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Nepal-Tibet floods: death toll nears 800; air pipe inserted to tunnel where large group trapped – follow updates

If you’re just joining us now, here are the key developments from the last few hours: The death toll in Nepal has risen to 781, taking the overall toll to 797. Chinese state media earlier confirmed 16 dead in Tibet and 546 people missing following Wednesday’s disaster. There are 3,048 people unaccounted for. Nepal’s Chitwan district has become the site of mass burials for hundreds of unidentified victims whose bodies were swept away by the devastating flash floods. Authorities have dug ⁠hundreds of graves in the district’s Devghat forest, with the forest trials serving as a temporary burial ground for bodies too badly decomposed to be identified. About 85 Americans remain missing, the state department said on Sunday. State department spokesperson Tommy Pigott told ABC News that nine Americans have been evacuated and that he was unaware of any US nationals dying in the disaster. China said 261 foreign nationals from 23 countries were missing on the Tibetan side of a ⁠border crossing with Nepal: the ⁠highest number was from Nepal at 104, while 49 Indian, 33 Latvian, 18 American and 15 British citizens were also unaccounted for. Senator Penny Wong, Australian minister for foreign affairs, said Australia is deploying a further $3m in humanitarian assistance to flood-afflicted areas along the Nepal-China border. Wong highlighted that 42 Australians remain unaccounted for. Authorities have issued high-alert fresh water surge and flash flood warnings for the Trishuli Bazaar area in Nepal’s Nuwakot district following severe upstream glacial collapses and debris flows. In a breakthrough late on Saturday, the Nepali army was able to insert a pipe into a tunnel at the Trishuli 3A hydroelectric site where more than 100 workers may still be alive and trapped inside such tunnels, with rescue efforts still ongoing.

Northern Cyprus ferry disaster: at least seven dead as vessel capsizes – latest updates

Republican Turkish party MP Sami Ozuslu told the Guardian late on Sunday that the death toll had risen. “Sadly we are now hearing that there are nine or ten dead,” he said. The families of passengers were converging on hospitals in Nicosia, Kyrenia and elsewhere, desperate for news of loved ones, he added. “I met many relatives at the central hospital in Nicosia earlier today who were looking for family members among the missing,” he said after visiting the hospital with a delegation from the ruling party. “Everyone was in a state of shock.” Ozuslu also revealed that three children were in intensive care, adding: “They are in intensive care but seem to be out of danger.”

Venezuela’s Delcy Rodríguez says oil deal with Trump has ‘endless’ benefits

Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has defended her government’s highly controversial energy deal with Donald Trump, insisting the South American country will maintain ownership and sovereignty over its massive oil reserves. Rodríguez, who assumed power in January after Trump ordered the abduction of the president, Nicolás Maduro, took to the airwaves on Saturday to push back against criticism of what the US president has called “the biggest oil deal in world history”. “The benefits are endless,” claimed Rodríguez, a former vice-president who Trump backed after ordering Maduro’s capture during a special forces raid on the capital, Caracas. During a six-minute television broadcast, Venezuela’s acting leader claimed the deal would help her resource-rich country develop its economy, earn revenues of more than $209bn (£154bn), and become “an energy powerhouse”. Rodríguez said: “As everyone knows, our country has the biggest oil reserves in the world. But having resources underground isn’t enough. We need investment, technology, infrastructure [and] production capacity to convert this wealth into wellbeing for our people.” She added: “It’s no use having our oil reserves underground, only to appear in statistics or bookkeeping … and for us not to be able to convert and translate them into development for Venezuela.” Trump announced the “groundbreaking” deal on Friday, calling it a “historic transaction [that] more than doubles American oil reserves … while helping to continue to set Venezuela on a course toward Tremendous Success and Great Prosperity”. On Sunday, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform: “One of the things I am going to do with the Venezuelan Oil is fill up the Strategic National Reserves which, because of Sleepy Joe Biden, has been virtually emptied.” Trump added: “The ‘topping out’ process will begin very shortly, and is a Gift from Venezuela to the People of the United States.” Hours after seizing Maduro on 3 January, Trump warned Rodríguez she would face an even worse fate if she failed to toe the US line. “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” Trump said. Details of the agreement – struck during months of secret talks – remain sparse but it will reportedly see Washington take control of 65bn barrels of Venezuelan oil reserves. The South American country has the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves, with an estimated 303bn barrels, compared with Saudi Arabia’s 268bn and Iran’s 208bn. Rodríguez said the deal involved 17 “strategic oilfields” where it was hoped more than 1.5m barrels could be produced each day. But the deal has provoked outrage, both among members of Venezuela’s opposition and within the Chavismo political movement of which Rodríguez is part. Speaking on Friday, one prominent opposition figure, who asked not to be named, called the agreement “a massive land grab” by a “a rapacious, mafioso United States”. Writing on X, Rafael Ramírez, the former head of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA, accused Rodríguez’s administration of “driving a dagger straight into the heart of the homeland” with the “neo-colonial” transaction. “They are handing over 65bn barrels of our reserves to the United States. That has never happened in Venezuela, and I think nowhere else in the world,” Ramírez added in an interview with the newspaper El Nacional. On Saturday, dozens of leftwing protesters marched through Caracas with banners reading: “We are neither a colony, nor a backyard” and “Yankees go home!” Critics of the agreement shared an ironic meme on social media suggesting the state oil company’s name should be changed from PDVSA to “PDUSA”. In her broadcast, Rodríguez, the daughter of a Marxist guerrilla who spent years denouncing “imperialist” attempts to snatch her country’s oil reserves, countered claims she was surrendering Venezuela’s natural resources to a foreign power. She thanked Trump and the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, for striking the deal but added: “There is something that must be made absolutely clear: Venezuela retains the ownership and sovereignty over its resources.” “We are thinking of Venezuela’s future,” claimed the politician, whose country was plunged into authoritarian rule and one of the world’s worst peacetime economic crises during Maduro’s 13-year rule. The deal represents an astonishing U-turn from Rodríguez and the socialist, anti-imperialist political movement she and Maduro inherited from Hugo Chávez after his 2013 death. In one 2024 speech, footage of which circulated on social media after Friday’s announcement, Rodríguez lambasted the Venezuelan opposition, accusing it of seeking to surrender the country’s oil, natural gas and gold reserves to their “masters” in Washington. Last September, as the US tightened the screws on Maduro, Rodríguez told the New York Times: “The Pentagon always had a strategic objective of obtaining Venezuelan reserves.” The deal will reportedly involve the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital, which channels funds into projects seen as important for national security. It will also involve a private company owned by Alejandro Betancourt, a controversial UK-based tycoon who has emerged as a key intermediary between the Trump administration and Rodríguez and owns mansions in Oxfordshire and London. Opposition politicians fear the deal will scupper attempts to recover Venezuela’s democracy and hold fresh presidential elections. Maduro is widely believed to have stolen the last vote, in 2024, and Rodríguez has deflected questions about a future election, saying vaguely that it will happen “some day”. Trump has also said Venezuela is “not really ready” for elections. Writing on X, the opposition leader Juan Pablo Guanipa, said: “The only way to truly reactivate the Venezuelan economy in the long term and make this agreement benefit both parties is through a free election that leads to a representative government, clear rules of the game, rule of law, and institutions that allow our resources to be managed transparently and for the benefit of the nation.” Without that, the energy deal was like “a skyscraper [built] on pillars of clay”, Guanipa added.

Iceland rejects EU accession talks after divisive referendum campaign

Voters in Iceland have ⁠rejected ⁠a government proposal to reopen ⁠accession talks with ⁠the EU after a closely fought referendum campaign that divided the country against a backdrop of global volatility. After a long and anxious night for those on both sides of the debate, the no camp ended up with 52.8% of votes on Sunday morning and the yes camp with 47.2%. Voter turnout was high at 82.5%. The vote was held in the shadow of repeated threats by Donald Trump to invade or acquire neighbouring Greenland. Although Iceland is a Nato member, supporters of EU membership said European solidarity would provide greater protection if Trump ever made similar threats towards the smaller, Arctic island. At a press conference the prime minister, Kristrún Frostadóttir, said the campaign had “raised the debate in Iceland to a higher level” while acknowledging that there were aspects that “could have been done better”. Given how close the outcome was, she said, it was important to respect the views of yes voters. But she said: “It is quite clear that this matter will not move forward under this government.” She said the government would wait to decide on whether to submit a parliamentary resolution formally withdrawing its EU membership application. Iceland originally applied in 2009 after the financial crash but pulled out of talks in 2013, saying it could not go any further without a referendum. There will be disappointment in Brussels, which had been keen to welcome a wealthy new member and appeared willing to compromise with Iceland on thorny issues such as fishing to facilitate its accession. The yes campaign argued that joining the EU could offer greater security amid war in Ukraine and the Middle East, and given the US president’s unpredictable attitude towards the Arctic. But the no campaigners’ warnings that EU membership would threaten the country’s sovereignty and fishing waters turned the vote in their favour. Their victory quickly attracted the attention of anti-EU leaders. The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen wrote on X: “At a time when some are pushing for greater federalism and the transfer of sovereignty to the European Commission, this vote reminds us that another Europe is possible, a Europe of free, sovereign nations cooperating voluntarily on matters of common interest.” Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, wrote: “Congratulations to Iceland on voting to keep their independence.” The ‌government in Reykjavík had framed its membership plan as a “now or never” moment, and Kristrún told voters earlier in August that a no vote would put all EU speculation aside. On Sunday, she told RUV that she hoped the vote would not leave the nation divided. Kristrún, who spoke at public meetings around the country in the final weeks in support of yes, said: “I don’t experience this as hurt. I know some people have been in a state of shock, but now I’ve sat with a large group of people across the country and people are completely open to different outcomes.” She acknowledged that many people in Iceland, particularly from rural areas, had concerns about the potential impact on agriculture, fisheries and natural resources of joining the EU. “I promise that we will handle these issues well and keep these concerns in mind,” she said. The vote exposed a stark divide between rural and urban areas, with the capital, Reykjavik, the only area in the island nation of 400,000 people where a majority supported yes. The government had pledged to hold a referendum on whether to reopen the accession talks when it came into office, with Kristrún telling the Guardian at the time that it was a “necessary step forward”. After Trump renewed his threats to invade Greenland at the start of this year and amid a greater global focus on the Arctic, the government announced that the referendum would be brought forward. Hulda Þórisdóttir, a politics professor at the University of Iceland, said she was not surprised by the result given the tone of the latter stages of the campaign, with misinformation spreading and the considerably bigger financial resources of the no campaign. “No won due to a combination of factors: a strong feeling that the EEA [European Economic Area] is all we need, a sense of Icelandic exceptionalism, economic self-interest and a lot of misinformation among the least engaged – for example, ‘I don’t want my son to have to join the EU army,’” Hulda said. “But very importantly, it seems clear to me that the no campaign was much, much better funded.”

‘There’s no place to go’: providers see more abortions later in pregnancy as bans spread in US

Providers are seeing more patients in need of abortions later in pregnancy as abortion bans and restrictions proliferate in US states, all while access to insurance falls. Those bans and restrictions have also meant that later abortion care access has grown over the past decade in a handful of haven states and cities. Patients are showing up “later and sicker” in need of reproductive healthcare, said Diane Horvath, cofounder of Partners in Abortion Care in Maryland, the only all-trimester clinic in the US that is owned and operated by women. About 41 states have abortion bans or significant restrictions at some point in pregnancy. More than 20 million people have lost Medicaid coverage since 2023, while between 3 and 5 million people have lost or dropped their coverage through Affordable Care Act exchanges in recent months. “People are getting chucked off of Medicaid. The premiums are all going up,” Horvath said. Instead of seeking care early in pregnancy, she said: “They’re just not going in. There’s no place to go.” The cost of later abortion – which is loosely defined as anything past the first trimester, the time during which the vast majority of abortions occur – tends to rise the later it happens in a pregnancy. “Sometimes you’re looking at a $22,000 gap with maybe three days to pull together funding,” said Alisha Dingus, executive director of the DC Abortion Fund (DCAF), one of the largest abortion funds in the country. Rising costs and decreasing availability “may create substantial barriers to accessing later abortion care”, a recent Jama study found. Costs tend to rise later in pregnancy “Further into pregnancy, the cost of care goes up, the number of providers goes down, and more and more restrictions go into effect,” said Erika Christensen, cofounder of Patient Forward, a group focused on all-trimester abortion access. The later abortion population is disproportionately young people living below the poverty line in healthcare deserts, Christensen pointed out, adding: “They’re sort of in a perfect storm: they have the least amount of time to find the money for the most expensive care … we’re talking about someone’s abortion costing potentially more than they make in an entire year.” The challenges to accessing abortion also increase as the weeks progress. Only clinics in four states and Washington DC, offer all-trimester care to all patients. But even as the health landscape grows more complex, more providers are moving into the gaps. In Maryland, where there is no viability limit on pregnancy and the state constitution now protects reproductive freedom, two all-trimester clinics serve patients from around the country and the world – Care Reproductive Health Clinic and Partners in Abortion Care. There is also the DuPont Clinic in neighboring Washington DC. Abortions in later pregnancy happen for all the reasons people seek abortion earlier in pregnancy, Horvath said. Patients learn new information about the health of the fetus or about their own health; they lose their jobs or their homes; their partners become abusive or disappear. For some, particularly children, the pregnancy itself may not be diagnosed until very late. Pregnancy “can be really dangerous”, Horvath said. “At any point in the pregnancy, abortion is going to be lower risk than continuing the pregnancy.” People who need abortions now are often forced to wait longer to access care because of legal barriers and difficulty getting and paying for appointments. They might go to several different states seeking care, hitting up against gestational limits at each point. By the time they end up in Maryland, they’re frequently past the second trimester. “It is a multiday procedure, and the barriers to access it are so high that to get an abortion at that stage of pregnancy is an intentional decision made with a lot of thought and care,” Dingus said. “This is a medical procedure, and people should have the ability to choose what happens to their bodies.” Yet even among some abortion supporters, she said, there is stigma around later abortion. When it comes to later abortion, Horvath said, “people can in good faith decide for themselves if that’s something they would ever want to do or need to do” in their own lives. But medical decisions should be left up to the patient and their health provider – not politicians or government officials, she said. She continued: “When we say: ‘Well, abortions are OK until this point, except for these things’ – then we get into the business of somebody in an office building in Annapolis deciding what they think is a good abortion and a bad abortion. And I realize that not having a set rule is a really uncomfortable thing for people to hold, but the place that I have to land is: I have to trust this pregnant person to make that decision. “I do not pretend that I know better about someone’s life than they do,” Horvath added. In 2025, Partners stopped accepting Medicaid for later abortion because they were losing thousands of dollars on each procedure under reimbursement rules, Horvath said. “We need a significant amount of monthly funding support in order to stay open if we’re going to accept Medicaid for two- and three-day [procedure] folks, which is crappy. It hurts access, and it’s awful,” she said. But they haven’t turned any patients away, she said. “We do work with about 40 different abortion funds, and so we are able to get people, often, fully funded.” DCAF has been a major source of support – helping to pay, in an average week, for at least 20 people getting care at 28 weeks’ gestation and later, Dingus said. “Even before Dobbs, there was always a high number of people who traveled to this region for their abortion care because we didn’t have any gestational age bans,” Dingus said. “Probably in the past two years, we’ve seen a pretty significant uptick in people who are needing funding at 30 weeks and later.” While donations initially ramped up after the Dobbs decision, that funding has slowed to a trickle even as needs have increased, Dingus said. Funds like DCAF “are seeing just more and more people who need our support, and we are feeling the weight of not having the money for all of those people”, she said. “We are seeing much larger gaps than we’ve ever seen.” ‘This is life-saving work’ A decade ago, Christensen needed an abortion at 32 weeks. Back then, there were only two geriatric white men in the world willing to offer later care in “old-timey” clinics that felt like walking “through a portal back in time”, she said. Advocates worried that when those providers died, care would die with them. “Things are very different now,” Christensen said. “These providers offering modern later-abortion care are younger, they’re more diverse, the majority of them are women, they’re offering trauma-informed care, their clinics are beautiful – you’re walking into a normal healthcare center.” The Partners clinic, for instance, is decorated in motifs of flying birds; there’s soft lighting and extra phone chargers, reclining recovery chairs and blanket warmers. The clinic offers gowns of all sizes, and patients may change into donated clothing or wash their own clothes in a laundry machine – because some patients bring nothing with them when they step on a plane. But the focus on comfort goes beyond aesthetics. “We’ve tried really hard to set our clinic up in a way that people know their autonomy is being respected,” Horvath said. “Nothing happens without your permission. You can stop us at any time; you can ask questions at any time.” Autonomy is central to discussions about abortion – including later abortion, Christensen said. It gets at “the core of whether women get to be people”, she said. “If the best we can do, as the mainstream feminist and abortion movement, is ‘ask state daddy for permission for when and under what circumstances we can end our own pregnancies,’ I think it’s not the conversation that is required for us to be equal free people.” Recent years have sharply clarified these key questions about abortion rights, she said, noting: “It could always move faster, but progress is progress, and it is changing.” Horvath’s father is a physician, and practicing medicine always made sense to her. When she began thinking she would focus on later-abortion care, she worried about her and her family’s safety. They still get protesters outside the clinic sometimes. Then she saw a very young patient, a 12-year-old girl who needed an abortion. Horvath asked her: “What are you looking forward to when you go back home?” The child said: “I think I just really want to be a kid again.” That’s when Horvath realized she could never take any other path but abortion care. “This is sacred work. This is life-saving work,” she said. “This little girl gets to go be a little girl again.”

Nepal-Tibet death toll rises amid new flood fears and race to free group trapped in tunnel

Rescuers in Nepal and Tibet have battled through leg-sucking mud amid the threat of fresh flooding to search for thousands of people still missing after a deadly wall of water swept through the Himalayan border zone, engulfing entire villages. The latest updates on Sunday put the number of missing at 3,048, including hundreds of foreigners. There was a total of 797 confirmed deaths across Nepal and Tibet, and reports of some bodies swept downstream possibly as far as India. Nepal said it had begun the task of burying some of the hundreds of bodies after first taking DNA samples so that families could later reclaim them after identification and perform traditional funeral rites. The disaster, which struck the border on Wednesday morning, was caused by a glacial collapse which sent a wall of water and debris downstream, the US Geological Survey said. Nepal’s foreign minister called for a global response to the climate crisis, saying the small, poor Himalayan nation was bearing a disproportionate share of its impact. “Despite having only 0.1% contribution to global emissions, people of Nepal have become major victims of climate change,” Shisir Khanal said on Saturday. More than 3,700 people have been rescued in Nepal so far. Nepal said on Sunday that 2,502 people, including 592 foreigners, were out of contact in the country. It reported an updated death toll of 781 people. Chinese authorities on Sunday reported 16 deaths and 546 missing, of whom 261 were foreign nationals, including 104 from Nepal, 49 from India, 33 from Latvia, 18 from the US and 15 British citizens. In a breakthrough at the weekend, Nepal’s army was able to insert a pipe into a tunnel at the Trishuli 3A hydroelectric site, where more than 100 workers are believed to be trapped. The home minister, Sudan Gurung, said: “We have already started sending air through the small opening, and we will now begin excavation work and send the rescue team inside.” It is a race to reach the workers, who may still be alive inside the tunnels, with rescue efforts focused on the Trishuli 3A and 3B sites. They are among 933 hydropower workers who are among the missing, according to Nepal’s disaster authority. Nepal warned on Sunday of rising flood waters and urged rescue teams to exercise caution. “We have received information that the flood flow in the Bhotekoshi river in Rasuwa has increased further,” the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said. Flood warnings were sent to people’s phones early on Sunday as rescue crews worked to clear a highway connecting Kathmandu to one of the areas hit by the floods. In Dhading, one of the worst-hit regions in Nepal, some people began returning to ruined homes to see what could be salvaged. Residents of the flood-hit villages said they were struggling to make sense of near-constant alarms they had received since the initial floods. One resident, Govind Shreshta, told the Associated Press: “Sometimes they say a flood is coming, then we have to run again to higher ground, even at night. There is also rain. It’s really difficult for me. I have a 72-year-old father and 70-year-old mum. I must carry them and I am exhausted. It’s going on like this for those who are still alive.” The government estimated Nepal’s reconstruction bill could run to billions of dollars. Officials in Nepal called for forensic testing kits to identify bodies and freezer units to store them in, saying bodies that had been in water could decompose at a faster rate. Survivors face an agonising wait to learn the fate of missing relatives and the prospect of rebuilding their lives from nothing. “All the settlements near the river were swept away,” Buddhi Ram Dangol told Agence France-Presse in Nepal’s Nuwakot district. “There is nothing left.” In Tibet, where Chinese authorities are the only source of information, rescue operations were paused at the hardest-hit area of Gyirong over the risk of more flooding from a newly formed lake. A total of 2,141 rescuers were near the Gyirong site, the Xinhua state news agency reported, including more than 500 in the worst-hit area. In Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, relatives and friends gathered outside the main government hospital from early morning, desperately searching for news of missing loved ones. Many shuffled between the help desk and the hospital noticeboard, clutching photographs and scanning lists of patients in the hope of finding them. Dil Maya Lama stood weeping near the help desk at the hospital, searching for information about her 26-year-old brother, a driver for a hydropower company in Rasuwa. She had travelled from Ramechhap, about 80 miles (130km) away. “I came here with the hope that I might find him,” she told the Associated Press. “There is no information about him.” Nelza Moktan sought information about her missing cousin, who also worked as a driver in Rasuwa. “I feel hopeless. It has already been four days,” she said. With Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters

Definitely no or maybe yes: what tipped the Icelandic referendum | Miranda Bryant

It was always going to be a close contest. But on the night, the figures showed just how divided Iceland was on the issue of whether or not to restart negotiations with the European Union. After a nail-biting overnight count, the well-funded no campaign rejoiced on Sunday morning as the broadcaster RUV declared it the winner with about 52.8% of the vote. Given the size of Iceland’s population – barely 400,000 – the margins were tiny. Opponents had criticised the no campaign as fearmongering, its tactics compared by some to those deployed by Brexit activists in the UK’s 2016 referendum. Its depiction of fishing and farming, two issues inextricably tied to Icelandic national identity, as threatened by EU membership were central to its success. Results showed a big split between voters in the capital region and the rest of the largely rural country, where among some there is a sense that national identity is at risk of being forgotten. But it was perhaps also the question on the ballot paper that, despite the allure of a closer relationship with Europe at a time of global volatility and an erratic US president threatening Iceland’s larger neighbour, Greenland, helped the no voters win the day. The question Icelanders were asked was “Should Iceland resume accession negotiations with the European Union?”. A second referendum was to be held once a deal had been reached. Iceland, it is important to note, is already a member of the European Economic Area (EEA) and the Schengen passport-free travel area. This meant that a vote yes would have actually been a “yes, maybe”, whereas a no vote was always a clearer, more decisive move. One of the “yes, maybe” campaign’s slogans was “Já til að sjá” (“yes to see”), which felt vague in comparison to the bullish claims of the no campaign. Among the “no” campaign’s claims were that the EU would act as a “new superpower” over Iceland and that it could turn the country into a “quota-free fishing village” where foreign companies could invest in Iceland’s prized and highly valuable fishing industry, putting fishing rights and profits in the hands of external parties. At a yes campaign party at Reykjavík Art Museum in the Icelandic capital’s downtown area, at a point in the election night where yes seemed to have edged ahead, Þòrir Snoor, a yes supporter, said: “The no side has done a lot of fearmongering and done it very very well.” While he had a lot of peers who, like him, thought the euro could be the solution to the country’s high inflation and high interest rates, the 25-year-old admitted: “A lot of my friends have said they are scared of the European Union.” Wearing a blue EU cap, Snædis Inga Rúnarsdóttir, 30, agreed that the no campaign had been louder – and better funded. She said she would have to make peace with a potential win by no, but hit out at a swirl of misinformation around the referendum. Iceland’s foreign minister, Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir, had previously said she feared her country faced a “Brexit moment” amid warnings over the potential influence of misinformation, foreign interference and AI in the referendum. Just before midnight when votes were still being counted, she told the Guardian that whatever the result, “at least Icelandic people have shown it was the right thing to have a vote”. Before being ushered deeper on to the dancefloor, she added: “And what I like the most is now foreign policy is, everything is, on the agenda.”

Pacific Islands Forum meeting in turmoil after several leaders pull out of Palau summit

Several leaders have pulled out of a the Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ meeting in Palau at the eleventh hour. Solomon Islands prime minister, Matthew Wale, has cancelled his appearance after a no-confidence motion was lodged against him at home by the Solomon Islands home affairs minister, Manasseh Maelanga. Maelanga accused Wale of “repeatedly making decisions of matters of national importance without proper consultation with, or the approval of, cabinet, thereby undermining the principles of collective cabinet responsibility, representative democracy and good governance”, according to the ABC. Australia has been in negotiations with the Solomons on a security treaty, with the hope that further negotiations could have taken place on the sidelines of the summit. Fiji’s prime minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, and his Vanuatu counterpart, Jotham Napat, will also not be attending, with the Samoan leader, La’auli Leuatea Schmidt, another notable absence. The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has confirmed he will still be attending. Oliver Nobetau, the Lowy Institute’s Pacific Islands program director, said the pulling out by key leaders “dulls the flame” of the meeting. “This has been shaping up to be quite a significant PIF … it’s really unfortunate that this is the case,” he told Guardian Australia. “With the pulling out of this many key prime ministers within the region, it dilutes the potential of what could come out of this leaders’ meeting.” Nobetau said there were high expectations that this leaders’ meeting could progress pilot projects around Pacific climate resilience, and was important ahead of the Cop31 climate summit in November and a pre-Cop31 summit to be held in Fiji and Tuvalu in October. He added the leaders not showing up could be read as those nations prioritising bilateral agreements with nations including Australia above region-wide commitments. “PIF has to demonstrate its usefulness as well. While it is a useful forum for a lot of our Pacific members, maybe the bigger countries feel there are more pressing issues or they can achieve more benefits for their countries by engaging bilaterally or directly with other partners.” Speaking at Queensland Labor conference on Sunday in Brisbane, Albanese said Australia had a duty to help Pacific nations thrive. Albanese said allowing Pacific nations to succeed would also benefit Australia. “The big challenges facing the Pacific require solutions designed and delivered for the Pacific, by the Pacific,” he told the “Australia has a key role to play, as a partner and leader. “In a time of strategic competition in our region, our engagement in the Pacific Islands Forum and our contributions to the infrastructure, regional security and climate action of the region matter more than ever before.” The visit follows the prime minister signing a security deal with Fiji, elevating the bilateral relationship to a formal alliance as Australia seeks to curb Chinese influence in the region. Pacific leaders are set to discuss security and climate concerns during the summit. Albanese said Australia would also seek to reiterate support for Pacific workers coming to the country. Debate has recently raged over how the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility Scheme cohort would factor into immigration cuts flagged by various parties. Representatives of the resurgent One Nation have been pressed to clarify that PALM workers, many of whom provide much-needed labour in regional areas, would not be included in a significant reduction to net overseas migration. Albanese said the migration discussion had been fuelling division and the Pacific worker scheme would continue because of its critical economic benefit. “People from the Pacific make an enormous contribution to Australia’s prosperity through their vital work in regional industries like agriculture and meat processing,” he said. “So many of our farmers and food producers rely on them. “We know also the wages they remit home help boost the economies of their families and communities, contributing to the prosperity and stability of the whole region.”