Indian Sub-continent

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Authorities in Nepal said 68 people have been confirmed dead after a regional passenger plane with 72 aboard crashed into a gorge while landing at a newly opened airport in the resort town of Pokhara. It’s the country’s deadliest airplane accident in three decades.

The country’s Civil Aviation Authority posted the announcement to Twitter Sunday, while rescuers were scouring the crash site near the Seti River, about 1.6 kilometers (nearly a mile) away from Pokhara International Airport.

Kanpur:: A man was found dead in a forest in Gangaganj Part-II, in the Panki police station area, the police said.

The man’s head was broken and the body ditched in the forlorn forest, the police said, adding that they sent the body for a post-mortem.

A police team reached the spot after receiving information that a man had been found dead in the forest, with his skull smashed.

According to the police, while the identity of the victim is yet to be ascertained, he is believed to have been 26 years of age.

ISLAMABAD, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif discussed enhancing existing bilateral relations at all levels in a meeting with Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the prime minister's office said in a statement here.

DHAKA, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) -- Bangladesh's total exports in the first half of the current 2022-23 fiscal year (July 2022-June 2023) reached over 27 billion U.S. dollars, up 10.58 percent year on year, the latest official data showed.

The Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) data posted on its website showed that Bangladesh earned 27,311.26 million dollars from exports in July-December of 2022, compared to 24,698.55 million dollars a year earlier.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday that inaction by the country’s former president and four others led to Easter Sunday bomb attacks in 2019 that killed nearly 270 people and ordered them to pay compensation for violating the basic rights of the victims and their families.

Kanpur: After the recent day grab of the extinct vulture, a small white owl has now been found in Kanpur. It was spotted in the Navin market here.

None knows where it came from. When people saw that a white owl was sitting in the window of the shop, the crowd started gathering to see this unique owl.

Forest officer Lallu Singh says that the owl is considered a protected bird. We will hand it over to the zoo. Where did it come from, at the moment we are trying to find out about it.

PUL-E-KHUMRI, Afghanistan, Jan 11 (NNN-ANA) – The police have rounded up 30 drug addicts in Afghanistan’s northern Baghlan province, and shifted them to a rehabilitation centre, provincial police spokesman, Mawlawi Shir Ahmad Burhani, said yesterday.

The official told local reporters that, “the addicted persons are not criminals and all the 30 drug addicts have been taken to a rehabilitation centre, to get treatment and would be reintegrated to their families, after getting discharged from the centre.”

COLOMBO, Jan 10 (NNN-XINHUA) – Sri Lanka’s treasury is running out of funds, as a serious economic crisis continues to affect the nation, the country’s cabinet spokesman said, today.

Cabinet Spokesman, Bandula Gunawardena, told reporters that, funds collected through taxes have seen a decline.

As a result, the treasury is running short of funds to make payments, said Gunawardena.

Gunawardena said, the economic crisis that hit the country in 2022, has affected the income of the treasury.

KATHMANDU, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Nepali Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal won a vote of confidence comfortably in the House of Representatives on Tuesday evening, two weeks after he took office as the head of a new coalition government.

Dahal, also known as Prachanda, won the support of 268 lawmakers in the 275-strong lower house, much more than the 138 votes needed to pass the trust motion.

Lawmakers from the Nepali Congress, the largest party in the chamber which did not join the seven-party coalition, voted in favor of Prachanda as well.

Kanpur: The leather traders are in a big worry owing to a feared fall in exports of leather items to foreign countries.

It is mainly due to the reported emergence of Covid's new variant in the USA and China.

It has been reiterated by the traders that they are in anguish fearing a 40% drop in exports of leather products from this city.

The leather traders are noticing challenges in their business, and exports to countries, like China, America, United Arab Emirates, Iran, and Iraq as the trends in exports are decreasing.