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A day after the Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) slashed the prices of petroleum petroleum, the Department of Transport Management reduced the public transportation fares.

The department reduced the fares of public transportation plying in the inter-state with effect from today.

The NOC had slashed the prices of petroleum products by Rs 10 per liter on Thursday evening.

The department has reduced the public transportation fares by 2 percent.

Similarly, the department has also reduced the fares by 2.6 percent and 2. 9 percent for cargo carriers serving routes in the hills and the Tarai respectively.

The death toll from heavy rains last week in the Brazilian city of Recife and its metropolitan area has risen to 126, with two people still missing, the government of the northeastern state of Pernambuco said, Business Standard reported.

At least 9, 302 people have been driven from their homes due to rains that caused major floods and landslides in Recife, burying dozens of hillside houses and causing most of the deaths, Xinhua news agency reported.

It is the worst tragedy to occur in Pernambuco since the start of the 21st century and the second worst in the state's history, after the May 1966 flooding caused the Capibaribe river to overflow leaving 175 dead.

Firefighters and army soldiers are working to recover the bodies of the two missing victims with the help of trained rescue dogs.

A total of 31 municipalities in Pernambuco have declared a state of emergency due to the rains, while 51 towns suffered some type of damage.

The federal government has announced it will allocate some $200 million to rebuild affected areas, according to Business Standard.

Rains also affected the states of Sergipe, Alagoas, Paraiba and Rio Grande do Norte, in the northeastern region of Brazil.

In Alagoas, four people died and nearly 12,000 remain homeless.

Airline Operators Association of Nepal (AOAN) has stated that it is impossible to implement the decision of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) to have two pilots on a single-engine helicopter.

CAAN had suggested that even single-engine helicopters should have two pilots but the Airline Operators Association of Nepal has said that it wasn’t practical to have two pilots on commercial flights. A five-member technical team from CAAN is studying the possibility of having two pilots on a helicopter.

Captain Rameshwar Thapa, president of the Airline Operators Association of Nepa, said helicopter companies would collapse if such a rule was in place. He said that the companies couldn’t bear the cost of paying salaries to two pilots on a helicopter that only had one engine.

But he did say that there was no problem in having two pilots in a helicopter with a capacity of more than nine seats.

“We don’t have enough pilots as it is. If this rule is put in place, helicopter companies would collapse,” he says.

There are 11 helicopter companies operating in Nepal and have 31 single-engine helicopters and 5 double-engine helicopters. Ten foreign and 26 Nepali pilots have been flying helicopters with one engine.

Daily flights to and from Simara Airport have been curtailed from June 7 to 27 citing maintenance at the airport site.

Chief of Simara Airport Bhupendra Bhatta said that flights will take place only from 6:00 am to 11:00 am during the period. 

Bhatta shared that total daily flights have been reduced to six from twelve for 20 days starting June 7.

The Simara Airport, which was awaiting renovation for years, is being maintained by reducing the daily flights lately.

Saptakoshi Construction Service Company has won the tender for the facelift of the airport, it is said.