Submit your Article

A powerful earthquake has killed at least 920 people and left hundreds more injured in Afghanistan, Taliban officials say, BBC reported.

Pictures show landslides and ruined mud-built homes in eastern Paktika province, where rescuers are scrambling to treat the injured.

In remote areas, helicopters have been ferrying victims to hospitals.

Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada said hundreds of houses were destroyed and the death toll was likely to rise.

His deputy minister for disaster management Sharafuddin Muslim told a news conference that at least 920 people had been killed and a further 600 injured.

The quake struck about 44km (27 miles) from the south-eastern city of Khost shortly after 01:30 local time (21:00 Tuesday GMT), when many people were at home, asleep in their beds.

Earthquakes tend to cause significant damage in Afghanistan, where there are many rural areas where dwellings are unstable or poorly built.

Taliban officials called for aid agencies to rush to the affected areas in the nation’s east.

Decades of conflict have made it difficult for the impoverished country to improve its protections against earthquakes and other natural disasters – despite efforts by aid agencies to reinforce some buildings over the years, according to BBC.

Even before the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan’s emergency services were stretched to deal with natural disasters – with few aircraft and helicopters available to rescuers.

Most of the casualties so far were in the Gayan and Barmal districts in Paktika, a local doctor told the BBC. Local media site Etilaat-e Roz reported a whole village in Gayan had been destroyed.

Tremors were felt across more than 500km of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Witnesses reported feeling the quake in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, as well as Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.

However, there have been no immediate reports of casualties, and the earthquake caused little damage in Pakistan, according to BBC Urdu.

Afghanistan is prone to quakes, as it’s located in a tectonically active region, over a number of fault lines including the Chaman fault, the Hari Rud fault, the Central Badakhshan fault and the Darvaz fault.

The earthquake was magnitude 6.1 at a depth of some 51km, according to seismologists.

In the past 10 years, more than 7,000 people have been killed in earthquakes in the country, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports. There are an average of 560 deaths a year from earthquakes, BBC reported.

Experts have advised people to be cautious saying that there is a high risk of outbreak of infectious disease like Cholera in Kathmandu.

The Ministry of Health and Population confirmed cholera infection in four  people in Kathmandu so far.

According to the District Health Office, Kathmandu, the infection of the disease has been confirmed in one person in Bhotebahal, one in Dillibazaar and two in Bagbazaar.

The Division of Epidemiology and Disease Control under the Department of Health Services said that the samples are being collected from the areas where the cholera has been detected.

The results have not come yet.

The patients of Bagbazaar have found drinking  water of both the jar and the tap without boiling.

A team has been deputed to collect the samples of water in Bhotebahal and Dillibazaar.

Basanta Adhikari, Chief at the District Health Office, Kathmandu said that a team has been formed to investigate the highly contagious fatal disease.

Prices are continuing to rise at their fastest rate for 40 years as food, energy and fuel costs climb, BBC reported.

UK inflation, the rate at which prices rise, edged up to 9.1% in the 12 months to May, from 9% in April, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

Food price rises, particular for bread, cereal and meat, were a big factor in the latest rise, the ONS said.

Cost of living pressures have led to unions and workers calling for pay rises.

But the government has warned against employers handing out big increases in salaries over fears of a 1970s style "inflationary spiral", where prices continued to rise as wages went up.

Currently, inflation is at the highest level since March 1982, when it also stood at 9.1% and the Bank of England has warned it will reach 11% this year.

Inflation is the pace at which prices are rising. For example, if a bottle of milk costs £1 and that rises by 5p compared with a year earlier, then milk inflation is 5%, according to BBC.

In a BBC-commissioned survey of more than 4,000 people, 82% said they thought their wages should increase to match the rising price of goods and services.

Households were hit by an unprecedented £700-a-year increase in energy costs in April, and fuel price rises in June mean it costs more than £100 to fill an average family car with petrol.

The country's railways were severely disrupted on Tuesday as rail workers begun a series of strikes in a dispute over pay, jobs and conditions.

About 40,000 members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union working for Network Rail and 13 train operators walked out, with union bosses calling for a pay rise of 7%, while employers have offered a maximum of 3%.

Jon Richards, assistant general secretary Unison, accused ministers of "living on another planet" over "talks of public sector pay restraint".

"Under-pressure health, care, school and council services desperately need staff to be given a pay boost that matches runaway prices," he said, BBC reported.

But Dominic Raab told the BBC's Today programme: "We have got to stop making the problem worse by fuelling pay demands that will only see inflation stay higher for longer and that only hurts the poorest the worst."

The ONS said rising prices for food and non-alcoholic beverages helped fuel inflation in May.

Russia's war in Ukraine has severely restricted wheat and maize supplies, which are used to make bread and cereals, from two of the world's biggest exporters.

Ukraine is also a major producer of of sunflower oil, meaning to the costs of alternatives have also climbed.

Market reach firm Kantar has forecast that the average annual grocery bill in the UK is set to rise by £380 this year.

Supermarket Asda told the BBC some shoppers are setting £30 limits at checkouts and petrol pumps, with customers are putting less in their baskets and switching to budget ranges.

Grant Fitzner, chief economist at the ONS, said the prices of goods leaving factories rose at their fastest rate in 45 years in May, driven by "widespread food price rises".

Mr Fitzner added the cost of raw materials "leapt at their fastest rate on record".

But he said the steep rises in food and record high petrol prices in May had been stemmed by the price of clothes rising less than they did this time last year, along with a drop in computer game costs.

Responding to the latest inflation rate, Chancellor Rishi Sunak said the government was "using all the tools at our disposal to bring inflation down and combat rising prices".

"I know that people are worried about the rising cost of living, which is why we have taken targeted action to help families, getting £1,200 to the eight million most vulnerable households," he added, according to BBC.

But Rachel Reeves, Labour's shadow chancellor said the country needed "more than sticking plasters to get us back on course - we need a stronger, and more secure economy". 

"Though rapid inflation is pushing family finances to the brink, the low wage spiral faced by many in Britain isn't new. Over the last decade, Tory mismanagement of our economy has meant living standards and real wages have failed to grow."

One way to try to control how fast prices are rising is to raise interest rates. This increases the cost of borrowing and encourages people to borrow and spend less, and save more.

In a bid to stem the pace of soaring prices, the Bank of England recently increased UK interest rates from 1% to 1.25%.

The move was the fifth consecutive rise, pushing rates to the highest level in 13 years. However, when inflation was last at 9.1% in March 1982, interest rates were 13%, Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown said, BBC reported.

Police on Tuesday arrested an Indian national on the charge of illegally operating a call bypass center in Birgunj Metropolitan City-2.

The detainee has been identified as Irphan Suphiyan Khan (38) of Telakuwa, Badshahgram, Uttar Pradesh.

Acting on a tip-off, a joint team of the Central Investigation Bureau of Nepal Police and the District Police Office, Parsa raided a house in Birgunj and apprehended him.

Police have also confiscated a 32-port GOIP gateway device, two routers, an inverter, 40 NTC SIM cards and 58 Ncell SIM cards among others from the house.

Police said that they are investigating the case.