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Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing on Friday for the 2022 Winter Olympics and a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, bringing with him a deal to increase natural gas supplies to China amid rising tension with the West, Reuters reported.

Putin told Xi that Russia had prepared a new deal to supply China with an additional 10 billion cubic metres of natural gas, according to a broadcast of their talks aired in Moscow.

Russia, one of the global leaders in hydrocarbon supplies, has been strengthening its ties with China, the world's top energy consumer against the backdrop of Moscow's standoff with the West over Ukraine and other issues.

The broadcast aired in Moscow showed Xi and Putin, neither one wearing a mask, sitting opposite each across a large table in a Beijing state guesthouse, surrounded by masked aides.

"I would like to thank you for the invitation to the opening of the Olympic Games," Putin told Xi. "We know firsthand that this is a huge job. I am sure that our Chinese friends have done it brilliantly, as you always do when preparing such major events."

Xi said the meeting injected new vitality into the relationship, according to the report.

The Olympics, already transformed by the coronavirus pandemic and to be held within a strictly closed loop, have also been overshadowed by the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The United States and some of its allies have announced a diplomatic boycott of the Games in protest at China's human rights record. China denies any abuses.

Earlier, China state television footage showed a jet flying with the Russian and Chinese flags. Next to it were jets with Mongolian and Serbian flags. Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic and Prime Minister L. Oyun-Erdene, of Mongolia, are expected to attend the opening ceremony later on Friday.

Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and the United Arab Emirates' Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan had also touched down, according to state media reports.

Russia and China coordinated their positions on Ukraine during a meeting between their foreign ministers, Wang Yi and Sergei Lavrov, in Beijing on Thursday, the Chinese foreign ministry said.

In response, the United States warned Chinese firms that they would face consequences if they sought to evade export controls imposed on Russia in the event of it invading Ukraine.

"We have an array of tools that we can deploy if we see foreign companies, including those in China, doing their best to backfill US export control actions, to evade them, to get around them," U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price told a regular news briefing.

Before Lavrov, Beijing had not received foreign political guests for almost two years as it tried to keep the coronavirus out.

Thousands of Russian troops have massed near the border of Ukraine, raising fears of an invasion, which Russia denies planning. Russia has asked NATO to bar Ukraine from joining and to pull out of eastern Europe.

The CK Raut-led Janamat Party has postponed its highway centric protests.

Issuing a statement on Friday, Chandan Kumar Singh, General Secretary of the Janamat Party, said that they decided to postpone the protests due to adverse weather.

The party has directed the leaders and cadres to stage protests in rural municipalities and municipalities instead of highways.

General Secretary Singh said that the party will bring the new protest programmes from February 13.

The leader of the Islamic State (IS) is dead following a US raid in northern Syria that also killed a senior deputy of the terror group, US officials say, BBC reported.

Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi set off a blast killing himself and his family as special forces rounded on his hideout after a gunfight.

US President Joe Biden disclosed the overnight raid on Thursday. 

Qurayshi's death "removed a major terrorist threat to the world", Mr Biden said.

US officials did not name the IS deputy also killed, but provided dramatic details of the operation that had been months in the planning.

IS has so far made no public comments on the issue.

Several US experts told the BBC that Qurayshi's death would be a blow to IS, but the group would ultimately regroup.

The raid targeted a three-storey residential building on the outskirts of the opposition-held town of Atmeh, which is in northern Idlib province and close to the border with Turkey.

The region is a stronghold of jihadist groups that are fierce rivals of IS, as well as Turkish-backed rebel factions fighting the Syrian government.

Intelligence reports had established that Qurayshi was living with his family on the second floor of the residential building in Atmeh from which he ran IS using couriers to despatch his orders in Syria and elsewhere. 

A notorious militant known as "the Destroyer", Qurayshi - who also went by the noms de guerre Hajji Abdullah, Amir Mohammed Said Abdul Rahman al-Mawla and Abdullah Qardash - became IS leader in 2019, following the death of his predecessor Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Though the terror group announced his rise to the leadership four days after Baghdadi's death in October, Qurayshi is believed to have long been groomed for the role and kept away from the battlefield in anticipation of assuming the mantle. 

US authorities had offered a $10m ($7.3m) reward for information about the veteran jihadist, who was born in Mosul, Iraq, in 1976.

How was the raid carried out?

While in Atmeh, he never went outside except to bathe on the rooftop, but an airstrike would have come with high risks of civilian casualties - another family not believed to be connected to IS or aware of Qurayshi's presence lived on the ground floor. 

A possible ground raid was studied in detail, with a dozen scenarios practised and risk assessments taken of the situation on the ground, senior administration officials said. Models were built of the residential compound and engineers studied the likelihood of the building crumbling in a blast.

Mr Biden was briefed on the details of a possible operation in December. 

He gave a final go-ahead for the special forces raid on Tuesday, monitoring it in real time from the White House situation room as multiple helicopters arrived in Atmeh around midnight on Thursday (22:00 GMT on Wednesday).

Local sources said the US special forces faced stiff resistance on the ground, and that they came under fire from anti-aircraft guns mounted on vehicles. Gunfire and shelling were heard for two hours before the helicopters left. 

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said US forces were able to evacuate 10 people from the house, including eight children. 

Those killed in the raid included one of Qurayshi's deputies and his wife, both of whom had fired on US forces. Additionally, Mr Kirby said that US forces engaged a small group of people who approached the area during the two-hour mission and were "deemed hostile", resulting in two of them being killed. 

"That resulted in the end of hostile activity," he said, adding that "it appears as if a child was also killed" nearby. Mr Kirby added, however, that the US doesn't "have perfect knowledge of every single person who was killed". 

As the raid unfolded, Qurayshi detonated an explosive device on the third floor of the house, killing himself, his wife and two children. President Biden described it as "a final act of cowardice".

Qurashi was later identified "through fingerprints and DNA analysis", said Mr Kirby. 

There were no US casualties. One American helicopter malfunctioned during the raid and had to be destroyed.

Qurashi's blowing up tactic was also used by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi when he encountered US forces in 2019.

Baghdadi killed himself and three children by detonating an explosive vest during a US special forces raid on a hideout that was only 16km (10 miles) away from Atmeh.

The White Helmets rescue service, also known as the Syria Civil Defence, said it had found the bodies of six children and four women at the house targeted in the raid.

All Americans involved in the operation returned safely, Mr Biden said.

IS no longer controls large swathes of Iraq and Syria as it did at the height of its power. Nor is it the draw for jihadists that it used to be, back when its command of social media drew in recruits and incited others to carry out attacks where they lived. And it has not been able to launch the kind of external operations in Europe like the Paris attacks of 2015.

Last year, its offshoot in Afghanistan, IS-K, drew far more attention, particularly for the deadly attack in Kabul as the US and allies were pulling out.

But there have been concerns in recent months from counter-terrorism officials that the group was trying to reconstitute in Iraq and Syria and build greater capacity. That was seen in ambushes and attacks, particularly in a significant attempt at a massive prison break in north-east Syria last month, as well as renewed propaganda.

Washington will hope the killing of Qurayshi will halt any resurgence in its tracks.

"Hajji Abdullah oversaw the spread of [IS]-affiliated terrorist groups around the world after savaging communities and murdering innocents," Mr Biden said, calling him "the driving force behind the genocide of the Yazidi people in north-western Iraq in 2014".

"We all remember the gut-wrenching stories of mass slaughters that wiped out entire villages, thousands of women and young girls sold into slavery, rape used as a weapon of war.

"Thanks to the bravery of our troops this horrible terrorist leader is no more," he said.

US foreign policy think tank specialists told the BBC that IS would be damaged by the death of Qurayshi.

Jon Alterman, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said: "Losing a leader makes them even [IS] more paranoid. 

"We want them to be paranoid and want them to be searching for traitors in their midst. It's totally destructive and it's wonderful."

Jomana Qaddour, of the Atlantic Council, said: "It's always a good thing when the head of ISIS is taken out. But this certainly won't be the last we see of ISIS."

CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal said that it is difficult to take an immediate decision on the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC).

Addressing a meeting of the party’s Karnali Province virtually on Thursday, he said that it is hard to take the decision on the MCC in this situation.

“It is difficult to take an immediate decision on the MCC. Many leaders have differences over some of the provisions of the MCC. We will take the decision on the issue only by holding discussions with the leaders,” he said.

Chairman Dahal said that the leaders in the ruling coalition are holding discussions on a daily basis about the provisions to be amended in the MCC.

Meanwhile, he claimed that the ruling coalition will not fall apart at any cost.

During the meeting, Chairman Dahal directed the party leaders and cadres to start preparations for the upcoming local level elections.

Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, however, is in favour of the parliamentary ratification of the MCC.