Nepal flash flood live updates: more than 1,000 people missing after glacial collapse at Tibet border
As the search and rescue continues, here are some of the latest images.
Nepal flash flood: more than 1,500 missing, mostly tourists, after disaster kills at least 165 at Tibet border
Nearly 1,500 people are missing, the majority of whom are tourists, authorities have said, after a catastrophic flash flood hit Nepal and Tibet, roaring down valleys and wiping out entire villages, with the preliminary death toll standing at 165. Rescuers are racing to locate people missing in the mountainous region popular with trekkers and pilgrims, including the hundreds of nationals from India, the US, UK, Australia and Canada. Terrifying videos from the event on Wednesday showed a massive wall of water crashing down on the border as people attempted to flee. Trucks were upended and houses, roads and power projects swept away in Nepal, while officials in Tibet said they feared “major casualties” after a mudslide hit a border land crossing. In the affected areas, houses, trees and vehicles were submerged or buried in mudslides. Helicopters hovered overhead all day in the area bringing in survivors. Almost 600 foreigners were among 826 people missing in Nepal, police and tourism officials said. Among those unaccounted were 177 from India, 63 from the US, 34 from Australia, 33 from Britain and 25 from Canada. Chinese state media said at least 558 were missing on the Tibet side of the border, of whom at least 260 were foreign nationals. Police in Nepal said 165 bodies had been recovered by late on Wednesday. Chinese state media reported three dead on the Tibet side of the border. Many of the victims were on a pilgrimage to Kailash Mansarovar, a high-altitude site in Tibet that is revered by Hindus and Buddhists among others. Early reports from Nepali officials initially suggested an earthquake in the area could have caused the lower part of a glacier to collapse and trigger the floods. But the US Geological Survey later said what was initially reported as a 4.4-magnitude earthquake was a seismic shock generated by glacial rock and ice collapsing and the flow of debris. “No earthquake had occurred.” An initial study of Planet Labs satellite imagery indicated that a landslide of ice and rock triggered the debris-laden flood in the Lhende River, about 20km (12 miles) north-east of the Nepal-China Rasuwagadhi border crossing, Nepal’s national disaster authority said. Experts say the risk of such events is compounded by the extreme topography of the Himalayas. People shared harrowing stories of how they managed to survive. “I started running. Then a wall of water came thundering down as if it was an earthquake,” said Bibek Kumal, a labourer who was working downstream from the worst-hit Rasuwa district, near Nepal’s Himalayan border with China’s Tibet. From his hospital bed, Kumal said the torrent swept him downstream amid mud and debris but he survived by clinging to a mango tree. “Had there been no mango tree, I would have been washed away to death,” he said. “It was a huge gush of mud coming straight towards us. As it got closer, it kept rising higher and higher,” said Keshav Prasad Baral, a 68-year-old survivor, who was being treated at a small hospital. “I tried to grab my wife’s hand and take her to the terrace. But she was swept away by the mud. Four or five hours later, a helicopter came to rescue me. My wife is still somewhere beneath the mud. She’s gone.” The head of the international Red Cross (IFRC), David Fisher, said “entire villages and market areas have been wiped out”. The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, said UN teams and partners were mobilising supplies and personnel in Nepal to support communities affected by the disaster. The US government said it would provide $500,000 in emergency assistance. Tibet government officials mobilised nearly 800 emergency workers and 150 vehicles as well as sniffer dogs and speed boats to help the rescue efforts, China’s official Xinhua news agency said. The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, said: “The most urgent task is doing everything possible to search for and rescue the missing people.” People from the affected areas of Nuwakot and Dhading were seen gathering outside a Nepali army training centre – the base for helicopter rescue operations – seeking information about missing family members. Police were recording the names of the missing just outside the barracks gate. Mobile phone torches were their only source of light as the area remained without electricity due to damaged hydroelectric infrastructure. The tour company Himalayan Glacier said 47 people including two children were missing from one of its groups in Nepal. Among them were 15 Australians, 10 Canadians, nine Nepalis, eight Americans, two Britons, two Singaporeans, and one Russian-American dual citizen, its managing director, Sanket Pandey, said. The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said his thoughts were with those concerned about their loved ones, and that getting information about the status of those missing remained difficult. With Reuters and Agence France-Presse
What caused the catastrophic flash flood in Nepal and Tibet – and how does a glacier collapse?
Flash floods that swept through the Nepal-Tibet border region on Wednesday have left scores dead and more than 1,000 people missing. Here’s what we know so far, and what likely caused the disaster. Nepal flash floods: what we know so far On Wednesday morning local time, a landslide of ice and rock resulted in a torrent of mud, water and debris bursting the banks of the Trishuli river, also known as the Bhotekoshi, which runs between China and Nepal. Homes, roads, bridges and power plants were swept away. Officials in Nepal said 403 people, including 341 from foreign countries including India, the US, the UK, Australia, South Korea and Malaysia, have been reported missing. In Tibet, China’s state broadcaster said at least three people were killed and 265 were missing. Experts at the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development said water levels on the Trishuli river rose by as much as nine meters in half an hour. The Lhende Khola river, a tributary of the Bhotekoshi, was most affected, they said. “The Lhende Khola has flooded twice in 14 months, this time triggered by an ice rock avalanche from a glacier on the Nepal side that blocked the river and released a sudden surge downstream,” said Saswata Sanyal, a disaster risk reduction specialist at the climate research group. What caused the flooding in Nepal? An avalanche from a glacier is believed to be the likely cause of the flash flooding. Local media reported Nepal’s foreign minister, Shisir Khanal, told the country’s parliament on Wednesday that initial reports suggested the floods could have been caused by an earthquake in the area that triggered a landslide. However, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said that while the event was initially reported to be caused by a magnitude 4.4 earthquake, further analysis showed the “seismic event was a glacial collapse and debris flow that caused subsequent catastrophic impacts downstream” and “no earthquake had occurred”. The USGS noted the glacial collapse had registered as a magnitude 5.2 seismic event on the Richter scale, occurring near the border between Nepal and China at 8.37am local time on Wednesday. According to Assoc Prof Daniel Shugar, a geomorphologist at the University of Calgary in Canada, initial satellite analysis showed a 0.2 sq km chunk of ice “collapsed about 1.2km vertically”. “What I can see in … satellite imagery from Planet Labs, the lower part of a glacier broke off at about 5,200 metres and crashed onto the valley floor about 1,200 metres below,” he wrote on Bluesky. The satellite imagery also seemed to show that a large amount of snow had melted in the 24 hours prior to the disaster, he said. “Some of the glaciers in the valley were covered in snow yesterday and today they are mostly bare ice. So in other words (and I haven’t seen any weather station data yet), it was probably warm.” Shugar said construction could also be a factor. Prof Andrew Mackintosh, a glaciologist at Monash University in Melbourne, said it was unclear whether the collapse was isolated to the glacier, or was the “whole mountainside collapsing that included part of the glacier”. “When a glacier of that scale collapses, it generates a lot of water, and then there’s a cascading sequence of events … where the water and the sediment combine and bulks up and creates the flood.” An international group of glacier researchers has said that while a glacial collapse was “certainly involved”, it was “unlikely to be the sole cause”. How often do glaciers collapse – and is the climate crisis a contributing factor? “These sorts of large glacier collapses are really shocking,” Mackintosh said. “It’s hard as a glaciologist not be alarmed by these events that seem different to what we’ve observed previously.” However, he said “there have been so few of these documented that we’re not really able to make very clear statements about the specific relationship between glacier collapse and climate change yet”. Scientists do, however, “have very high confidence in the relationship between glacier retreat and climate change”. “We also know that mountain permafrost is degrading under a warming climate,” Mackintosh added. He described permafrost, ground that is frozen year round, as being akin to a “glue that holds the rock and sometimes adjacent glaciers … together on very sleep slopes”. The Himalayas – spanning Nepal, India, China, Bhutan, and Pakistan – are warming twice as fast as the global average, putting the region at increased risk of avalanches, landslides and floods. The United Nations said in 2023 that Nepal’s mountains had lost close to one-third of their ice in just over 30 years due to global warming. An assessment published that year found that Hindu Kush Himalayan glaciers disappeared 65% faster between 2011 and 2020 than in the previous decade. In 2021, a Himalayan glacier broke off and caused flash flooding in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, leaving 200 people dead or missing. Subsequent research suggested that a 27m-cubic-metre avalanche of rock and glacier ice transformed into “an extraordinarily large and mobile debris flow”. Though not thought to be a cause of the August 2026 event, mountain areas are also at risk of “glacial lake outburst floods”. Glacial lakes form behind natural dams as a result of glacier melt, and can cause catastrophic outburst floods if their natural dam walls are breached. Assoc Prof Adrian McCallum, a glaciologist and polar engineer at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia, said: “With a warming climate, glaciers recede, ice becomes water, that water gets trapped.” More than 12,000 deaths have already been attributed to such floods globally. According to the UN, Nepal has more than 2,000 glacial lakes, of which 21 are considered potentially dangerous. – with Reuters and Associated Press
Thursday briefing: Will the government reform the system to bring down our energy bills?
Good morning. For too many people, this just doesn’t feel like breathing room. Andy Burnham entered Downing Street in July pledging to give consumers respite from the cost of living crisis. A day later he announced a VAT cut on domestic electricity from 5% to zero due later this year, saving the average household about £45 a year. But this pales against yesterday’s announcement that the energy price cap is rising another 4% from 1 October, the second jump in three months. The typical annual bill for household gas and electricity use will soon be a wallet-straining £1,723. Miatta Fahnbulleh, net zero secretary, worked valiantly during a media blitz yesterday to repeat early promises to help families out – the £2 cap on bus fares, action on free school meals – but the evidence is inarguable: British households are still paying more for power than many other European nations. For today’s First Edition, we ask: Why are Britain’s energy bills so high? And, what can be done to reduce them? But first the headlines. Five big stories World news | More than 1,000 people are missing – the majority of whom are tourists – after a catastrophic flash flood hit Nepal and Tibet, wiping out entire villages and leaving a preliminary death toll of 165, authorities said. Social media | Meta agreed to significant changes to its Instagram and Facebook apps in a settlement that ended a landmark lawsuit on Wednesday. UK news | A coroner has formally opened an inquest into the death of Jason Arday, who resigned as a professor at the University of Cambridge amid allegations of plagiarism. Environment | Levels of a toxic “forever chemical” rose to 13 times the legal limit during Thames Water pilots for a controversial multimillion pound water recycling scheme that will pump millions of litres of treated sewage into the River Thames during drought. UK politics | Andy Burnham has dropped his support for capping political donations, causing anger among activists and Labour MPs who have long campaigned for change to the way parties are funded. In depth: ‘No single lever can be pulled to bring down prices without consequence’ A typical energy bill is made up of a standing charge, a fee to keep connected to the grid, and a unit rate for the amount of gas or electricity you consume. It also includes underlying charges to maintain and operate the energy network and government-mandated levies to fund social and environmental schemes. Britain has one of the most expensive energy markets in the world, driven in no small part by how the market price for our electricity is determined. According to our “marginal pricing” system, the price paid by suppliers for wholesale electricity at any give moment is dictated by the most expensive source of generation required to meet demand there and then. In the UK, this is regularly electricity from costly gas-fired power plants. Regardless of how much cheap wind or solar power we make, this highest common denominator still sets the price. Last year, 31% of the UK’s electricity was produced from burning natural gas, but it is estimated to have set electricity prices over 90% of the time. Energy costs in the UK diverged from other European nations in around 2020, Doug Parr, chief scientist and policy director at Greenpeace tells me. That’s when Britain ended its reliance on coal in electricity production, which as recently as 2012 was responsible for 43% of UK supply. “Gas became the marginal cost setter, which meant we were much more exposed to the gas prices than other countries.” Subsequent wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have seen global gas prices soar, further hitting British bill-payers. Energy policy experts warn that, because successive governments have left our energy system to drift for years, no single lever can be pulled to bring down prices without consequence. That said, there are a number of short and longer-term reforms that current ministers should consider. *** Short term solutions Cut the levies – save £100 a year Energy bills don’t just pay for energy – over the years, additional subsidies have been quietly added, like funding the Warm Homes Discount Scheme, or paying for early renewables innovation. By 2027, these levies will add over £100 a year to the average household energy bill, according to the climate thinktank E3G. Subsidies also add over 20% to an electricity bill for most businesses. Levy reform could reduce inflation by 0.3%, according to modelling by Nesta, though government departments would have to shoulder the funding shortfall. Deal with energy debt – save up to £70 a year Households struggling to pay inflated bills costs us all. By the end of this year, individuals will owe an estimated £7bn to their suppliers. That’s not just a problem for those in arrears: the cost of managing this debt crisis is passed on to every consumer, at between £50 and £70 a year. Immediate solutions include introducing a “social tariff” to provide cheaper energy for poor households; giving suppliers the income data they need to assess who is in fuel poverty; and tasking Ofgem with reviewing supplier debt collection practices. Once the rising debt has been curbed, a more radical option would be to write off the remaining amount. Reactive pricing Suppliers could certainly make flexible tariffs, which incentivise people to use energy when it is cleanest and cheapest, available more rapidly. Octopus has a specific tariff for night storage heaters, for example, which it says can benefit the average householder by £128 per year. *** Longer term fixes Re-design the market – save up to £270 a year by 2030 The experts at E3G want to see major reform of market design, moving away from the current system where everybody picks up the highest price. “The government must put all electricity generators on to fixed price contracts,” says senior policy adviser Susie Elks, who argues this would also reverse the failures of privatisation where companies can make massive profits off electricity users as they have done during the past two energy crises. This approach is already used by 89 countries across the world and, according to the Common Wealth thinktank, would lower bills by an estimated £130 to £270 per household by 2030. Control the crown The crown estate makes vast quantities of cash from our energy market, as the legal owner of the seabed around England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Wind developers paid £875m to the crown in “option fees” last year. Greenpeace has threatened to sue King Charles’s property management company, accusing it of exploiting its monopoly ownership of the ocean floor and ultimately driving up the price of our future energy bills. At this critical juncture when the government plans to quadruple offshore wind power capacity by the end of the decade, Parr says the crown estate’s auctioning of seabed rights have driven up costs for developers. “Like the energy market, it’s the top-most bid that sets the price, so everybody will be paying for these highly inflationary leases.” With the crown estate the only company who can lease the seabed, Greenpeace argues “they should be looking after the public interest and maximising the cost-effective rollout of offshore wind for decarbonisation, not maximising their own profits.” Decoupling gas and electricity pricing – save £65 a year Ecotricity founder and Labour donor Dale Vince has long advocated for the permanent decoupling of gas and electricity prices. Ed Miliband was known to be considering this when he was energy secretary, telling Labour MPs it was “complicated but possible”. This is “probably the biggest and most effective intervention one can make”, argues Parr. Common Wealth suggests that households could save nearly £200 a year if the government stepped into the market to act as the sole buyer of electricity. Their research found that public procurement of electricity could shave billions of pounds from electricity prices. Other research commissioned by Greenpeace argues that even removing gas plants from the wholesale electricity market and placing them into a strategic reserve could save the average household £65 a year. This would require the government to bring gas-fired power stations under government control, meaning they would no longer be able to sell power on the open market. Instead, we’d have a state-operated strategic electricity reserve, ready to fire up if required to meet demand. This would make these power stations a regulated asset base – a process less expensive than complete nationalisation. *** A controversial curveball There’s also zonal pricing, which the UK government’s energy department rejected proposals for last year. This would have seen different parts of the UK charged different rates for their electricity, based on local supply and demand. The debate remains a bruising one, with advocates like Greg Jackson, founder of Octopus Energy, arguing it would make the market more efficient. Critics, including some of Britain’s biggest renewable energy companies, are convinced the disruption would raise costs and jeopardise plans for the UK to have a virtually carbon-free power sector by the end of the decade. A report for the UK Energy Research Centre warned that implementing zonal pricing right now risked “putting the cart before the horse.” Fahnbulleh promised yesterday that the government was exploring “what more we can do” to help those struggling with high bills. Policy analysts would argue that solutions are ready and waiting. Have your say We’d like to hear your thoughts about the newsletter – what you enjoy, what we could do better, subjects you’d like to read more of – so we’ve created a short survey. It should take around five minutes to fill out, and your feedback will help us shape First Edition for the future. Take the survey here What else we’ve been enjoying Amanda Anisimova’s 2025 Wimbledon final double-bagel is one of the most harrowing sporting shellackings I’ve ever witnessed, and this interview with her is an insightful glimpse into the pressure of top-level competition. Sam Coare, newsletters team For anyone who, like me, has been reaching back through Dolly Parton’s musical catalogue since the sad news of her passing, I appreciated this thoughtfully curated Spotify list. Libby Not content with simply taking our jobs, AI is now coming for our relationships – though Amy Hawkins and Yu-chen Li’s balanced and empathetic reporting on China’s “companion bots” surprised me. Sam Ben Doherty has written a vivid and often confronting account of four months of hearings of Australia’s royal commission on antisemitism, called in the wake of the Bondi terrorist attack last December. Libby I’m oddly fascinated with the is-it-or-isn’t-it mystery of the supposedly Natalie Portman-inspired book, Life of M, which Elle Hunt has dug into. I’m already looking forward to its inevitable 27-episode Netflix dramatisation. Sam Sport Football | Sávio came off the bench to score Tottenham’s fourth goal in a 5-1 Carabao Cup win against Charlton, with Mikey Moore and Dominic Solanke also on target. Tennis | Serena and Venus Williams will play doubles at the US Open after receiving a wild card on Wednesday into the event they have won twice. Football | Uefa is poised to drop its threatened boycott of Fifa competitions after receiving concrete guarantees that the global governing body will never attempt a repeat of Gianni Infantino’s plan to sell stakes in the World Cup. The front pages “PM drops support for donations cap after lobbying from unions”, is the Guardian’s front page today, while the FT has “Burnham battles Budget jitters with pledge to ‘take pressure off’ business”. The Times leads with “Britons lost in Nepal floods”, the Mail writes “Over 20 Britons missing in Nepal flash flooding”, and Metro has “Tourists vanish in deadly surge”. The Telegraph says “Germany in talks to fund Trident”, the i Paper splashes “Social media addiction: tech giant pays $17bn over child harm”, and the Express has “Britain’s OAPs facing ‘dire winter’”. The Latest Dolly Parton: why the world loved the queen of country Tributes have poured in for Dolly Parton, the pioneering country music singer, songwriter and actor, who has died aged 80. Stars including Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey and Paul McCartney have paid tribute to one of the world’s greatest music artists, with many praising her lifelong philanthropy and advocacy for literacy and LGBTQ+ rights. Lucy Hough speaks to Guardian deputy features editor Jenny Stevens. Cartoon of the day | Rebecca Hendin The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Sophie Jones used to feel like her fear of rejection was holding her back. So she decided to do something extreme about it: she would actively seek out that which she once hid from, and for 30 days intentionally put herself in situations where she expected to be met with a blunt “no”. Yet whether it was asking her local barista if she could make her own coffee, or approaching strangers and requesting to join in with what they were doing, Sophie’s experiment didn’t go anything like the way she imagined. “Time after time, I was exposed not to rejection, but the heartening kindness of humans who owed me nothing,” she says. “Instead of simply learning to cope with humiliation, I instead discovered rejection to be relatively rare.” Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Martin Belam’s Thursday news quiz Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply
How the deadly Nepal and Tibet flash flood unfolded – a visual guide
The massive glacial collapse that caused catastrophic flash floods in the Himalayan border region of Nepal and Tibet has killed at least 165 people, though the number of dead is set to rise, with local officials saying more than 1,000 were missing. Officials said 826 people were missing in Nepal, among them 579 tourists from two dozen countries, including India, the US, Australia, Britain and Canada. Chinese state media said 558 people were missing in Tibet’s Gyirong county. It was not immediately clear if the missing counts were separate or some people had been counted twice. At 8.37am on Wednesday, an enormous section of a glacier in the Himalayas sheared free and crashed on to the valley floor in Nepal’s Langtang national park, about 60km north of the capital Kathmandu, near the mountainous Nepal-Tibet border. Such was the force of the event, it was initially reported as a magnitude 4.4 earthquake. The United States Geological Survey later determined the tremor was caused by glacial rock and ice collapsing, registering a magnitude of 5.2. The collapse triggered a huge release of water, mud, rock and ice that thundered down valleys and swept down the Lhende Khola, Bhote Koshi and Trishuli rivers. The high-speed flash floods careered towards northern Nepalese towns, including areas popular with mountaineering tourists and pilgrims. Horrifying videos from the Gyirong border post, which connects Nepal and Tibet, showed people running for their lives as the wall of debris obliterated buildings and swept away lines of buses. In Nepal, houses and roads were washed away in seconds. “It was a huge gush of mud coming straight towards us. As it got closer, it kept rising higher and higher. When I saw it enter our home, I tried to grab my wife’s hand and take her to the terrace. But she was swept away by the mud,” said Keshav Prasad Baral, a 68-year-old survivor, who was being treated at a small hospital. “Four or five hours later, a helicopter came to rescue me. My wife is still somewhere beneath the mud. She’s gone.” Another survivor described being saved by clinging to a mango tree as he watched the house where he had been working disappear. In a stark illustration of the deluge’s deadly power, a bridge crossing the Trishuli river was shown in a video being washed away in a tsunami-like flood. Multi-level homes were quickly submerged as the torrent gouged through the riverside town. Bibek Kumal, a Nepali labourer, was working in Bidur when others sounded the alarm. “I started running. Then a wall of water came thundering down as if it was an earthquake,” Kumal said from his bed at Kathmandu’s National Trauma Centre. The torrent swept him downstream amid mud and debris, but “luckily I was stuck up in a mango tree, he said. “Had there been no mango tree, I would have been washed away to death.” At a location just north of Kumal’s lucky escape in Bidur, a video shows an immense flood swallowing a river valley as it surges towards Betrawati Bazaar, an important historical and pilgrimage town. Mud and water moving at such high speeds forms a lethal combination “like liquid concrete,” said Hatim Sharif, a hydrologist at the University of Texas San Antonio, adding that it cannot be outrun. Nepal’s tourism ministry said hundreds of people were believed to have been trekking in Rasuwa, one of the worst hit districts. Officials said 133 tourists from India and the Indian diaspora were missing, as they made their pilgrimage to Mount Kailash in Tibet, a sacred site for Hindus. Rescue operations were difficult on Wednesday because of damage to infrastructure and higher than normal river levels. Helicopters could not land in Nepal’s affected areas of Syapru Besi and Timure in the Rasuwa region, which has a population of about 50,000. Rescuers waded through mud and sludge, looking for survivors after flood waters buried the lower floors of multi-storey buildings. “There is devastation everywhere we look,” Tula Bahadur BK, a health worker in Rasuwa, told Reuters. “The settlements next to the river have been completely swept away. Five of my own relatives are missing.” Dave Petley, an earth scientist with Nottingham Trent University, described the scale of the event as close to “apocalyptic”. The huge volume of water was possibly a combination of ice that converted to water as a result of the initial collapse and river water. But until the exact cause of the disaster could be confirmed by scientists, that was just speculation, he noted in the science outlet Eos. The Himalayan mountain range spans several countries in South Asia and has many of the world’s highest peaks and remaining glaciers. The steep slopes and the lush valleys below are especially vulnerable to flooding and landslides, and extreme weather events like intense monsoons and melting glaciers have become more common because of warming due to human-caused climate change. Researchers in Kathmandu found earlier this year that glaciers across the Hindu Kush Himalaya region are melting faster, with ice loss rates doubling since 2000. With Reuters and Associated Press
Nepal-Tibet flash flood: what we know so far
Rescue teams rushed into action after flooding and landslides caused by a “glacial collapse” at the China-Nepal border left more than 1,000 people dead or missing. Officials in Nepal said on Thursday that more than 400 tourists were among those unaccounted for, including many foreign nationals, while China reported more than 500 people missing including more than 250 foreigners. Surveillance video from the Chinese side of the border showed a huge wave of mud and debris crashing over a building several storeys high, engulfing it as dozens of people fled for their lives below. The surge swept away buses and cars. Other videos showed entire towns and their surrounds wiped out as the muddy flood rushed down the mountain slopes and along populated valleys. An earthquake was initially thought to be the cause; but by Thursday the US Geological Survey (USGS) said “a glacial collapse” was responsible for the disaster. “This event was initially reported as a magnitude 4.4 earthquake. Additional analysis of nearby seismic stations, long period seismic waves, and satellite imagery led to the determination that the seismic event was instead a glacial collapse and debris flow, and that no earthquake had occurred.” The USGS first reported the seismic jolt early on Wednesday about 66km (41 miles) north of Kathmandu, near the border. Entire villages and markets were “wiped out”, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said. It was dispatching emergency supplies including blankets, first aid kits, stretchers and body bags. The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, said UN teams and partners were mobilising supplies and personnel in Nepal to support affected communities. Experts warned that a lingering blockage upstream on the Nepal-China border river could produce a second flood. Nepal’s tourism ministry said the missing included scores of Indian nationals, Britons, Americans, Australians and Canadians as well as others from South Korea, the Netherlands, Malaysia, Portugal and South Africa. At least 28 Nepalese police were missing, a police spokesperson said. Nepali police said in the immediate aftermath of the disaster on Wednesday that they had recovered more than 162 bodies. Tibet government officials mobilised hundreds of emergency workers and vehicles as well as sniffer dogs and speed boats to help the rescue efforts, China’s official Xinhua news agency said. China’s president, Xi Jinping, said “the most urgent task is doing everything possible to search for and rescue the missing people”, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV. The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said his thoughts were with those concerned about their loved ones. He stressed that getting information about the status of those missing remained difficult.
The Nazis drove Bauhaus out of town. Now the far right is waging another war against the movement
The city of Dessau, where the Bauhaus design school flourished a century ago, catapulted Germany into the modern era and revolutionised global design. It is also where the Nazis drove the avant garde movement out of town and attempted to crush its utopian principles. A hundred years later, another high-stakes culture war over its legacy is looming. The EU’s biggest democracy will face one of the riskiest tests of the postwar period when Dessau’s home state of Saxony-Anhalt goes to the polls on 6 September. In what would be a first since Adolf Hitler’s time, a far-right party could win an absolute majority and take power in one of the 16 Länder. The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is running first in national polls and is poised to capture about 40% in Saxony-Anhalt. It has widened its double-digit lead among the state’s 1.8 million voters by homing in on the cost of living, fears around immigration, and the whipsaw effects of deindustrialisation and depopulation. But the party’s programme also lays out a vision for Germany with Saxony-Anhalt as a foothold, in a plan oddly fixated on Bauhaus. “The state government is running an image campaign called ‘think modern’ that seeks to derive the identity of Saxony-Anhalt from Bauhaus,” reads one passage. The AfD said it is countering with “a ‘think German’ campaign” that promises a “new, patriotic cultural policy” and an end to funding for “anti-German art and culture”. *** Bauhaus’s blend of form and function in architecture, art and industrial design shaped everything from Ikea style for the masses to the user-friendly elegance of Apple products. It was also a buzzing hive of sexual liberation, new roles for women and international collaboration before the Nazis drove its “degenerates” into exile. In her modest, sleek-lined office at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, director Barbara Steiner said that much like a century ago, the AfD’s anti-Bauhaus crusade was a Trojan horse aiming for the heart of Germany’s open, liberal society. “There would be a lot of people leaving the state”, if the AfD took control, said the Austrian-born Steiner. She argued the region was underestimated by its purported champions and their “absurd” war on a warped vision of Bauhaus. “People are always talking about the economic downturn and how everything’s going down the drain, but the people here are brilliant,” she said. “I’m afraid what is now so tenderly sprouting will be snuffed out by this rigidity and isolation.” While her own institution would probably face funding cuts, her bigger worries concern the chilling effects on public debate, cooperation and innovation. “They want cultural hegemony. That’s the really threatening thing.” Today Dessau-Roßlau, as the city has been known since a municipal consolidation in 2007, can seem like an open-air museum of the past 100 years’ tumult. Its historic, deserted market square is bookended by soaring spires. But taller still are the prefab communist-era housing blocks hulking over gutted brick warehouses. And on nearly every lamp-post, an AfD poster hangs with the promise “Our Year”. The sprawling Bauhaus campus and a glass-and-steel museum which opened in 2019 attract tens of thousands of visitors each year. But city authorities say tourism will never lift the economy out of the doldrums. Unemployment sits at 10%, against 8% across the state and 6% at the national level. Household income in Saxony-Anhalt falls near the bottom of the German table. With an average age above 50, Dessau-Roßlau is one of the country’s most geriatric cities. Its population has shrunk to 75,000 from 130,000 in 1990, the year Germany reunified, driven by an exodus led by highly educated young women. The 13-year-old AfD has said it wants to repopulate Saxony-Anhalt using lavish family subsidies with unclear financing, while freeing up lost potential by “liberating” Germans from shame over the Holocaust. Authorities classify the national party as suspected extremist and the Saxony-Anhalt chapter as confirmed extremist, meaning it poses a threat to democracy. Its flag-bearer is Ulrich Siegmund, a telegenic regional MP with reported ties to known neo-Nazis. Siegmund attended an infamous meeting in November 2023 to discuss a “remigration” plan for mass deportations. *** At a candidates’ debate on Dessau’s outskirts, the mainstream parties pleaded with voters to consider the consequences of backing the AfD. Making his pitch, state premier, Sven Schulze, of the Christian Democratic Union, the party of Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, did not make a single reference to the historically unpopular leader. Schulze, the only candidate with a chance of standing in the way of the AfD, has often seemed to be campaigning against his own party, most recently attacking a signature national pension reform plan. He accused the AfD of selling snake oil on growth, jobs and borders. “Even if the day after tomorrow all women decide they’re only there for baby-making, as some (parties) seem to want, that won’t solve the problem,” he said. “It’s important to be honest: we will also need people from abroad in the coming years, particularly in the care sector and in hospitals.” Tobias Rausch, in the state parliament for the AfD since 2016, brushed off questions about the legality of its calls for mass expulsions of asylum seekers. “We want to rescue the country from politicians from the old parties and finally make policies for the people,” he said. “We don’t just want to change things in Saxony-Anhalt but also at the national level.” Armin Willingmann, a veteran Social Democrat struggling to keep Germany’s oldest party in the regional parliament, appealed to a sense of pride in regional accomplishments, including Bauhaus. “This is a place of exceptional cultural significance – our global culture,” he said. “We really must be careful not to shut the door, not to adopt Herr Rausch’s quite crude policy of isolationism.” Undecided voters said they appreciated local patriotism but that the politicians seemed to be talking past economic realities. “If the economy is blossoming here, why is there no money to be found anywhere?” said Ruth Schulze, in her 60s and no relation to the CDU candidate. “I was born and bred in Dessau and don’t want to speak ill of it – but the lack of money really is the number one issue,” said Schulze, who runs an advertising agency she said was struggling with overhead costs. Teacher Maria Karius, 40, said the far right had come to be seen as a normal part of the political landscape as frustration with the mainstream parties festered. Despite a 15-% drop in the Dessau crime rate last year, she said there was a perception that public spaces weren’t safe. “Nothing changes – it’s always the same. That’s fertile ground for the AfD.” While the debate’s tone often sounded resigned, back in town there were still some echoes of Bauhaus’s revolutionary esprit. Rima Al Ahmad, who came to Dessau from the bigger city of Halle a decade ago to study design, works in a shared community space for artists and creators called Vor Ort, which translates as on site or local. It was conceived of as a “cultural anchor” for German and international students drawn to courses rooted in Bauhaus traditions. “It can be hard to find your place here if you come from outside,” she said. On a tour of its printmaking workshop, recording studio and lush community garden, Al Ahmad, 32, born to a Syrian father and a German mother, described the project as a kind of resistance against her state’s increasingly “notorious” image. “I was born in Saxony-Anhalt and for me, Saxony-Anhalt is home,” she said. “It has beautiful places and great, just normal people, regardless of the far right.” Asked what the Bauhaus pioneers would think of Vor Ort, she smiled: “I think they’d like that the experimental spirit is being carried forward here.”