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The Ministry of Energy, Irrigation and Drinking Water in Madhes Province has made a decision to provide relief to the vulnerable communities including those suffering from the drought.

Officiating secretary at the ministry, Ram Kumar Khanga, held a meeting among development partners and representatives from various sectors on Tuesday and made an 8-point decision for providing the relief to the drought-hit households across the province.

As per the decision, the most vulnerable community and households will be identified immediately and coordination among local levels and the district disaster management committee would be made stronger. Even the capacity of development partners would be assessed in this regard. 

The vulnerable households will be asked to choose one option- installation of either deep boring or shallow tube well. A long-term plan on promotion of alternative agriculture will be prepared with the collaboration among private sector, development partners and government. Chure region conservation and promotion will be further prioritized by the government.

A disaster response action plan to cope up drought will be submitted in a related committee within a week, it was shared.

Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak has appointed Mokhtar Ahmad as Chairman of Nepal Hajj Committee. 

Ahmad is a resident of Kalyanpur Municipality-12 of Siraha district.

The Home Ministry shared the information that the minister-level decision made the appointment on Tuesday. 

The process to appoint members to the Committee is underway, it has been said.

India has said its security forces killed three militants who shot dead 26 civilians near a tourist town in Indian-administered Kashmir in April, triggering a brief military conflict with Pakistan, BBC reported.

Home Minister Amit Shah told parliament the men had been killed by Indian forces near the disputed region's main city Srinagar on Monday. 

He claimed the attackers were Pakistani nationals, a charge Islamabad denies. The men's identity was confirmed through forensic and ballistic tests, Shah told MPs. 

Pakistan has not commented on the claims, which have not been independently confirmed and come amid mounting criticism of India's government for alleged security lapses in Kashmir, according to BBC.

A gunman who killed four people when he stormed a skyscraper in the heart of New York on Monday evening left a note that appeared to blame the National Football League (NFL) for a brain injury, the city's Mayor Eric Adams says, BBC reported.

The attacker, 27-year-old Shane Tamura of Las Vegas, shot himself dead after opening fire in a building where the American football league has its headquarters, but went to a different part of the building after taking the wrong lift.

The gunman was carrying a note in which he blamed CTE, a brain disease triggered by head trauma, for his mental illness, Adams said.

Tamura played football as a teenager but did not play in the NFL, ex-teammates have told US media, according to BBC.

At least 18 migrants died in a shipwreck off the city of Tobruk in eastern Libya over the weekend, and 50 are still missing, the International Organization for Migration said on Tuesday, citing reports, Reuters reported.

Ten survivors have been accounted for so far, the IOM said.

Tobruk is a coastal city near the border with Egypt.

Since the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011, Libya has become a transit country for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe across the desert and over the Mediterranean, according to Reuters.

A worst-case scenario of famine is unfolding in Gazaand immediate action is needed to avoid widespread death, a hunger monitor warned on Tuesday, as the number of Palestinians reported killed in the conflict with Israel crossed the 60,000 threshold, Reuters reported.

The hunger alert and the new death toll are grim milestones in a conflict that began almost two years ago when Hamas attacked Israel, sparking an offensive that has laid waste to much of the enclave and ignited hostilities across the region.

The alert by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) raised the prospect that the man-made starvation crisis in Gaza could be formally classified as a famine, in the hope that this might raise the pressure on Israel to let in far more food, according to Reuters.

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli inaugurated the extended irrigation, hydropower project and transmission line under the Rani Jamara Kulariya Irrigation Project on Tuesday. 

PM Oli inaugurated the irrigation project with the capacity of irrigating 14,300 hectares of land.  Also brought to operation were the 4.71 MW hydropower project and a transmission line. 

This marks the completion of the project’s second phase and extension into the third one.

Following the completion of the second phase, the electricity generated from an irrigation canal at Katashe of Janaki Rural Municipality-9 in Kailali district has been connected with the 33 KV transmission line. 

The third phase of the project is expected to provide irrigation facilities to Bhajani, Joshipur, Bardagoriya and Ghodaghodi Rural Municipalities in the district while the second phase is catering to the irrigation needs of Tikapur, Lamkichuha and Janaki Rural Municipalities. 

Dubbing the project as one of the historic achievements in the development of Nepal's water resources and rural agriculture sector, the PM was confident that it would illustrate the country's rural life, agricultural production, self-reliance in energy and food security.

The Rani Jamara Kulariya irrigation facility started with the collective effort of local farmers, using traditional skills some 120 years ago, he reminded, attributing the evolution into the present state to the participation of local community and effective government coordination.

On the occasion, PM Oli instructed the concerned authority to expedite the national pride projects, such as Sikta, Babai, Mahakali III, Bheri-Babai and Sunkoshi Marine Multipurpose Projects for their timely completion.

Lebanon’s military court convicted six people accused of killing a U.N. peacekeeper, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon said Tuesday. Lebanese officials said the chief defendant was sentenced to death, Associated Press reported.

“UNIFIL welcomes the conclusion of the trial process and the Government of Lebanon’s commitment to bring the perpetrators to justice,” it said in a statement.

UNIFIL did not give further details, but three Lebanese judicial officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case, said the court had issued a death sentence in absentia Monday against Mohammad Ayyad, the main defendant in the case, according to Associated Press.