Floods and inundation render hundreds of families homeless in Morang
As many as 367 families have been displaced due to floods and inundation triggered by torrential rainfall in Morang district so far.
DSP Deepak Shrestha, spokesperson at the District Police Office, Morang, 1,368 persons of the 367 families have been shifted to safer places by Wednesday morning.
He said that the number of displaced people could increase as the rains have not stopped yet.
According to him, the houses of the displaced families have been completely submerged.
The eight local levels of Morang including Biratnagar Metropolitan City, Capital of Province 1, have been hit hardest by the water-induced disasters.
Biratnagar Metropolitan City, Belbari, PathariShanishwori, Urlabari and Sunbarsi Municipality and Kanepokhari, Gramthan Budhiganga and Jahada Municipality have been affected the most.
DSP Shrestha said that 63 families of Biratnagar-7 and 8 have been displaced due to inundation so far. He said that hundreds of families have been affected in Biratnagar.
As many as 1, 400 families of Biratnagar and Katahari have been affected due to the Singhiya River.
Police said that eight families of Belbari-6, 150 of Katahari-1, 120 of Jahad-1 and 2 and 26 of Budhiganga-1 have been displaced.
Chief District Officer of Morang Kashiraj Dahal said that the floods have damaged houses and various physical infrastructures like bridges and roads among others.
Mumbai building collapse kills at least 11 with more feared trapped
A four-storey residential building collapsed in India's financial capital of Mumbai overnight, killing at least 11 people, with more feared trapped under the rubble, officials said on Tuesday, Associated Press reported.
Part of the building, located in a crowded suburb in the central part of the city, crumbled to the ground at around midnight on Monday, the city's civic body BMC said.
Rescue workers were working to pull out debris and rubble until late on Tuesday, with work hampered by heavy rain.
Building collapses are common in Mumbai during monsoon season, mostly due to poor construction, according to Associated Press.
Non-essential petrol sales halted for two weeks in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka has suspended sales of fuel for non-essential vehicles as it faces its worst economic crisis in decades, BBC reported.
For the next two weeks, only buses, trains and vehicles used for medical services and transporting food will be allowed to fill up with fuel.
Schools in urban areas have shut, while officials have told the country's 22 million residents to work from home.
The South Asian nation is in talks over a bailout deal as it struggles to pay for imports such as fuel and food.
Sri Lanka is the first country to take the drastic step in halting sales of fuel to ordinary people "since the 1970s oil crisis, when fuel was rationed in the US and Europe and speed limits introduced to reduce demand", Nathan Piper, head of oil and gas research at Investec, told the BBC.
He said the ban underlined the steep rise in oil pricing and limited foreign exchange reserves in Sri Lanka.
Many of the island's residents don't know how they will cope without fuel. There have been long queues at filling stations across Sri Lanka for months.
Chinthaka Kumara, a 29-year-old taxi driver in Colombo, thought the ban would "create more problems for people".
"I'm a daily wage earner. I've been in this queue for three days and I don't know when we will get petrol," he told BBC Sinhala.
Drivers have been asked to go home, with tokens distributed aimed at rationing scarce fuel stocks. Some kept queuing, but others couldn't.
"I was in a queue for two days. I got a token - number 11 - but I don't know when I will get fuel," S Wijetunga, a 52-year-old private sector executive, told the BBC.
"I need to go to the office now, so I have no option but to leave my vehicle here and go in a three-wheeler."
Kenat, a motorised rickshaw driver in the Colombo suburb of Kotahena, said people like him were being "destroyed".
"Our family used to have three meals a day. Now we eat only twice a day. If this continues, it will come down to one meal," he told BBC Tamil.
Ghislaine Maxwell sentenced to 20 years over sex trafficking
Ghislaine Maxwell has been sentenced to 20 years in a US prison for helping former financier Jeffrey Epstein abuse young girls, BBC reported.
Maxwell, 60, was convicted in December of recruiting and trafficking four teenage girls for sexual abuse by Epstein, her then boyfriend.
One of her accusers said outside the court in New York that she should stay in prison for the rest of her life.
Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019.
He had been awaiting his own sex trafficking trial.
Ghislaine Maxwell's crimes took place over a decade, between 1994 and 2004.
Pronouncing the sentence, Judge Alison J Nathan said Maxwell's conduct had been "heinous and predatory".
"Ms Maxwell worked with Epstein to select young victims who were vulnerable and played a pivotal role in facilitating sexual abuse," she added, according to BBC.
She said the case called for a "very significant sentence" and that she wanted to send an "unmistakable message" that such crimes would be punished.
As well as jail time, the judge imposed a fine of $750,000 (£610,000).
Maxwell, whose lawyers had argued for a term of less than five years, looked straight ahead and showed no emotion as the sentence was passed in front of a packed public gallery.
Earlier, she addressed her victims. She said she empathised with them, adding that she hoped her prison sentence would allow the victims "peace and finality".
Maxwell has been in custody since her arrest in July 2020, held mostly at Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center.
The case against the British former socialite has been one of the highest-profile since the emergence of the #MeToo movement, which encouraged women to speak out about sexual abuse, BBC reported.



