A glacial collapse caused seismic activity and “catastrophic” downstream impacts in Nepal and Tibet, the US Geological Survey is saying. Seismic activity initially reported as an earthquake “was instead a glacial collapse and debris flow” that “caused subsequent catastrophic impacts downstream”, the agency said on Thursday, quoted by Agence France-Presse.
Thirty-three British citizens including a 13-year-old girl are among more than 400 travellers missing after a flash flood on the Nepal-Tibet border, according to Nepal’s tourism board. The sudden flood happened on the Tibetan side of the Bhote Koshi River at about 8.30am local time on Wednesday. The 33 UK citizens are among at least 341 foreign nationals unaccounted for. Earlier on Wednesday, the tour operator Alpine Eco Trek said a 13-year-old girl was among the missing British nationals, as well as two Irish citizens. Among the missing British nationals are three men aged 65, 64 and 52, and seven women aged 44, 47, 51, 60, 63, 63 and 65, according to travel logs. The firm, which offers guided tours and expeditions in Nepal, confirmed four of its Nepali tour guides – aged 38, 35, 45 and 29 – are missing as well. Kumar Adhikari, the manager of Alpine Eco Trek, said on Wednesday: “I feel so sad. We are just thinking about what to do next. “We are in pain at the moment, deep pain.” Adhikari said the tour group, who were on a nine-day tour to Mount Kailash, were crossing into Tibet from Nepal when they became trapped at the border as the flash floods struck. He said he was in contact with his tour guides until 8.40am when their phones went offline, at which point the group would have been inside Tibet’s immigration office. “We were hoping that inside it was safe,” he said. “But later the video came from China’s government which (showed) even Tibet’s side was hit by the flood.” The tourist board said more than 100 of the missing people were yet to have a nationality confirmed. Police in Nepal said 157 bodies had been recovered and more than 40 people were injured and receiving treatment in hospital. A wall of mud and rock appeared to have collapsed into the river on the Himalayan border of Nepal and Tibet, triggering catastrophic flooding on the Nepali side, Reuters reported. It said verified videos showed dozens of people being swept away at the border. Houses, roads and energy infrastructure were destroyed in Nepal, while officials in Tibet said they feared “major casualties”, with some people missing in the county of Gyirong after a mudslide hit a border land crossing. Initial reports suggested an earthquake had triggered an avalanche and caused the floods, Shisir Khanal, Nepal’s foreign minister, told the country’s parliament. Eight South Koreans working on a hydropower plant were missing and 10 others stranded, South Korea’s foreign ministry said. Local authorities said tourists in the Rasuwa district of Nepal and other areas along the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli rivers should “exercise extreme caution”, remain in safe areas and move to higher ground if required. Visitors were urged to stay in regular contact with hotels and travel agencies. People planning to travel to the affected areas in the coming days were warned to postpone their journeys. The UK’s foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, said: “I am deeply concerned to hear of the flash floods on the Nepal-China border. All my thoughts are with those affected and with British nationals in the area and their relatives here at home.” The British embassy in Kathmandu urged people in affected areas to follow local advice. A joint statement with the embassies of Australia, the EU, Finland, France, Norway and Switzerland said: “We are deeply saddened by the devastating flooding in Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts and surrounding areas. Our thoughts are with all those affected by this disaster. We express our solidarity with the people of Nepal during this difficult time. “We encourage all those in affected areas to follow the guidance of local authorities and official safety advisories as the situation continues to evolve.”
Police in Spain have arrested a dangerous Albanian criminal nicknamed the “escape wizard” who has managed to break out of four jails in Italy and Belgium by sawing through bars, clambering down knotted sheets and even using a human pyramid to breach prison walls. The fugitive, who has not been officially named, was arrested after officers from the Policía Nacional force discovered he was living in the north-eastern Spanish city of Tarragona. He was the subject of a European arrest warrant issued by the Italian authorities. Spanish police identified the man by the initials TT, which correspond to those of Toma Taulant, an Albanian national known in Italian media as the “mago della fuga”, or “escape wizard”. Before escaping from a maximum-security prison in Milan eight months ago, he was serving a prison sentence due to end in 2048 for a series of offences including violent robbery, theft and drug dealing, according to Italian media reports cited by Agence France-Presse. “It sounds like something out of a film, but sometimes reality is stranger than fiction,” the Policía Nacional said in a statement that described him as “the master of escapes”. “He escaped from a jail in [the Umbrian city of] Terni in 2009, from a jail in Parma in 2013 and from a Belgian prison that same year after using a human pyramid to climb over the wall,” the police said. “His latest escape, in December 2025, came after he managed to break out of a maximum-security prison in Italy after sawing through the bars and climbing out of the window down knotted sheets.” According to the statement, the “very dangerous” fugitive was arrested in Tarragona last Friday, putting up “strong and active resistance” as officers swooped. “The man was accompanied by a number of his compatriots who tried to stop him being arrested, including one man who struck and injured two officers,” the force said. Police are still looking for the assailant but have recovered a Sig Sauer pistol that was discarded by one of the suspect’s associates. Once in custody, the man was found to be in possession of fake identity documents, which revealed that he had a criminal record in the Catalan city of Girona for possession of weapons and explosives. He was also found to be carrying two €500 banknotes that are thought to have been counterfeited, which have been sent to the Bank of Spain for investigation. The suspect was denied bail and has been remanded in custody at a jail in Tarragona while he awaits extradition to Italy.
How long does it take for the penny to drop in Downing Street and the Foreign Office (Israel’s Ben-Gvir posts video of gallows site for hanging Palestinians, 20 August)? Israeli individuals have had sanctions imposed on them for over a year with absolutely no effect, and it is likely that people such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, see them as some sort of badge of honour. Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband must realise by now that the only sanctions likely to have any effect are those imposed against the state of Israel, so denouncing the issue of tenders for the E1 settlement near Jerusalem as an “unacceptable and destructive act ” is just box-ticking. It’s all very well for Miliband to say that all Israeli settlements in the West Bank are a “flagrant breach of international law”, but their construction has been going on for years; had the UK and others had the courage to take action when the first ones were built, who knows how many lives could have been saved? Now, with the UN international commission of inquiry reporting that there is ongoing genocide in Gaza, war crimes and ethnic cleansing being carried out in the West Bank, and the callous murder of journalists and “ecocide” in southern Lebanon, criticising recent events as illegal and inhumane, while taking no effective action, is frankly pathetic. Bernie Evans Liverpool • 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.
South African police have arrested two Thai nationals in separate incidents for allegedly attempting to smuggle endangered parrot eggs out of the country as authorities try to stem the tide of wildlife trafficking. A 50-year-old Thai national was arrested at OR Tambo international airport in Johannesburg on 20 August, carrying 50 bird eggs in a homemade incubator in a hand-luggage bag, South Africa’s environment ministry said in a statement. The ministry said preliminary investigations indicated that the eggs were from parrot species listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites), which regulates international trade in wild animals and plants to ensure species do not become extinct. It did not specify which species. Another Thai national, a 23-year-old, was arrested at the same airport on 16 July, allegedly trying to smuggle 418 parrot eggs in two homemade incubator bags. Thailand’s embassy in South Africa did not immediately respond to a request for comment. South Africa is battling wildlife smuggling on several fronts, from poached rhino horns and the bones of illegally farmed tigers to abalone shellfish and succulent plants. The environment ministry said: “The illegal collection and trafficking of parrot eggs pose a serious threat to wild bird populations and animal welfare. Eggs are often concealed in improvised incubation devices and transported under conditions that significantly compromise their viability and endanger the welfare of developing embryos and hatchlings.” Staff at the National Zoological Garden in Pretoria are incubating the seized eggs, the ministry said. “Several of the rescued eggs have successfully hatched and the chicks are receiving intensive veterinary and husbandry care to maximise their chances of survival,” the statement added. The ministry said the arrests were carried out after a “joint intelligence-driven operation” led by its Environmental Management Inspectorate, known as the “Green Scorpions”, and police intelligence, border and endangered species units. South Africa punishes the illegal export of Cites-listed species with a fine of 10m rand (£460,000), up to 10 years in prison or both.
The climate crisis means “we’re going to have to change everything – the way we live, the way we produce, the way we trade,” France’s veteran radical-left firebrand, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, told the summer congress of his France Insoumise party last weekend. The term “climate change”, said Mélenchon – the most likely rival to Marine Le Pen in next year’s presidential run-off, according to one poll this week – may sound “almost reassuring”, but its actual impact will feel like “landing on another planet whenever we leave home”. The speech is notable because despite the four heatwaves that have scorched Europe this summer, shattering temperature records, fanning unprecedented fires and causing thousands of excess deaths, few politicians want to talk about climate action. Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, heating up twice as quickly as elsewhere. The consequences, as UN climate chief Simon Stiell puts it, are “reaching national emergency levels”. And yet major policy speeches by Europe’s political leaders addressing the climate crisis, making plain its causes, and laying out the changes that will be needed to live with it can be counted on the fingers of one hand. French voters have faced “silence from some politicians and inadequate pronouncements or demagoguery from others”, said Le Monde in a stark editorial, warning that “decision-makers on both the right and the left are losing credibility”. People want “a political message that translates into action, and sheds light on the future”, it said. The gap between “citizens’ heightened awareness of the crisis and the lack of commitment from their elected officials to address it” will trigger mounting frustration and anger. A mid-July Ipsos poll found environmental protection had jumped 12 points from June to become French voters’ fourth greatest concern, after what the pollster described as “a first real experience of what the hell of a significantly hotter world might look like”. In the UK too, Labour party activists worry that despite the ever more visible impacts of the climate crisis, there has been no major political push from the government on the issue, even as voters become increasingly convinced of the need for action. And while Friedrich Merz said this week action was needed to “curb climate change and adapt to the consequences” (though not at a cost to German industry), he’s been accused all summer of ducking the issue for fear of boosting the climate-sceptic, far-right AfD. There are, of course, exceptions. Spain’s outspoken prime minister, Pedro Sánchez (pictured top), has long warned that “climate change kills”, and recently stressed: “It’s not enough to address the consequences; what we have to do is reduce its causes.” A French centre-left presidential contender, Raphäel Glucksmann, spoke this week of the need for an “ecological transformation” ending the use of fossil fuels, and pledged a 100-day “ecological revolution” if elected president (which looks extremely unlikely). But the silence from most mainstream politicians is deafening, says Jean Jouzel, a veteran French climatologist. The political class in general, he says, “have simply not yet engaged with the reality of global heating. They have to tackle it head-on.” The root of the problem, Jouzel suggests, is that “politicians live in the short-term. Their horizon is avoiding any damage during their period in office. For me, a real political leader … has the courage to look to the medium and the long-term.” Short-termism, political polarisation and cost-of-living fears have, in effect, silenced leaders across Europe, as populist and far-right parties successfully frame green laws as an “ideological mantra” and the elite’s punishment for “ordinary working people”. The reasoning is clear: voters suffering high energy bills, food inflation and stagnating wages are unlikely to hail demands for real financial and lifestyle sacrifices in pursuit of an ill-defined climate gain. Carbon taxes and boiler restrictions carry electoral risk. *** Local over global But that reluctance to address the real issue has shifted Europe’s climate debate away from long-term carbon reduction towards more localised adaptation – which, perhaps inevitably, has itself now become a battleground in the continent’s culture wars. Air conditioning is a prime example, now loudly touted on Europe’s right as a vital symbol of personal freedom and technological comfort, but widely decried by the left as environmentally irresponsible and symptomatic of long-term planning failures. “If I am elected president, I will put into place a massive air-conditioning plan,” Le Pen trumpeted this summer, arguing the technology had little or no impact on global heating: “When environmentalists don’t want something, they twist the studies.” The risk in all this is that by focusing on necessary but essentially reactive coping measures, leaders wind up reducing the existential challenges of global heating to debates over consumer choice and comfort that can fit into an electoral cycle. Meanwhile, vital long-term carbon reduction gets pushed further and further into the background. As Dutch MEP, Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy, argues: “Nobody should feel guilty for wanting relief from extreme heat. Air conditioning saves lives.” However, he continues, neither should we “accept the cynical argument that the answer to rising temperatures is simply to install more air conditioning – while abandoning the very policies designed to tackle the causes of those rising temperatures”. Be that as it may, in the multiple European countries with national elections coming up over the next 18 months – including France, Italy and Spain – the climate emergency remains, for the time being at least, largely absent from the debate. And that’s regrettable, because as Jouzel says: “Global heating is no longer a scientific debate. It’s a very real political problem.” Grégoire Leménager, writing in the French weekly Le Nouvel Obs, agreed. “Looking the other way is no longer an option,” he said. Nothing is simple, but after the summer Europe has just endured, politicians who “refuse to make climate action a cornerstone of their manifestos” will, he continued, “be exposed for what they are: criminal accomplices to an inevitable defeat”. To receive the complete version of This Is Europe in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.
Hundreds are missing and at least 22 people have died after torrential floods hit the Himalayan border areas of Nepal and in Tibet in China. An avalanche of ice and rock triggered massive flash floods causing widespread damage to villages and infrastructure. Officials said 384 tourists, including 291 from countries including India, the United States, the United Kingdom and Malaysia, were reported missing. If you’ve been affected by the flash floods on the Nepal-Tibet border, we’d like to hear from you. Though we’d like to hear from you, your safety and security are most important. When recording or sharing your content with us, please put your welfare and the welfare of others first. Extreme weather events can be very unpredictable and carry very real risks.