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Who are the Australians missing in the Nepal floods? What we know so far

The number of Australians missing in the Nepal-Tibet flash flooding disaster has fallen to 36, after two further people were confirmed safe on Friday. It comes after five previously unaccounted for Australians were confirmed safe earlier this week, with one found in Nepal, one in Tibet and three outside the crisis-hit area. Sydney woman Cara Severino, 25, was also safely located in Nepal more than two days after the 26 August floods. The names of the Australians confirmed safe this week have not yet been released. Pilgrims trekking to a holy site in Tibet make up the majority of Australians who have been reported missing after deadly flash floods and landslides tore through valleys on the Nepal-Tibet border on 26 August. Most were travelling with Himalayan Glacier Adventures, Kailash Journeys and the Isha Foundation. Across Nepal and Tibet, more than 5,000 people have been reported missing and Nepali and Chinese authorities have confirmed more than 1,000 have died. Here’s what we know about the Australians who remain missing. This article will be updated as more information becomes available. Venkatraman Balakrishnan and Chitra Venkatraman New South Wales couple Venkatraman Balakrishnan, 52, and Chitra Venkatraman, 46, were among 15 Australians travelling to Mount Kailash on a spiritual trip with the Himalayan Glacier Adventures tour group. Their son, Akash Venkatraman, said his parents had planned to leave their riverside accommodation in Syabrubesi before it was devastated by flood waters. Muralitharan family Shylaja Muralitharan, 42, Chandresekaran Muralitharan, 47 and their children Ashwin, 14, and Aarush, 11, were also taking part in the Himalayan Glacier Adventures spiritual tour to Mount Kailash when the flood hit. The parents and two children had been training together for the long walk, Shylaja’s younger sister Vaishnavi said. She lost contact with the family shortly after their breakfast on the morning of the flood. Iyer family Sreedharan Iyer, 52, and Lakshmi Iyer, 50, and their adult sons Rishab Iyer, 23, and Rudhra Iyer, 20, were taking part in the spiritual pilgrimage to Mount Kailash with Himalayan Glacier Adventures. The Iyer brothers are medical students at the University of Newcastle and members of the West Pennant Hills Cherrybrook Cricket Club in Sydney’s north-west. Karan Bhardwaj, Arpan Mithalal Kothari and Bhavin Raval Karan Bhardwaj, Arpan Mithalal Kothari and Bhavin Raval were travelling together on a Kailash Journey tour of the region. Bhardwaj’s family says the three men have known each other since 2009, when they met at university. Raval’s wife, Bhavinkumar Raval, has told the ABC she believes her husband is still alive and is making plans to travel to Nepal. Bhardwaj is a 40-year-old Brisbane-based member of the Royal Australian Air Force. Bhardwaj’s family member Jen said: “Karan is a dad to my beautiful seven-year-old nephew, as well as a brother, uncle and brother in law. He is so desperately loved by his family and right now we are desperately praying, hoping and believing that Karan is safe, alive and somehow making his way back to us.” Narayan Panthi Narayan Panthi, from Brisbane, has been listed by Nepali police as travelling with operator Kathmandu Holiday Tours and Travel. It is understood Panthi had been carrying out independent volunteer charity work in Kathmandu earlier in the week before travelling towards the border region. Panthi’s cousin, Amrit Bhusal, told Guardian Australia his family were devastated but “holding on to hope and praying for positive news”. “We are still hoping,” Bhusal said. “We are still searching. We are still praying for Narayan to come home safely.” Bhusal said Panthi had been “helping disadvantaged children in Nepal reach their full potential through education”. Bharat Mangwani Bharat Mangwani, 42, was travelling with the Isha Foundation as part of a pilgrimage to Lake Manasarovar when his family lost contact with him on Wednesday morning. He was last seen at Gyirong before the group was set to depart for Kathmandu. “All of us are praying for him and hopefully he comes back to us soon,” close friend Kushagra Tiwari said. Mangwani’s family, including his nine-year-old son and three-year-old daughter, have travelled to India with a family friend, while his wife has flown to Nepal to look for him. Sumi Adhikari Sumi Adhikari, 41, was at the Gyirong Port crossing with the Isha Foundation group when the flood hit. Her husband, Nava Pandey, has travelled to Nepal seeking information about her whereabouts. “We still have no clear or official information about Sumi or the other members of her group,” Pandey said on Saturday morning. Renee Spry A Sunshine Coast disability support worker, Renee Spry has been described as a “deeply spiritual” person who travelled to Nepal on a pilgrimage. “She had two degrees, and she chose to do something that was … a completely selfless vocation. Her priority was always other people,” her sister Clair Spry said. “Every person she touched, they knew her love and kindness. She would be so uncomfortable with all this.” Clair Spry has set up a GoFundMe so her family can travel to Nepal to look for signs of Renee. Suhasini Kandimalla A mother of two from Springfield, near Brisbane, Suhasini Kandimalla was hiking with another Springfield local, according to her sister, Supreethini Kandimalla. While she was a New Zealand citizen, Suhasini had been approved for Australian citizenship, her sister said. She had planned to attend a citizenship ceremony for it to be granted soon after she returned. “I don’t know if it was a religious calling for her to do it,” Supreethini said of the Nepal trip. “But she certainly loved the treks in New Zealand too, and would go on lots of long hikes.” Reshma Patel Newcastle woman Reshma Patel, 46, was in the Isha Foundation group. She didn’t know Sumi Adhikari beforehand, but the pair had become friends on the pilgrimage, Patel’s family friend Chin Valsan says. “They were talking to each other, and they were supposed to come back on the same flight on Thursday,” he says. He describes Patel, who has two children aged 10 and 14 and works casually for Canterbury-Bankstown council, as “full of life” and a “kind soul” who loves her family and friends. Kanagamah Sundrasan The mother of two from Springfield, near Brisbane, was part of the Kailash Journey trek to Mount Kailash. Her daughter, Swaatika Kanniah, said her mother had been excited about the hike. “It was a pilgrimage, she really wanted to go and have that experience.” A photograph of her on the trip shows her smiling with five other members of the tour; all are now missing. “I feel like everyone is trying their best, but yes we don’t know much about what’s going on,” Kanniah said of the recovery efforts. Michael Keats The family of 37-year-old Michael Keats, from Mollymook in NSW, said on social media that he had died. Keats’s partner, Emily Boyd, said on Instagram on Sunday that he had been on a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash, which had been his “dream for many years”. “Mike went on a pilgrimage to Mt Kailash seeking enlightenment,” Boyd said. “There’s a bittersweetness knowing that there was nothing more that Mike wanted [than] to know God, and to merge with the divine. “He was a mystic, a medicine man, a teacher, leader, partner, father, brother, son, uncle and dearly beloved friend. He showed up for so many people in so many ways. A heart of pure gold. We love you forever and always.” On Tuesday, the foreign minister, Penny Wong, said the Australian government “has not yet received official confirmation of Mr Keats’ passing. He does remain unaccounted for in terms of the information we have. But … we respect the rights of the families to make the statements they have”. “Our thoughts go out to his family and to every Australian family who is hoping that the many who are missing can be located,” she said. Luke Costanzo Luke Costanzo, 30, from Perth remains missing, his family has confirmed. He was on a pilgrimage trek with the Isha foundation, and the group was last in contact at the Gyirong port border crossing as they were making their way back to Kathmandu on the final day of their journey, the family said in a statement. “Luke is an extremely strong, compassionate, disciplined and spiritual person. Once he makes a decision he commits to it fully and he was so excited to be visiting Mount Kailash on a pilgrimage trek with the Isha Foundation,” the family said. “We truly appreciate all the love and support from friends and family that we’ve received and ask everyone to keep Luke, and all those affected, in your thoughts and prayers.” The family has asked people who wish to help to donate “to aid the wonderful people on the ground who continue with rescue efforts”. Sandeep Mohapatra and Sidharthi Kumari Sahu Sandeep Mohapatra and Sidharthi Kumari Sahu are members of Melbourne’s Odia community. The couple had taken part in a pilgrimage and were last believed to have been making their way towards the immigration office. Hara Patro, a member of the Melbourne Odia community, travelled to India to speak with their families and has urged Australians to keep the couple in their hearts. “Their families are living through unimaginable uncertainty,” he said. “Every day without news makes the situation harder, but we continue to hope and pray that Sandeep and Sidharthi will be found safe.” The couple’s son is staying with family in India as they wait for news.

Serbians targeted with spyware in country’s ‘largest documented wave of surveillance’

At least 14 people from across Serbian civil society were targeted with advanced spyware earlier this year in what the digital rights group Share Foundation said was the largest documented wave of such infection in Serbia to date. The wave of spyware infections was discovered in August after Apple notified people in 110 ⁠countries that they had probably been victims ⁠of mercenary spyware. The Citizen Lab, which carries out forensic analyses of spyware attacks, released an analysis on Wednesday showing that at least one of the Serbians had been targeted with the NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, which would have given the attacker “total access to the device”. Share said those targeted included members of a Serbian student movement that has been a thorn in the side of the government of Aleksandar Vučić since 2024. Coalescing out of countrywide protests that followed the collapse of a train station that winter, it is one of the largest student movements in Europe. Vučić has been in power for more than a decade, during which time critics have said he has overseen a hollowing-out of institutions while steering the country closer to Moscow. There is no evidence that Vučić’s government was the entity that targeted the student with the Pegasus spyware. However, other spyware used against the students, including a software called NoviSpy, has been previously connected to Serbian authorities. In an interview with Euronews Serbia TV on Wednesday, Ana Brnabić, the parliamentary speaker and a ranking member of the ruling Serbian Progressive party, denied that students had been spied on. “Absolutely not,” she said. “I do not believe a single word they’ve [students, Share] said.” Share said the timing – during March’s local elections – may have been a practice run before snap elections set for this October. “This is the largest documented wave of surveillance in Serbia so far,” said Andrijana Ristic, a policy adviser at Share. “We imagine … that the local elections were basically used as a test for the ruling party to see [the spyware’s] strengths, but also to see the amount of pressure they are able to exert over the students and the opposition.” John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab, said: “Our forensic findings, and this fresh wave of Apple threat notifications reveal that Serbia’s peaceful pro-democracy movement is being aggressively targeted with mercenary spyware ahead of key 2026 election cycles.” Milica Popović, one of the students who was targeted, called the attacks “cruel”. She said: “Thinking that someone may have entered my private space without my knowledge made me feel so exposed.” But, she said, the attack, as uncomfortable as it was, would not deter her or the student movement. “If their intention was to frighten us, or make us stop, it will not work.” NSO Group, which makes Pegasus, a spyware that has been leveraged by authoritarian states to target journalists, human rights campaigners and dissidents, began as an Israeli company with close ties to the military. It is now under US ownership, and appears to be searching for a way into the US market, including through efforts to get off the US Commerce Department’s blacklist. However, this and other incidents will raise questions about what has been described as their attempt to rebrand as an “ethical spyware company”. NSO Group has been permanently barred by a US court from targeting WhatsApp users and Meta products. It is unclear if this most recent Pegasus attack happened via WhatsApp. “Today, Pegasus is still being used to hack people campaigning for democracy. NSO spent a decade promising reform, yet their spyware is still an instrument of political repression,” said Railton. NSO Group was approached for comment.

JD Vance reacts to airstrike that killed four at Iran wedding: ‘Things happen’

The US vice-president, JD Vance, said “sometimes things happen” when asked on Thursday whether an American strike was responsible for killing four people, including a child, at a wedding celebration in southern Iran this week. The strike hit Kuhestak, a town in Sirik county on the strait of Hormuz. The toll was reported not by the Iranian government but by the Iranian Red Crescent, a member of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement that operates independently of Tehran and is generally treated by international monitors as a credible source on casualty figures. Asked at a White House press briefing whether the US was responsible, Vance dismissed the reporting. “I will say that the Iranian state media has not been a very good scribe about what’s happened in the conflict thus far, so I’m extremely skeptical of this,” he said, offering no acknowledgment that the killings had been confirmed by an internationally recognized humanitarian body. “What I can say with 100% confidence is that, unlike the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] IRGC, the United States never targets civilians in combat,” Vance continued. “We never will do that. We never have done that, and unfortunately, obviously, sometimes things happen.” Vance told reporters that he had no new information on the specific strike, but that the US was investigating and, unlike Iran, learns from its mistakes. He also said that the conflict between the US and Iran, which has now stretched into a seventh month, and led to the deaths of 18 US service members, was not presently “a war”. The comment sparked immediate backlash from Democrats and critics. “It’s unbelievable gaslighting,” Congressman Ro Khanna, a Democrat of California, said in a video posted to X. “This is war,” he added. “You know who understands it’s a war? Donald Trump. He claims that we’re winning the war.” Earlier on Thursday, Trump claimed in a social media post that the US had “virtually unlimited” amounts of mid- to high-grade munitions, and called journalists who have reported on the Pentagon’s dwindling stockpiles “treasonous SCUM”. The remarks come amid a broader US-Iran war that continues with no sign of a lasting peace despite months of halting negotiations. The US and Iran exchanged fire earlier this week, renewing fears of greater escalation across the region. US Central Comman (Centcom) has said the broader strike package that Tuesday night targeted Iranian air defense sites, radar systems, maritime assets and communications facilities, without specifying whether the wedding venue was among the intended targets. The Red Crescent said shrapnel from the US missile strike hit the residential home where the wedding celebration was under way, killing four people and wounding more than 50 others. Iranian authorities have previously put the overall death toll from US and Israeli strikes in the thousands, figures that outside observers, including US-based monitoring groups, have broadly corroborated. The strike also revives scrutiny of a 28 February US attack roughly 23 miles away, in Minab, that hit a school compound and killed at least 156 people, most of them schoolchildren. A preliminary US military inquiry reportedly found that strike resulted from a targeting error, after outdated coordinates identified the school as part of an adjacent Revolutionary Guard naval base. The Pentagon said at the time it was investigating; a full report has not been made public.

Israelis shoot dead two Palestinian teenagers after settlers encircle village

Israelis have shot dead two teenagers in a Palestinian village encircled by settlers, and Israeli troops have razed an entire village outside Hebron, in the latest attacks in a surge of Israeli terror and ethnic cleansing across the occupied West Bank. The shootings targeted Khalil Abu Alia, 16, who was about to start 11th grade at the al-Mughayyir boys school, and 19-year-old Omar al-Nassan, who graduated from the same institution with top marks this summer. The teenagers were killed soon after sunset, when a group of settlers entered the village under police and military escort to steal dozens of sheep from a Palestinian home, village residents and Israeli activists said. Snipers took up position on rooftops and one shot Abu Alia in the neck, his English teacher, Waheed Abu Naim, said in a phone interview. The boy was on the doorstep of his home when he was targeted. Al-Nassan was shot twice, the second time in the back, residents and activists said. Both had died before they made it to hospital. A spokesperson for the Israeli military said Israeli police, army and settlers entered the village to take sheep claimed by settlers from a Palestinian home. The spokesperson provided no evidence of ownership, theft or investigation into stolen goods. When Palestinians resisted seizure of the sheep by throwing stones and cinder blocks, the troops shot them, the spokesperson said. “The forces responded by firing at key instigators in order to remove the threat. Hits were identified.” Abu Alia was killed by a soldier. It was not clear whether Al-Nassan was shot by a soldier or a settler. Israeli soldiers and militants had already killed three other students from their school’s 470-strong student body this year. The other victims were a 17-year-old player from the Palestinian youth football team shot in June, a 14-year-old gunned down at the school gate in April, and another 14-year-old killed outside the village mosque in January. “We don’t know how long these crimes are going to continue,” said Abu Naim, who had taught all five boys, and said many more of his students had been injured by Israeli attacks. His brother was also killed by settlers in April. “This week we are making extra security preparations for the new semester which starts in three days,” he said. They have built a higher wall around the school, topped by a fence, and strengthened gates to the compound. They are also making teaching contingency plans, because the village has been under tightening siege for the past two weeks. Since late 2023, Israeli barricades blocked all but one road into the village, and at least eight settler outposts surround it in all directions. In late August soldiers and settlers began closing the one remaining lifeline out of al-Mughayyir for hours at a time, setting up a temporary checkpoint near the school in the morning and evening. At least eight families have fled in the past week because they were unable to commute to work, renting flats in other places, Abu Naim said. The school has 26 teachers but only nine live in the village, and they fear the other two-thirds may not be allowed to reach their classrooms on Monday. In the south Hebron hills Israeli forces spent the day razing the homes of 12 Palestinian families who lived in the community of Khirbet al-Taban. All 70 residents are now homeless, including 28 children. Israeli troops demolished all buildings and destroyed water cisterns, storage, livestock pens and caves, the Israeli-Palestinian rights group B’Tselem said in a statement. It is the 66th Palestinian community that has been wiped off the map since October 2023, with 18 others partly displaced, the group said. Nearly 5,000 people have been forced from their homes, almost half of them children. “Israel is continuing to erase Palestinian communities at an accelerating pace as part of the ethnic cleansing it is carrying out in the West Bank,” said Yuli Novak, the executive director of B’Tselem. “The world continues to stand by as Palestinians and their lives are left completely exposed to Israeli violence.” A spokesperson for Cogat, the Israeli military agency which manages civilian affairs in occupied Palestine, said troops were carrying out “enforcement activity” against illegal construction in a military training zone. In 1981 Israel designated the Masafer Yatta area, including Khirbet al-Taban, as Firing Zone 918. It has been working since to push out the roughly 1,200 Palestinian residents who remain. They have been fighting expulsion in Israeli courts for decades, slowing but not stopping demolitions. As Palestinian communities have been wiped out, illegal Israeli settlements have expanded, with 11 outposts inside the firing zone, housing some of the most notoriously violent Israeli settlers. None have been targeted for removal.

Far-right Israeli minister outlines plan for removal of all Palestinians from Gaza

Israel’s far-right national security minister has set out a plan for the illegal forced expulsion of all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, with the intention of sending them abroad. Speaking in the run-up to close-fought Israeli elections, Itamar Ben-Gvir said the plan aimed to remove 250,000 Palestinians from Gaza in the first year, followed by the rest of its population of roughly 2 million over the next six years. “It’s realistic,” Ben-Gvir said, claiming there were countries that were “ready” to take in Palestinians from Gaza, without naming which ones. While the forced displacement of civilians in occupied territory is considered a war crime under the Geneva conventions, Israeli political figures have competed over the harshness of their visions for Gaza, rebuffing efforts by the US president, Donald Trump, to advance a half-baked and largely moribund ceasefire deal that has been marked by continuing Israeli attacks. Ben-Gvir said the far-right Jewish Power party would demand “a ministry in charge of emigration” during the formation of the next government, adding that his plan was “the result of a year and a half of work and … is concrete”. The proposal is contained in a 20-page document with the euphemistic title of “National Work Plan for Voluntary Emigration from the Gaza Strip”. Despite the use of the word “voluntary”, the plan will be seen as coercive by the international community because of the dire conditions imposed on Gaza’s population by Israel and because of Ben-Gvir’s explicit intention: to remove Gaza’s Palestinian population. Earlier this year, an independent UN inquiry found that Israel continued to commit genocide by deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza. Ben-Gvir’s comments follow hard on the heels of comments by Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, who said Israel was seeking the approval of the Trump administration to displace Palestinians from Gaza, which he claimed was still under discussion after being “frozen” by Trump. Katz, at a conference hosted by the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, said Israel would facilitate the emigration “by any means”, implying a policy of coercion. Trump himself provoked international outrage at the beginning of his second term with a suggestion that all 2 million Palestinians leave Gaza and that the US redevelop the territory, a proposal he later walked back. With elections in Israel in October, Ben-Gvir has made a series of inflammatory interventions aimed at his far-right base, including sharing footage from a site where Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks by Israeli military courts – but not Jewish extremists accused of similar crimes – are to be executed. In another video, he revelled in the mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody. Polling suggests that Jewish Power, the party led by Ben-Gvir – who has convictions for incitement to racism and support for a terrorist organisation, and who has been put under sanctions by various countries – would gain about seven seats. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for his part staged a visit to a military outpost in Gaza on Wednesday to insist that Israel would not withdraw from the areas of Gaza that it occupies. “We are not withdrawing. We are staying on this line. We control 60% of the strip. And there is still more to come, because we are eliminating the terrorists who threaten us – we do this day in and day out,” he said. According to Israel’s deputy chief of general staff, Maj Gen Tamir Yadai, the country now controls 65% of Gaza. This is far beyond the 53% agreed under the ceasefire brokered last year by Trump. As well as pushing for the expulsion of Gaza’s population, Ben-Gvir has called for the deportation of two MPs and others “who are disloyal to the state of Israel” – including Jews – saying he would promote such a policy if he is included in the next government.

Sabotage, leaks and political ties: the story of the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder trial

The conclusion of the longest-running murder trial in Maltese history has left a country in turmoil, and a grieving family still searching for answers. At 7.30pm on Wednesday, gasps and cheers echoed around hall 22 of the courts of justice in Valletta, as a jury pronounced a businessman accused of ordering the murder of the investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia not guilty. Yorgen Fenech, 44, had been facing a life sentence if convicted. Now, after nearly seven years in and out of custody, he is free to return to a gilded life as the heir to one of Malta’s biggest fortunes. In her reporting, Caruana Galizia had taken aim at many powerful figures, including Fenech and the politicians he was close to. Her revelations, and the fallout from her violent death in a car bombing in October 2017, had ultimately led to the resignation of the prime minister, Joseph Muscat, and several members of his government. Within weeks, three hitmen accused of planting the bomb were arrested. Two were sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to murder, while the third was given a reduced 15-year sentence in exchange for evidence against his accomplices. After Wednesday’s decision, the long search for whoever was responsible for hiring them must begin again. The opposition leader, Alex Borg, has demanded the recall of parliament from its summer recess, and called for the government to act to strengthen press protection and anti-corruption measures. “We believe journalism is the backbone of a democracy,” he told the Guardian, describing the failure to find the culprits as a black mark against the Labour government. The party has been in power since 2013. Caruana Galizia’s family described the verdict as “justice denied”. The attorney general is considering whether to appeal for a retrial. The chances of success may be slim: both charges brought against Fenech were dismissed by an 8-1 majority. It had taken nine years, a relentless family campaign and a determined judge to bring Fenech before a jury. In the end, they took him at his word. During his evidence, he was adamant: “I never ordered Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder, or anyone else’s. I had no role in her murder.” While the identity of the mastermind remains a mystery, what the trial did reveal was the full extent of the challenges faced by those leading the search for Daphne’s killers. Witness after witness spoke of attempts to block and sabotage the murder investigation. As detectives worked to identify all of those involved, from the bomb makers to the hitmen to their ultimate client, they heard evidence that the most sensitive details were being leaked. Most disturbingly of all, the jury was told much of the information was coming from the prime minister’s right-hand man. “Don’t worry about me, nobody can touch me,” Fenech was heard saying in secret recordings that formed a cornerstone of the case against him, and played to the jury. The man who had made those recordings was a taxi driver, Melvin Theuma, who testified to acting as the middleman between Fenech and the bombers. He was the key prosecution witness, having secured a pardon two years after the murder in return for giving evidence. In July 2020, he was taken to hospital in a critical condition. Overcome with remorse, he had attempted suicide while staying at a safe house, and it took intensive support to get him back in the stand. What follows is the story of the search for those responsible, based on pre-trial hearings, the trial itself, and related court cases. Consumed by an investigation that would kill her In the last summer of her life, Caruana Galizia was deeply isolated. As a younger woman, she had not only been brilliant, but strikingly beautiful, with big statement earrings and shining black hair. She had co-founded a national newspaper, was a lifestyle magazine publisher, and had become one of Malta’s most-read columnists, all while raising three sons. In later life, it was the investigative work that consumed her. Her blog Running Commentary was among the most-read news sites in Malta, but its popularity, and her often scathing satires of public figures, made her a target. She had as many detractors as fans, and on social media she was vilified as a “witch”. There were arson attacks, and the family dogs were killed. “I was worried about her,” her middle son, Andrew, told the trial. “The atmosphere around her was horrible. People would stare at her in Valletta. She wouldn’t leave the house.” Caruana Galizia knew she was at risk and had already started varying her routine. For added security, she drove a rental car. It was in that car that she died on 16 October 2017, aged 53, metres from her house. A bomb placed under the driver’s seat ripped through the vehicle, scattering burning remains across the road and into a field. Barricaded inside their home, sheltering from the media storm, Daphne’s sons and her widow, Peter, wondered who they could trust. They felt sure her work would hold clues, but also that they could not hand sensitive source material to the police. Her eldest son, Matthew, a software engineer who had been part of the reporting team that won a Pulitzer prize for the Panama Papers, a giant leak of offshore company data, suggested contacting journalists outside Malta. “I didn’t have the resources to do the investigation on my own,” he told the jury at Fenech’s trial. He reached out to the Guardian, which joined Reuters, the non-profit Forbidden Stories and others to form the Daphne Project. Before her death, Caruana Galizia had published a series of stories that plunged the Maltese government into scandal. She had found evidence in the Panama Papers that the energy minister, Konrad Mizzi, and the prime minister’s chief of staff, a businessman turned political fixer called Keith Schembri, had set up offshore companies held via anonymous trusts. Posts she published, read out during the trial, suggested she thought they were planning to use these to receive kickbacks. Those allegations are now the subject of a criminal case, in which Fenech, Schembri, Mizzi and others are pleading not guilty to corruption, trading in influence and criminal association. At the time she died, Caruana Galizia was receiving a leak of information about a large government contract – a concession to build a €500m gas power plant that would supply electricity for the national grid. The leak came from the servers of the company building the plant, Electrogas. One of its shareholders was Fenech, and the email traffic suggested he was a driving force, handling communications with the government, and the refinancing of a crucial bank loan. The jury heard how, in her blog, Caruana Galizia had described the venture as a “magic new corruption power station”. The prosecution had claimed, in its closing submissions, that Fenech’s motive for ordering her murder was to prevent any further revelations. The Electrogas data was shared with the Daphne Project. As reporters combed the files, following the money trails, Keith Arnaud, a homicide detective, searched for the killers. At first he made rapid progress, thanks to the FBI. The agency’s cellphone analysis team had been in Europe when the bomb went off, and they diverted to Malta, landing there within hours. The hitmen, brothers George and Alfred Degiorgio, and their accomplice Vincent Muscat, had used burner phones but they had been careless, often carrying them alongside their usual mobiles. The FBI made the link, tracing a text message sent by George to detonate the bomb. In December 2017, the trio were arrested. In April 2018, Vincent Muscat told police he was ready to turn on his accomplices, in exchange for a shorter sentence. While the hitmen had never known the identity of their ultimate client, Muscat had the name of the middleman: Melvin Theuma. The mosquito and the lion For Theuma, a fatherless teenager, the Malta Racing Club was a home from home. He started as a groom, tending to the ponies that pull small carts around the bare-earth track. Before long he was working as a scout for a bookmaker. The old betting shop still stands across the street from the Fenech family stables. Theuma and Fenech became friends, but it was not a relationship of equals. As the taxi driver said in court: “I was hanging out with a lion, and I’m a mosquito.” Police said in court they had identified Fenech as a suspect by September 2018. But it would take until February 2019 for a warrant to be authorised to intercept his calls. The person signing the warrants was the prime minister, Joseph Muscat. From the beginning, Muscat had been receiving updates about the investigation directly from Arnaud and his colleagues. That decision was controversial because, along with his ministers, he had been one of the main subjects of Caruana Galizia’s reporting. Muscat has indicated it was customary for the prime minister to sign warrants in cases of national importance. He has previously said he fulfilled his duties “without fear, prejudice or favour”. In a statement on Thursday, he said that from the beginning, and while he was still in office, “no one was protected from or immune to justice”. Schembri was allowed to attend the police briefings and told the trial he was kept informed throughout. The two men were close – Schembri had started out as Muscat’s campaign manager – but Schembri had another good friend: Fenech. They had played football together as children, and when Fenech, a few years younger, stepped up to run his family business, Schembri had mentored him. They would often holiday together and gather for family events. Schembri is accused of repeatedly leaking sensitive details about the homicide investigation to Fenech. He denies the allegations, and is being prosecuted over the matter in a separate criminal case. During his trial, Fenech sought to paint Schembri as the ultimate mastermind, describing himself as a go-between, passing messages to Theuma. Fenech’s lawyers depicted the taxi driver as a blackmailer and a liar, and accused the police of framing Fenech because they had failed to properly follow other leads. They said the searches at Schembri’s home and his office had been bungled. His phone, active 28 minutes before the raid, was never found. “All roads lead to Keith and all bridges leading to Keith were burnt,” Fenech’s lawyer said. “And so a bridge had to be built to Yorgen Fenech.” Schembri denies any involvement in the murder. In their evidence, police said he was never a murder suspect. Under questioning, Fenech admitted paying €400,000, via Theuma, to the hitmen to cover their legal bills. He said this was to keep Theuma calm, and that the cab driver had “drained” him of money. He also admitted giving Theuma money before the murder, but said he warned that it should not go ahead, telling the taxi driver to “stop it here”. He admitted passing information about the police investigation from Schembri to Theuma, starting soon after the assassination. “Keith Schembri was continuously informed and in a way you can say real time,” Fenech told a court in 2019, in a constitutional case regarding his right to a fair trial. “The information was passed to me by Keith Schembri but it came from Mr Arnaud, and he used to tell me that it came from Mr Arnaud.” Recordings, messages and testimony from Fenech himself indicate that in the first months after the murder he had passed on to Theuma the identity of who had made the bomb and the date on which the police were planning to arrest the hitmen. When the police raided their shed by the docks, they had already thrown their mobile phones into the water, and one of them had written his wife’s number on his wrist. In April 2018, Fenech also shared that Vincent Muscat was offering to become a witness for the prosecution. The news sent Theuma into a spin and he started to record his exchanges with Fenech, using a spare phone switched to airplane mode so it would not ring. It was around this time that Arnaud’s investigation seemed to lose momentum. Eventually, details of what had been uncovered began to leak. By May 2019, reporters had Theuma’s name. Europol, which had been supporting Arnaud and his team, threatened over the summer of 2019 to withdraw unless arrests were made. The family were also losing patience. “We had known what was being alleged about Melvin Theuma for months,” Matthew Caruana Galizia has said. “And it reached a point where I just wanted to go into the street and spraypaint his name on a wall. I wanted the world to know that he was the middleman, to just push the police into action.” While the walls around the prime minister and his friends looked strong from the outside, when the police finally went for Theuma, Joseph Muscat’s administration crumbled. Theuma had been warned of his planned arrest date but police swooped two days early, on 14 November 2019. Fenech had urged him in messages beforehand to dispose of the evidence. The jury saw one message in which he said: “Be 100% sure everywhere is clean.” But Theuma held on to his recordings. On 19 November, the prime minister signed a memorandum guaranteeing Theuma immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony. Within hours, Fenech was making preparations to flee, messages seen by the jury suggest. “Go while you’re still in time,” his uncle texted. He planned to sail to Sicily, and then head for France. However, the police had been tipped off. His yacht was intercepted a mile off the coast, and he was arrested. The interrogation tapes, played at his trial, showed he offered to implicate Schembri in return for a pardon. As Fenech talked, heads rolled. Schembri was arrested in relation to the suspected leaks, and resigned. The economy minister, a frequent subject of Caruana Galizia’s blog, suspended himself and Mizzi, by now reassigned from energy to tourism minister, quit, citing “political, extraordinary and general circumstances in the country”. Public outrage brought hundreds on to the streets, filling the grand plaza outside the prime minister’s office, chanting: “Mafia, mafia.” Fenech’s pardon request was rejected and on 30 November, he was charged. Two days later, Joseph Muscat resigned. Defiant to the end, he insisted: “This case cannot define everything that our country is.” The saga is once again drawing attention from outside Malta. Shami Chakrabarti, the British Labour peer, has been appointed rapporteur of a Council of Europe investigation into the Maltese government’s response to the murder. Caruana Galizia’s family members intend to give evidence at the first hearing next week. “The failure to ensure individual accountability for the murder risks perpetuating a culture of impunity,” Chakrabarti said on Thursday. “A culture where … those who try to shine a light in the darkness pay the ultimate price.”

Climate injustices have been laid bare in the Nepal-Tibet flood disaster | Letters

The recent glacial collapse and catastrophic floods in Nepal and Tibet are not isolated tragedies (Report, 28 August). They reflect accelerating climate disruption that disproportionately affects the countries and people that are least responsible for global emissions. As climate change intensifies, glaciers around the world, including in the Himalayas, are melting at unprecedented rates, destabilising ecosystems and causing glacial collapse and ice-and-rock landslides, destroying settlements, villages and livelihoods in minutes. No one died when a Swiss glacier collapsed last year, owing to early-warning systems that were in place. But a lack of early-warning systems means that the disaster in Nepal and Tibet has led to hundreds of deaths and thousands missing. Events like these are not “natural disasters”. They are due to global warming and climate injustices, and also flawed development policies, including rampant property developments on vulnerable floodplains. They call for better disaster preparedness and investment in early-warning systems. Most importantly, they require global action. The UK has long positioned itself as a leader in international development and climate action. Yet recent UK commitments have fallen far short of what is required – including the decision to raid the diminished aid budget to switch international climate finance grants to loans, to fund a bus-fare cap. The foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, recently spoke compellingly about the need to put the climate crisis and overseas development at the heart of UK international relations. These words must now translate into action. The UK must step up its development commitments and funding for climate adaptation, and loss and damage, to support those living on the frontlines of climate change. The recent glacial floods remind us that climate disruption is global, and highly unequal. The UK must act urgently. Anything less is a failure of responsibility. Prof Lyla Mehta Institute of Development Studies • Sunil Acharya is correct when he states: “The countries that benefited most from fossil fuel-driven growth have a responsibility to cut emissions rapidly” (Nepal-Tibet flood: this is the cost of not acting in the face of the climate crisis, 28 August). This was the founding principle of the global “contraction and convergence” framework, tabled by India, China and the African Group of Nations in Kyoto at Cop3 in 1997. Had we enacted this, we would now be on a safe, and equitable, 30-year contraction path, avoiding the worst of the climate crisis and ensuring our survival. Instead, we remain adrift, with no viable solution or plan. Is it really too late to adopt this framework? Lynda McDonald Portaferry, County Down • The key question is: who should pay for this disaster? Yes, the rich world should pay, but the bills should be sent to all the fossil-fuel companies that have known this risk for at least half a century and have ignored it. If they refuse to pay, all of us in countries that have profited from the fossil-driven benefits of “progress” should, through our governments, pay a progressive tax on all things based on fossil fuels, to cover the past, present and future costs of climate change. Jan Bengtsson Uppsala, Sweden • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

Nobel laureate Machado: ‘Illegitimate’ Venezuela regime has no right to strike US oil deal

The Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has questioned Donald Trump’s oil deal with Venezuela’s interim government, saying the country’s natural resources do not belong to “an illegitimate regime”. In her first public comments since Trump announced what he called “the biggest oil deal in world history” with Venezuela last Friday, Machado walked a diplomatic tightrope between challenging the agreement and trying not to rile the White House. In a video posted on social media, the Nobel peace prize winner said: “Of course the United States is the principal partner Venezuela needs to fully develop its strategic potential. This is what the majority of Venezuelans believe … and it is something I’ve spent my whole life defending.” However, Machado said, the current occupants of the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas were “enemies of the US”, saying they did not have the right or the democratic mandate to negotiate Venezuela’s natural resources. “The wealth of our subsoil does not belong to an illegitimate regime – it belongs to the Venezuelan people,” she said, adding that supporters felt “sadness and anger” at being excluded from the decision-making process. Venezuela has the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves with an estimated 303bn barrels, of which more than 65bn barrels are involved in the agreement. Trump’s deal was struck with the un-elected interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, who took power in January after her predecessor, Nicolás Maduro, was abducted by US special forces. Many observers expected Trump to replace Maduro with Machado, a conservative democracy activist who later gave the US president her Nobel prize award. But instead Trump backed Rodríguez, threatening: “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price – probably bigger than Maduro”, and sidelined Machado. The White House claims the oil deal will help secure US “energy dominance for the next century” as well as “purging foreign malign influence from our back yard” by excluding China and Russia. Speaking outside the Miraflores palace on Wednesday, the US energy secretary, Chris Wright, said the aim was “to massively grow production and economic opportunities in Venezuela”, adding: “President Trump has a clear mission in Venezuela. The mission is to bring peace, freedom, opportunity, and prosperity to everyone in Venezuela.” But there has been widespread condemnation of what critics call a predatory and colonial-style land grab. Machado’s supporters fear the deal makes Washington far less inclined to push for fresh presidential elections. Machado’s movement is widely believed to have beaten Maduro by a landslide in the last such vote, in 2024, but he refused to accept the result and clung to power until his dramatic rendition on 3 January this year. On Wednesday, Trump and Rodríguez brushed off questions about when an election might be held. “You had a very powerful, very nasty dictatorship in Venezuela – and they’re just not going to be ready for it yet,” Trump told reporters, before adding vaguely: “But soon.” Rodríguez said: “There will be an electoral process, but when Venezuela is ready. “I don’t set dates,” she added.