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Rescuers searching a mountainside in Nepal on Monday recovered the bodies of 17 of the 22 people who were on board a plane that crashed a day earlier, officials said. A search is continuing for the remaining people, airline spokesperson Sudarshan Bartaula said. Bartaula said rescuers believe some bodies are pinned under the plane’s wreckage. Rescuers working with their bare hands have not been able to move the metal debris, he said. The Tara Air turboprop Twin Otter lost contact with the airport tower on Sunday while flying on a scheduled 20-minute flight in an area of deep river gorges and mountaintops. Four Indians and two Germans were on the plane, Tara Air said. The three crew members and other passengers were Nepali nationals, it said. The wreckage was located by villagers who had been searching in the area for the Yarsagumba fungus, which is commonly referred to as Himalayan Viagra, according to local news reports. The Setopati new website quoted a villager, Bishal Magar, as saying that they heard about the missing plane on Sunday but were only able to reach the site on Monday morning after following the smell of fuel. Magar said it appeared the plane may have clipped the top of a smaller mountain and then slammed into a bigger mountain. Local news reports said the passengers included two Nepali families, one with four members and the other with seven. Aerial photos of the crash site showed aircraft parts scattered on rocks and moss on the side of a mountain gorge. The army said the plane crashed in Sanosware in Mustang district close to the mountain town of Jomsom, where it was heading after taking off from the resort town of Pokhara, 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of Kathmandu. According to tracking data from flightradar24.com, the 43-year-old aircraft took off from Pokhara at 9:55 a.m. and transmitted its last signal at 10:07 a.m. at an altitude of 12,825 feet (3,900 meters). Read: Rescuers close to plane that crashed in Nepal with 22 aboard      

Rescuers zeroed in on a possible location of a passenger plane with 22 people aboard that is feared to have crashed Sunday in cloudy weather in Nepal's mountains, officials said. The Tara Air plane was on a 20-minute scheduled flight from the resort town of Pokhara, 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of Kathmandu, to the mountain town of Jomsom. The turboprop Twin Otter aircraft lost contact with the airport tower close to landing in an area of deep river gorges and mountaintops. Also read: Plane with 22 people on board missing in Nepal’s mountains An army helicopter and private choppers were taking part in the search, the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal said in a statement. Army troops and rescue teams were headed to the possible site of the crash, believed to be around Lete, a village in Mustang district, Narayan Silwal, the army spokesman, said on Twitter. But bad weather and nightfall caused the search to be suspended until Monday morning, Silwal said. “Poor visibility due to bad weather is hindering the efforts. The plane has not yet been located,” he said. Rescuers were trying to reach an area where locals allegedly saw a fire, although it is still unclear what was burning, Silwal added. He said that officials can only verify the information once the troops reached the location. Sudarshan Bartaula, spokesman for Tara Air, said that rescuers had narrowed down a possible location of the plane. According to plane tracking data from flightradar24.com, the 43-year-old aircraft took off from Pokhara at 9:55 a.m. (04:10 GMT) and transmitted its last signal at 10:07 a.m. (04:22 GMT) at an altitude of 12,825 feet (3,900 meters). There were six foreigners on board the plane, including four Indians and two Germans, according to a police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk to the media. The plane was carrying 19 passengers and three crew, Bartaula said. It has been raining in the area for the past few days but flights have been operating normally. Planes on that route fly between mountains before landing in a valley. It is a popular route with foreign hikers who trek on the mountain trails and also with Indian and Nepalese pilgrims who visit the revered Muktinath temple. Nepal has had a spotty air safety record. In 2016, a Tara Air Twin Otter flying the same route crashed after takeoff, killing all 23 people aboard. In 2012, an Agni Air plane also flying from Pokhara to Jomsom crashed, killing 15 people. Six people survived. In 2014, a Nepal Airlines plane flying from Pokhara to Jumla crashed, killing all 18 on board. Also read: Plane veers off runway in China and catches fire; 36 injured In 2018, a US-Bangla passenger plane from Bangladesh crashed on landing in Kathmandu, killing 49 of the 71 people aboard. The Twin Otter, a rugged plane originally built by Canadian aircraft manufacturer De Havilland, has been in service in Nepal for about 50 years, during which it has been involved in about 21 accidents, according to aviationnepal.com. The plane, with its top-mounted wing and fixed landing gear, is prized for its durability and its ability to take off and land on short runways. Production of the planes originally ended in the 1980s. Another Canadian company, Viking Air, brought the model back into production in 2010.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and other top officials discussed revising stringent anti-epidemic restrictions during a meeting Sunday, state media reported, as they maintained a widely disputed claim that the country’s first COVID-19 outbreak is slowing. The discussion at the North’s Politburo meeting suggests it will soon relax a set of draconian curbs imposed after its admission of the omicron outbreak this month out of concern about its food and economic situations. Kim and other Politburo members “made a positive evaluation of the pandemic situation being controlled and improved across the country,” the official Korean Central News Agency said. READ: N. Korea's Kim vows to develop more powerful means of attack They also “examined the issue of effectively and quickly coordinating and enforcing the anti-epidemic regulations and guidelines given the current stable anti-epidemic situation," KCNA said. On Sunday, North Korea reported 89,500 more patients with fever symptoms, taking the country’s total to 3.4 million. It didn’t say whether there were additional deaths. The country’s latest death toll reported Friday was 69, setting its mortality rate at 0.002%, an extremely low count that no other country, including advanced economies, has reported in the fight against COVID-19. Many outside experts say North Korea is clearly understating its fatality rate to prevent any political damage to Kim at home. They say North Korea should have suffered many more deaths because its 26 million people are largely unvaccinated against COVID-19 and it lacks the capacity to treat patients with critical conditions. Others suspect North Korea might have exaggerated its earlier fever cases to try to strengthen its internal control of its population. Since its May 12 admission of the omicron outbreak, North Korea has only been announcing the number of patients with feverish symptoms daily, but not those with COVID-19, apparently because of a shortage of test kits to confirm coronavirus cases in large numbers. But many outside health experts view most of the reported fever cases as COVID-19, saying North Korean authorities would know how to distinguish the symptoms from fevers caused by other prevalent infectious diseases. The outbreak has forced North Korea to impose a nationwide lockdown, isolate all work and residential units from one another and ban region-to-region movements. The country still allows key agricultural, construction and other industrial activities, but the toughened restrictions have triggered worries about its food insecurity and a fragile economy already hit hard by pandemic-caused border shutdowns. Some observers say North Korea will likely soon declare victory over COVID-19 and credit it to Kim’s leadership. Yang Un-chul, an analyst at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea, said the North’s recently elevated restrictions must be dealing a serious blow to its coal, agricultural and other labor-intensive industrial sectors. But he said those difficulties won’t likely develop to a level that threatens Kim’s grip on power, as the COVID-19 outbreak and strengthened curbs have given him a chance to boost his control of his people.

Rescuers from the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) are searching for eight missing crew members of a fishing vessel that sank off Palawan province after colliding with a cargo vessel on Saturday afternoon, a PCG spokesperson said on Sunday. Commodore Armand Balilo said the collision occurred before 6:00 p.m. local time on Saturday, 26 km northeast of Maracanao Island, and 13 out of the 21 crew had been rescued. The search and rescue operations were continuing, Balilo said, and the cargo vessel MV Happy Hiro, on its way to the central Philippines, was not damaged and had helped transport the rescued fishers safely. READ: More than 200 dead after typhoon slams Philippines The maritime accident happened less than a week after a ferry carrying over 130 passengers and crew caught fire on May 23 while traveling to a town in Quezon province on the main Luzon island, leaving at least seven dead. Ferry accidents are not rare in the Philippines, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia.

Rescuers in Indonesia were searching for 25 people who were missing after a ferry sank in the Makassar Strait in Central Sulawesi province, officials said Sunday. A total of 42 people were on the boat when it sank in bad weather on Thursday morning while traveling from a seaport in Makassar to Kalmas Island in Pangkep Regency, said Djunaedi, the head of the South Sulawesi National Search and Rescue Agency. Like many Indonesians, Djunaedi goes by only one name. Seventeen people were later rescued, including some by two tugboats that were at sea at the time of the incident. Djunaedi said the search and rescue agency received new information about the location of the sunken ferry on Saturday and dispatched crews to the area. Two ferries and a search and rescue boat, along with local fishing boats, are involved in the search for the missing passengers. READ: Indonesia tourist bus smashes into billboard, killing 14 Ferry tragedies are common in Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, where ferries are often used as transport and safety regulations can lapse. In 2018, an overcrowded ferry with about 200 people on board sank in a deep volcanic crater lake in North Sumatra province, killing 167 people. In one of the country’s worst recorded disasters, an overcrowded passenger ship sank in February 1999 with 332 people aboard. There were only 20 survivors.

Russian frigate Admiral Gorshkov successfully test-fired a Tsirkon hypersonic cruise missile from the Barents Sea on Saturday, Russia's Defense Ministry said. The missile hit a naval target about 1,000 km away in the White Sea and the flight of the projectile corresponded to the designed parameters, it added. Also Read: Russia slams sanctions, seeks to blame West for food crisis The Tsirkon missile has been test-fired several times from the Admiral Gorshkov frigate and a nuclear-powered submarine. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Tsirkon missile is capable of flying at Mach 9 or nine times the speed of sound and striking a target over 1,000 km away.    

Seven people were killed on Friday after a minibus and a private car collided on the Ismailia-Suez desert road in northeastern Egypt, state-run Ahram newspaper reported. The collision resulted in the explosion of an oxygen cylinder inside the private car and a gas cylinder in the minibus. The bodies of the seven people were burned as they were trapped in the vehicles. The bodies were taken to local hospitals in ambulances, while a team of prosecutors had inspected the scene of the accident. According to initial reports, the accident took place when the private car's driver tried to turn to the other side of the road. READ: 7 soldiers killed in India road accident Road accidents are common in Egypt because of poorly maintained road infrastructure and loosely applied traffic regulations. Over the past few years, Egypt has been upgrading its road network, building new roads and bridges, and repairing old ones to reduce traffic accidents.

At least 15 people have died in torrential rains across southern China, state media reported Saturday. Eight died in two building collapses from landslides in Fujian province, near China's east coast, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing the Wuping county information office. Five others died and three were missing in Yunnan province, about 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) away in southwestern China, state broadcaster CCTV said in an online report. Three children were swept away by floodwaters Friday in Xincheng country in the Guangxi region, authorities said. Two died and one survived. The storm damaged roads, bridges and telecommunications and power facilities in Yunnan's Qiubei county, which is about 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of the border with Vietnam. In Fujian, five victims were found in a collapsed factory building and three others in a collapsed residential building on Friday, Xinhua said. Heavy rain started Thursday evening in Wuping county, which is about 210 kilometers (130 miles) inland from the coastal city of Xiamen. Video posted online showed streets flooded with muddy water and some roads partially washed away. The storm damaged crops, cut power and destroyed 39 houses in the county, state media said. More than 1,600 people were evacuated.

As many as seven Indian Army personnel were killed and 19 others injured when a vehicle carrying them to a forward location near the country's border with China veered off a mountainous road and rolled down a deep gorge in the federal territory of Ladakh on Friday, officials said. Read: Indian, Pakistani killed in UAE gas blast that injured 120 "A party of 26 soldiers was moving from the Transit Camp in Partapur to a forward location in Sub Sector Hanif. ... around 25 km from Thoise, the vehicle skidded off the road and fell in Shyok river (to a depth of approx 50-60 ft)," an Indian Army spokesperson told the media. While seven bodies were recovered from the gorge after a rescue operation, the 19 injured have been admitted to a field hospital in Partapur, a police officer told the local media. "The rescue operation began soon after news of the accident reached the nearest Army camp." Read: Shah Rukh Khan's son gets clean chit in drugs case Road accidents are very common in India, with one taking place every four minutes. These accidents are often blamed on poor roads, rash driving and scant regard for traffic laws. The Indian government's implementation of stricter traffic laws in recent years has failed to rein in accidents, which claim over 100,000 lives every year.

India's COVID-19 tally rose to 43,147,530 on Friday, as 2,710 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours across the country, showed the health ministry's latest data. Besides, 14 deaths from the pandemic registered since Thursday morning took the total death toll to 524,539. Also Read: Global Covid cases top 530 million There are still 15,814 active COVID-19 cases in the country with an increase of 400 active cases during the past 24 hours. So far, 42,607,177 people have been successfully cured and discharged from hospitals, of whom 2,296 were discharged during the past 24 hours.