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CPN-UML senior Vice-Chairman Ishwor Pokharel said that the UML was not in favour of forging an alliance with any party in elections.

"You be clear that the UML is not in favour of forming an alliance. However, there may be an agreement at local level as per need," he said, addressing a press conference organized here today by the Press Chautari Nepal, Chitwan.

There might be a 'local adjustment' as per need, which he said is an old practice for the party. "We tried to follow the local adjustment practice in the parliamentary election in 2048 BS. It is not that we will be finished off without a coalition. We will not forge an alliance with any party in elections."

The party would try to emerge victorious in the elections with the help of their good activities done in the past and their commitments to development activities, he said.

He also criticised the Election Commission for changing colours of ballot papers for the May 13 local election 'without consultations with political parties'. RSS 

China has sent the military and thousands of healthcare workers into Shanghai to help carry out COVID-19 tests for all of its 26 million residents as cases continued to rise on Monday, in one of the country's biggest-ever public health responses, Reuters reported.

Some residents woke up before dawn for white-suited healthcare workers to swab their throats as part of nucleic acid testing at their housing compounds, many queuing up in their pyjamas and standing the required two metres apart.

The People's Liberation Army (PLA) on Sunday dispatched more than 2,000 medical personnel from across the army, navy and joint logistics support forces to Shanghai, an armed forces newspaper reported.

More than 10,000 healthcare workers from provinces such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang and the capital Beijing have arrived in Shanghai, according to state media, which showed them arriving, suitcase-laden and masked up, by high-speed rail and aircraft, according to Reuters.

It is China's largest public health response since it tackled the initial COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, where the novel coronavirus was first discovered in late 2019. The State Council said the PLA dispatched more than 4,000 medical personnel to the province of Hubei, where Wuhan is, at that time.

Shanghai, which began a two-stage lockdown on March 28 that has been expanded to confine practically all residents to their homes, reported 8,581 asymptomatic COVID-19 cases and 425 symptomatic COVID cases for April 3. It also asked residents to self-test on Sunday.

The city has emerged as a test of China's COVID elimination strategy based on testing, tracing and quarantining all positive cases and their close contacts.

The exercise in China's most populous city takes place on the eve of when Shanghai initially said it planned to lift the city's lockdown, Reuters reported.

The country has 12,400 institutions capable of processing tests from as many as 900 million people a day, a senior Chinese health official was reported as saying last month.

China's primarily uses pool testing, a process in which up to 20 swab samples are mixed together for more rapid processing.

The city has also converted multiple hospitals, gymnasiums, apartment blocks and other venues into central quarantine sites, including the Shanghai New International Expo Center which can hold 15,000 patients at full capacity.

On Monday, some residents said they received their results on their personal health app just over four hours after they were swabbed in the morning. But in other parts of the city some said they had yet to receive any notification on when their tests would be, according to Reuters.

Locals have no bound of happiness as the Jayanagar-Kurtha Rail service has operated finally. 

Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi jointly inaugurated the railway service from New Delhi on Saturday. 

The rail that left at 8.30 am on Sunday had arrived at Janakpur station at around 10.15 am the same day. 

The rail that reached Janakpur from Jayanagar through Kurtha on the first day since its opening was packed with passengers on both ordinary and AC seats, shared Director-General of Nepal Railway Company, Niranjan Jha. 

He further said the railway service is smooth and regular on its scheduled time. The timetable has been set in a way that the rail comes and goes twice a day, he added.

As per the timetable, the rail leaves from Jayanagar at 8.30 am and 3.00 pm while another rail leaves from Kurtha at 10.30 am and 5.15 pm. 

The dwellers of Dhanusha who had long been awaiting railway service now are elated with the smooth operation of rail. 

Sanjaya Jha, a local youth, expressed his confidence that the area in and around Janakpuir would transform within a few years with the smooth operation of railway service. 

He said the area would witness a huge inflow of religious tourists and local production would get market which he believed would change the landscape of the area. RSS

Nepal reported 33 new Covid-19 cases on Monday.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 2, 942 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which 32 returned positive. Likewise, 2, 117 people underwent antigen tests, of which one was tested positive.

The Ministry said that no one died of virus in the last 24 hours. The Ministry said that 89 infected people recovered from the disease.

As of today, there are 842 active cases in the country.