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Twenty-one trees were removed from the roadside in Sallaghari of Bhaktapur following the death of three people after being hit by a falling tree on July 24.

On Sunday, a tree accidently fell and crushed a passenger bus (Ba 2 Kha 3584) and a scooter (Ba 61 Pa 3978) in motion, killing three on the spot and leaving 12 injured. Of the deceased, two were the bus passengers while the other was the scooter rider.

According to Chief District Officer of Bhaktapur Rudra Devi Sharma, the trees that were unsafe were cut down following Sunday's fatal accident. The Division Forest Office, Bhaktapur employees marked the vulnerable trees before their removal.

Likewise, the Khwopa Minibus Service Committee has agreed to bear the treatment cost of the injured. Of them, one has been already discharged, and 11 are undergoing treatment at the Dr Iwamura Memorial Hospital Sallaghari and Bhaktapur International Hospital, Kaushaltar,  

Scooter rider Raj Kumar Bhujel (45) of Harion-4, Sarlahi, Bishesh Khaburja (25) of Byasi of Bhaktapur Municipality-2 and Nhuchheram Bakhatyo (55) of Bhaktapur municipality-7 were killed in the accident.

The weather will be partly to generally cloudy throughout the country with chances of heavy rainfall at some places today.

There is a possibility of light to moderate rain along with thunder and lightning at some more places while heavy rain is likely at one or two places of Province no 1, said Sanjeev Adhikari, a meteorologist with the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology. 

According to him, the monsoon low pressure trough is presently located a little bit south from the normal position in the west while it is around the normal position in the east. 

Monsoon likely to be more active from Thursday

It is said the monsoon would be more active from Thursday. The weather forecast of the Department for the next 24 hours is that there are chances of light to moderate rainfall accompanied by thunder and lightning at some places of the country. Similarly, there is possibility of heavy rain at one or two places of Province no 1, Lumbini and Sudurpaschim provinces.

The Department has urged adoption of precaution as there is the risk of occurrence of landslide, mudslide and debris flow, risk of rise in the water level in the rivers and seasonal rivulets and the daily life and transportation services being hampered due to this in these places.

The Department said the weather will be partly to generally cloudy throughout the country with chances of light to moderate rain accompanied by thunder and lightning at some places tonight. There is also a possibility of heavy rain at one or two places of Province no 1, Lumbini and Sudurpaschim provinces tonight.

According to the weather update of the Meteorological Forecasting Division, the lowest temperature in Kathmandu Valley was 20.1 degrees Celsius and the highest 29.5 degrees Celsius.

Police have arrested an Indian national in possession of Rs 2.4 million undeclared money from Dhanusha.

The arrestee has been identified as Abdul Sami (19) of Bihar, India.

Acting on a tip-off, a police team deployed from the Hanumannagar Police Station nabbed Sami with the cash while he was heading towards Janarkpur from Lohana, Janakpurdham Sub-Metropolitan City-12 on a motorbike (BR 32 AJ 0170).

DSP Pradeep Kumar Chhetri of the District Police Office, Dhanusha said that they have recovered Rs 23,089,480 from his possession.

He said that they are looking into the case.

A fossil representing the earliest known animal predator has been identified by UK scientists, BBC reported.

The 560-million-year-old specimen, which was found in Charnwood Forest in Leicestershire, is likely a forerunner of cnidaria - the group of species that today includes jellyfish.

The researchers have named it Auroralumina attenboroughii in honour of Sir David Attenborough. 

The first part of the name recalls the Latin for "dawn lantern".

"I think it looks like the Olympic torch, with its tentacles being the flames," said Oxford University's Dr Frankie Dunn, who is reporting the discovery in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Not only does it push back evidence for predation in the animal kingdom by about 20 million years, it's probably also the first example of an organism with a true skeleton.

The outline of the 20cm (8 inches)-tall creature was imprinted on a long, sloping slab of quarry siltstone, surrounded by other fossil forms.

It's thought all were smothered in a turbid flow of sediment and ash that ran down the underwater flank of an ancient volcano. 

The death scene was originally uncovered in 2007 when researchers cleaned the Charnwood rock face with high-pressure hoses.

It's taken the 15 years that have passed since then to make sense of the assemblage and Auroralumina's position within it.

The Leicestershire location is internationally famous for what it tells us about the Ediacaran (635 to 538 to million years ago). 

This is the period in geological history that immediately precedes the Cambrian, which witnessed a great explosion in the numbers and diversity of lifeforms on Earth, according to BBC.

It was in the Cambrian (538 to 485 million years ago) that the blueprint for many modern animal groups was fixed.

But Auroralumina proves that its grouping - the cnidaria - have a heritage that stretches further back, into the Ediacaran.

"This is the cast-iron evidence of modern-looking organisms in the Pre-Cambrian. That means the fuse for the Cambrian explosion was probably quite long," said Dr Phil Wilby, palaeontology leader at the British Geological Survey.

Although the name cnidaria may not be that familiar, everyone will recognise its members. They include corals, jellyfish and anemones. One of their characteristics are stinging cells they use to capture their prey.

Dr Dunn's analysis of Auroralumina's features links it to the medusozoa sub-grouping within the cnidaria. 

Medusozoans transition through various stages in the course of their complex life cycles. During one stage they are a mass anchored to the seafloor. Later they morph into a free-floating, sexual phase during which they engage in reproduction. 

During that free-floating stage, they assume an umbrella-shaped body with stinging tentacles. They become a jellyfish.

Auroralumina therefore most closely resembles a medusozoan in its immobile, rooted stage, BBC reported.

"What's really interesting is that we think it's bifurcating, so you have these two 'goblets' which are attached near their base, and then there would have been a continuous bit of skeleton going down to the seafloor, which we don't see. Unfortunately, the fossil is incomplete," Dr Dunn told BBC News.

Bifurcation - the division of something into two branches or parts - is another first for Auroralumina in the fossil record, according to BBC.