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More than 40 MPs have left Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's coalition government, BBC reported.

MPs from parties aligned with Mr Rajapaksa's Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) led coalition said they would now independently represent themselves.

The move comes as the South Asian nation is grappling with power cuts and shortages because of an economic and foreign exchange crisis.

This has led to mass protests demanding Mr Rajapaksa's resignation.

It is unclear what the implications of the MPs' actions are at this point. They have distanced themselves from the government, but have not extended support to the opposition. 

It could, however, call into question the prime minister's authority over the parliament. 

Mr Rajapaksa's cabinet has already resigned, but both the president and his brother, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, have so far refused to step down.

Instead, the president called on opposition parties to help him form a national government and accept cabinet portfolios, according to BBC.

They have all refused and have reiterated demands for him to resign. 

"What the people want is for this president and the entire government to step down," said Sajith Premadasa, leader of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya, Sri Lanka's main opposition alliance.

On Tuesday, a freshly appointed finance minister also announced he was quitting the job, less than 24 hours after accepting the post.

Ali Sabry, a close ally of President Rajapaksa, said he would give up his parliament seat for someone outside politics who might be "suitable to handle the situation".

Meanwhile, anti-government protests continued on Tuesday in major cities across the country, BBC reported.

"People can't afford their daily rice, their dhal, their basic necessities. People can't get on buses to come to work, to go to school," one protester told the BBC.

"How much worse can it get? There's no petrol, there's no diesel, kids can't sit their exams because there's no paper," said another.

In the past days, demonstrations calling for the resignation of the president have picked up momentum.

Protesters even defied a curfew meant to last from Friday to Sunday in order to halt a planned day of protests, after a demonstration outside the president's house on Thursday night turned violent. 

The demonstrations mark a massive turnaround in popularity for Mr Rajapaksa, who swept into power with a majority win in 2019, promising stability and a "strong hand" to rule the country.

Sri Lanka is now struggling to pay for imports of fuel and other goods because of a shortage of foreign exchange, which has exacerbated its worst economic crisis since independence from the UK in 1948.

The country needs foreign currency to pay for imports of fuel, according to BBC.

"There are endless shortages of essentials, including fuel and cooking gas. Hospitals are on the verge of closing because there are no medicines," Maithripala Sirisena, Sri Lanka's former president and leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party that withdrew its support for Mr Rajapaksa's coalition, told parliament. 

"At such a time, our party is on the side of the people."

Faf du Plessis and Anuj Rawat got RCB off to a good start but that was undone by them losing four wickets in the space of two overs, Hindustan Times reported.

Dinesh Karthik then walked in and has since taken the chase by the scruff of the neck. Karthik and Shahbaz Ahmed, who also joined his senior partner in sending the RR bowlers to all corners of the park, ended up putting up 67 runs off 33 balls for the sixth wicket. The pair took the game away from them and RCB ended up getting over the line with five balls in hand.

Earlier, Jos Buttler was the driving force for Rajasthan Royals once again with his unbeaten 70 off 47 balls led them to a score of 169/3 in 20 overs.

Buttler struggled to score for much of the innings but teed off in the last two overs to take RR close tom 170 on what seems like a sluggish pitch, according to Hindustan Times.

Shimron Hetmyer, meanwhile, finished the innings off with a score and ended up with a score of 42 off 31.

The pair put up an unbeaten 83 off 51 balls for the fourth wicket.

Buttler was dropped twice and he ended up playing through the innings, Hindustan Times reported.

The United States and Western allies plan to pile additional sanctions on Russia on Wednesday after the emergence of troubling new evidence of war crimes in Ukraine, according to the White House. The new penalties will include a ban on all new investment in Russia, Associated Press reported.

Among the other measures being taken against Russia are greater sanctions on its financial institutions and state-owned enterprises, and sanctions on government officials and their family members, according to White House press secretary Jen Psaki.

“The goal is to force them to make a choice,” she said. “The biggest part of our objective here is to deplete the resources that Putin has to continue his war against Ukraine.”

Separately, the Treasury Department moved Tuesday to block any Russian government debt payments with US dollars from accounts at US financial institutions, making it harder for Russia to meet its financial obligations, according to Associated Press.

The Biden administration also announced Tuesday night that it was sending an additional $100 million worth of military assistance to Ukraine. Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said the new equipment will meet “an urgent Ukrainian need for additional Javelin anti-armor systems.”

President Joe Biden and US allies have worked together to levy a crippling of economic penalties against Russia for invading Ukraine more than a month ago, including the freezing of central bank assets, export controls and the seizing of property, including yachts, that belong to Russia’s wealthy elite. But calls for increased sanctions intensified this week in response to the attacks, killings and destruction in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.

The sanctions are intended to further Russia’s economic, financial and technological “isolation” from the rest of the world as a penalty for its attacks on civilians in Ukraine, Psaki said. That isolation is a key aspect of the US strategy, which is premised on the idea that Russia will ultimately lack the resources and equipment to keep fighting a prolonged war in Ukraine.

Psaki said the administration is assessing “additional consequences and steps we can put in place” but underscored that Biden is not weighing any military action.

An increasingly desperate Russia has engaged in military tactics that have outraged much of the wider global community, leading to charges that it is committing war crimes and causing other sanctions. 

Still, almost all of the EU has refrained from an outright ban on Russian oil and natural gas that would likely crush the Russian economy. The US has banned fossil fuels from Russia, while Lithuania blocked natural gas from that country on Saturday, becoming the first of the 27-member EU to do so. The EU executive branch on Tuesday proposed a ban on Russian coal, while Germany’s government intends to end its use of Russian natural gas over the next two years, Associated Press reported.

On Monday, Biden called for his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to be tried for war crimes and face new sanctions because of the atrocities and abuses seen around Kyiv after Russian forces pulled back from the Ukrainian capital. The corpses of what appeared to be civilians were seen strewn in yards, many of them likely killed at close range.

Biden said the US and its allies would gather details for a war crimes trial, stressing that Putin has been “brutal” and his actions “outrageous.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused the Russians of gruesome atrocities in Ukraine and told the UN Security Council on Tuesday that those responsible should immediately be brought up on war crimes charges in front of a tribunal like the one established at Nuremberg after World War II, Associated Press reported.

Over the past few days, grisly images of what appeared to be intentional killings of civilians carried out by Russian forces in Bucha and other towns before they withdrew from the outskirts of Kyiv have caused a global outcry and led Western nations to expel scores of Moscow’s diplomats and propose further sanctions, including a ban on coal imports from Russia.

Zelenskyy, speaking via video from Ukraine to U.N. diplomats, said that civilians had been tortured, shot in the back of the head, thrown down wells, blown up with grenades in their apartments and crushed to death by tanks while in cars.

“They cut off limbs, cut their throats. Women were raped and killed in front of their children,” he said. He asserted that people’s tongues were pulled out “only because their aggressor did not hear what they wanted to hear from them.”

Zelenskyy said that both those who carried out the killings and those who gave the orders “must be brought to justice immediately for war crimes” in front of a tribunal similar to what was used in postwar Germany.

Moscow’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said that while Bucha was under Russian control, “not a single local person has suffered from any violent action.” Reiterating what the Kremlin has contended for days, he said that video footage of bodies in the streets was “a crude forgery” staged by the Ukrainians, according to the Associated Press.

“You only saw what they showed you,” he said. “The only ones who would fall for this are Western dilettantes.”

As Zelenskyy spoke to the diplomats, survivors of the monthlong Russian occupation took investigators to body after body of townspeople allegedly shot down by troops. Others simply surveyed the destruction.

In Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv, 25-year-old, Dmitriy Yevtushkov searched the rubble of apartment buildings and found that only a photo album remained from his family’s home. In the besieged southern city of Mykolaiv, a passerby stopped briefly to look at the bright blossoms of a shattered flower stand lying among bloodstains, the legacy of a Russian shell that killed nine. The onlooker sketched out the sign of the cross in the air, and moved on.

Associated Press journalists in Bucha have counted dozens of corpses in civilian clothes and interviewed Ukrainians who told of witnessing atrocities. Also, high-resolution satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies showed that many of the bodies had been lying in the open for weeks, during the time that Russian forces were in the town.

The dead in Bucha included a pile of six charred bodies, as witnessed by AP journalists. It was not clear who they were or under what circumstances they died. One body was probably that of a child, said Andrii Nebytov, head of police in the Kyiv region. A gunshot wound to the head was visible on one, Associated Presa reported.

The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court at The Hague opened an investigation a month ago into possible war crimes in Ukraine.

Zelenskyy stressed that Bucha was only one place and that there are more with similar horrors — a warning echoed by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

Stoltenberg, meanwhile, warned that in pulling back from the capital, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military is regrouping its forces in order to deploy them to eastern and southern Ukraine for a “crucial phase of the war.” Russia’s stated goal currently is control of the Donbas, the largely Russian-speaking industrial region in the east that includes the shattered port city of Mariupol, according to the Associated Press.

President Bidya Devi Bhandari issued five ordinances on Tuesday.

She issued the ordinances as per the recommendation of the Cabinet, assistant spokesperson to the President's office Keshav Prasad Ghimire said.

He said that ordinance to amend some acts against sexual violence, ordinance to amend some acts related to criminal offenses and criminal procedure, social security (first amendment) ordinance, ordinance to regulate acid and other harmful chemicals and Nepal Police and State Police (Operation, Supervision and Coordination) first amendment ordinance.

The Ministry of Health and Population is to innoculate 7.5 million children against typhoid. 

Addressing a press meet organized here today, Chief of the Child Health and Vaccination Section at the Department of Health, Sagar Dahal, said children between the age of one year three months to 15 years would be administered the vaccines against typhoid.

The vaccination program will be conducted from April 8 to May 1. He said the typhoid vaccine would be administered for one time. 

GAVI, the global alliance for vaccines, has provided typhoid vaccines free of cost. Nepal is the first country in South Asia to administer the vaccine against typhoid and the World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended vaccination against typhoid in other countries with typhoid prevalence along with Nepal. 

The vaccines will be administered at 56,429 vaccination centres and schools throughout the country. Ten thousand health workers and 112 thousand 858 volunteers will be mobilized for this. 

Section chief Dahal said that going by the data for the last five years, typhoid infection has been found in over 450 thousand people in Nepal. According to him, it was estimated that there were 82 thousand 449 typhoid patients in 2019. Although typhoid infection is seen in people of all age groups, it is more prevalent among children below 15 years.

The Director-General of the Department of Health Services, Dr Dipendra Raman Singh pledged to eliminate typhoid through sanitation and vaccinations. One thousand sixty-two people per 100,000 tests have been infected with the infection, according to a study. 

Stating that the vaccine had been put to use only after its clinical trial, the director of the Family Welfare Division, Dr Bibek Lal said it requires only one dose and it is 85 percent effective. The typhoid conjugate vaccine being administered in Nepal has been approved by the World Health Organisation. 

Common side effects post-vaccination include fever, headache, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, stomach pain and skin rash among others. However, the Department has urged parents to take their children to vaccination centres nearby for the vaccine not being afraid of such common side effects. RSS

Nepal reported 24 new Covid-19 cases on Tuesday.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 3, 278 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which 21 returned positive. Likewise, 2, 309 people underwent antigen tests, of which three were tested positive.

The Ministry said that no one died of virus in the last 24 hours. The Ministry said that 51 infected people recovered from the disease.

As of today, there are 812 active cases in the country.

The Nepal Stock Exchange (NEPSE) plunged by 46. 46 points to close at 2,452.06 points on Tuesday.

Similarly, the sensitive dropped by 8. 34 points to close at 458. 22 points.

A total of 5,841,998 units of the shares of 2268companies were traded for Rs 2. 67 billion.

Meanwhile, Rastra Utthan Laghubitta Sanstha Limited was the top gainer today with its price surging by 10 percent. Likewise, Emerging Nepal Limited was the top loser with its price dropped by 10 percent.

At the end of the day, the total market capitalization stood at Rs 3. 48 trillion.