Russia will ultimately lack the resources and equipment to keep fighting a prolonged war in Ukraine.

Psaki said the administration is assessing “additional consequences and steps we can put in place” but underscored that Biden is not weighing any military action.

An increasingly desperate Russia has engaged in military tactics that have outraged much of the wider global community, leading to charges that it is committing war crimes and causing other sanctions. 

Still, almost all of the EU has refrained from an outright ban on Russian oil and natural gas that would likely crush the Russian economy. The US has banned fossil fuels from Russia, while Lithuania blocked natural gas from that country on Saturday, becoming the first of the 27-member EU to do so. The EU executive branch on Tuesday proposed a ban on Russian coal, while Germany’s government intends to end its use of Russian natural gas over the next two years, Associated Press reported.

On Monday, Biden called for his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to be tried for war crimes and face new sanctions because of the atrocities and abuses seen around Kyiv after Russian forces pulled back from the Ukrainian capital. The corpses of what appeared to be civilians were seen strewn in yards, many of them likely killed at close range.

Biden said the US and its allies would gather details for a war crimes trial, stressing that Putin has been “brutal” and his actions “outrageous.”

The Ministry of Health and Population is to innoculate 7.5 million children against typhoid. 

Addressing a press meet organized here today, Chief of the Child Health and Vaccination Section at the Department of Health, Sagar Dahal, said children between the age of one year three months to 15 years would be administered the vaccines against typhoid.

The vaccination program will be conducted from April 8 to May 1. He said the typhoid vaccine would be administered for one time. 

GAVI, the global alliance for vaccines, has provided typhoid vaccines free of cost. Nepal is the first country in South Asia to administer the vaccine against typhoid and the World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended vaccination against typhoid in other countries with typhoid prevalence along with Nepal. 

The vaccines will be administered at 56,429 vaccination centres and schools throughout the country. Ten thousand health workers and 112 thousand 858 volunteers will be mobilized for this. 

Section chief Dahal said that going by the data for the last five years, typhoid infection has been found in over 450 thousand people in Nepal. According to him, it was estimated that there were 82 thousand 449 typhoid patients in 2019. Although typhoid infection is seen in people of all age groups, it is more prevalent among children below 15 years.

The Director-General of the Department of Health Services, Dr Dipendra Raman Singh pledged to eliminate typhoid through sanitation and vaccinations. One thousand sixty-two people per 100,000 tests have been infected with the infection, according to a study. 

Stating that the vaccine had been put to use only after its clinical trial, the director of the Family Welfare Division, Dr Bibek Lal said it requires only one dose and it is 85 percent effective. The typhoid conjugate vaccine being administered in Nepal has been approved by the World Health Organisation. 

Common side effects post-vaccination include fever, headache, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, stomach pain and skin rash among others. However, the Department has urged parents to take their children to vaccination centres nearby for the vaccine not being afraid of such common side effects. RSS

Nepal reported 24 new Covid-19 cases on Tuesday.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 3, 278 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which 21 returned positive. Likewise, 2, 309 people underwent antigen tests, of which three were tested positive.

The Ministry said that no one died of virus in the last 24 hours. The Ministry said that 51 infected people recovered from the disease.

As of today, there are 812 active cases in the country.