Read the daily news to learn English

Ukraine war briefing: Zelenskyy orders military to triple daily long-range strikes on Russia

⁠Volodymyr Zelenskyy said ⁠he has ⁠ordered his military to increase its ⁠long-range drone ‌strikes ‌against Russia to ‌1,000 per day, up from about 300 currently. “There ‌needs to be more: there is a concrete goal, ⁠and we will fulfil this task,” the Ukrainian president declared on Friday in ‌his evening address. Russia’s ⁠gasoline production fell to about 70% of domestic consumption levels by the end of August after a series of drone attacks forced major refineries to suspend operations, according to two ⁠industry sources who spoke to Reuters. After a brief respite at the end of July, when some local authorities began easing or lifting restrictions on fuel sales, shortages ‌returned to Russian regions in ‌August. Over the past week, drones ‌struck and halted operations at several major refineries, including plants in Perm, Nizhny Novgorod and Yaroslavl, all significant producers of motor gasoline. Russia is losing about 6,000 more troops in Ukraine each month than it can recruit, western officials have said. While Russia is still acquiring new battlefield recruits at speed, with an estimated rate of 1,000 a day, in the past two months even this has not been sufficient to replace those killed or injured, Peter Walker writes. Recent Russian air attacks have destroyed about 90% of retailers’ food logistics in Ukraine, ⁠Kyiv’s agricultural minister said on Friday. Both countries have stepped up strikes in recent weeks on economic targets such as major retailers, with Russia targeting warehouses for ⁠Ukraine’s premier supermarket chains, ⁠top postal service and home-goods stores. “As of today, roughly speaking, 90% of food logistics operated by retail chains have been destroyed, but that doesn’t mean Ukrainians will be left without food,” farm minister Taras Vysotskyi was cited by ⁠the Ukrinform agency as saying. His comments to reporters in Kyiv are the most frank official assessment of the damage Russia’s escalating strikes have brought on Ukraine’s increasingly fragile economy in the fifth year of war. Ukraine has stored ⁠14.6bn cubic metres of gas ⁠in underground storage, enough ⁠for the upcoming ‌winter ‌season, the ‌country’s energy minister said. “Ukraine has stockpiled ‌natural gas for the baseline scenario for getting ⁠through the winter,” Denys Shmyhal said on Friday. Authorities ⁠in Russia’s Rostov region ⁠declared a ⁠state of emergency on Friday, ⁠saying port closures and disruptions ⁠to navigation in ‌the ‌Azov-Black Sea basin had ‌led to a significant accumulation of agricultural products at farms. The ‌regional government said on Telegram an emergency response had been introduced ⁠across the region, without going into more detail. Ukraine’s former defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov has ⁠accepted a role as innovation adviser at Italy’s Defence Ministry, officials said ⁠on Friday. Italy’s defence minister Guido Crosetto had disclosed the offer shortly after Fedorov ⁠was dismissed in July. Fedorov, 35, was fired six months after his appointment, having initiated reforms around procurement and mobilisation that put him on a collision course with the military establishment and political rivals. The UN nuclear ⁠watchdog said on Friday it had ⁠been informed ⁠of three drone incidents at Russian-held Zaporizhzhia ⁠nuclear power plant in south-eastern Ukraine ⁠earlier this week. The International Atomic ‌Energy Agency said a drone attack ‌on 25 August reportedly occurred near the plant’s cooling pond, injuring two plant employees, ‌while two other drones on 26 August reportedly struck the site’s dry spent nuclear fuel storage area ⁠and the sprinkling device of the power units system. Radiation levels at the ‌Zaporizhzhia plant remained normal, the watchdog added. Russian forces on Friday resumed their drone barrage of Ukraine’s Kyiv region, hitting more than a dozen apartment buildings and storage depots in a second straight day of aerial attacks, officials said. Russian strikes in the Kyiv region damaged 14 warehouses, 16 private houses, three apartment buildings and 16 vehicles, Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv regional military administration, said Friday.

In South Korea, it is illegal to travel to dangerous countries. Journalists say it’s making their work impossible

Shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, freelance photographer Jang Jinyoung crossed from Poland into Lviv and travelled on to Kyiv, where he spent a fortnight documenting the war. South Korea’s foreign ministry had designated Ukraine off-limits days earlier, making unauthorised visits a criminal offence. He knew he was breaking the law but went anyway, as no Korean journalist had yet reported from inside the country. “Everything back home was being relayed through foreign outlets. I wanted to see it more directly for myself,” Jang told the Guardian. On his return he was placed under criminal investigation. After refusing to accept a summary fine, a court north-west of Seoul this month convicted him and fined him 5m won (US$3,600). Many countries release travel advisories for their citizens, but South Korea is one of the few developed democracies that criminalises visits to blacklisted countries. On Friday, the country’s maximum penalty for such an offence tripled – from a year in prison or a 10m-won (US$7,200) fine to three years or a 30m won (US$21,700) fine, at the court’s discretion. The government says the system is necessary to protect citizens’ lives and safety, but critics argue the restrictions go beyond what’s required, and those with a genuine need to travel, including journalists and aid workers, are being unfairly caught out by the law. The foreign ministry says it grants 5,000 to 6,000 exceptions a year, including about 50 to journalists. But permission is discretionary and decided case by case. In Jang’s case, the application process for Ukraine specifically had not opened when he departed for the country. His case has been condemned by domestic and international press groups, and he is appealing against his conviction and plans to challenge the law at the constitutional court. He wants the permit system replaced with one where journalists simply notify the authorities of their plans. “Permission is control, and control over what gets covered reaches into editorial territory. The ban is the biggest barrier there is for anyone trying to report what is really happening in a conflict.” Aid workers and activists The travel ban in its current form began in 2007, when 23 members of a South Korean church travelled to Afghanistan against government warnings and were seized by the Taliban. Two were shot dead, and the remaining 21 returned after Seoul negotiated directly with their captors. Within weeks the government designated Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia as travel-ban areas, making unauthorised visits a crime. The current restrictions currently cover 10 countries in their entirety, including Ukraine, Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Haiti, with partial bans on a dozen more, among them Myanmar and Gaza. The decision to impose stricter penalties followed 2025 revelations that hundreds of South Koreans had been lured to Cambodia by fake job adverts and held in compounds run by fraud syndicates. The areas banned by the government in Cambodia were downgraded in July, after the ministry recorded a 94% fall in reports of Koreans being confined against their will. But the law has entangled people travelling for reasons far removed from the scam compounds, including journalists, rights activists and aid workers. Data released to the office of opposition lawmaker Kim Gunn shows the ministry reported 22 people to police in the first seven months of this year – more than double the total for 2025 and the most since 2020. Over the past decade, it has reported 120 people. All but one of this year’s cases concerned Europe, where the travel ban covers all of Ukraine, along with stretches of Russia and Belarus on the Ukrainian border. Earlier this month, police opened a criminal investigation into six South Korean activists who had travelled to Kyiv to lobby against the forced repatriation of two North Korean prisoners of war. The law also allows the ministry to invalidate passports without any criminal case. It used this in March against Kim Ahyun, a peace activist known as Haecho, as she prepared to join a Gaza aid flotilla. On Thursday the Seoul administrative court rejected her challenge. Unless it is overturned, she cannot travel abroad at all. In a statement, the foreign ministry said that by restricting passport use, the law had played an important role in protecting Korean lives over two decades, and denied that it amounted to censorship. “It is the minimum measure necessary to secure the lives and physical safety of citizens in dangerous areas”, it said. Jong-Chul Kim, a public interest lawyer who has been assisting Haecho, said the system was disproportionate, punishing people after they travel and stripping passports before they go. “The travel ban system, which has a strongly paternalistic character, not only infringes on individuals’ freedom to make their own choices regarding movement, but also seriously reduces the space for international civil society activities”, he said. Aid agencies working out of South Korea face the same restrictions and have long pressed for overseas relief work to be recognised as a category in its own right, saying they cannot get permission under the current system. A bill to do that has sat before parliament since 2024. Jun Mo Lee, who runs the Korean office of the Irish aid agency Concern Worldwide, said that with proper security systems, risk assessments and guidelines in place, there were many countries where humanitarian workers could safely be allowed to travel. “What we need is not less protection, but a more practical and proportionate system that balances safety with humanitarian access,”Lee said.

Number of Australians missing in Nepal’s deadly floods rises again, as Albanese deploys more personnel

The number of Australians who were reported missing in the catastrophic Nepal flooding disaster has risen to 41, as one family celebrates after an unaccounted-for woman made contact with them yesterday. It means three additional Australians were confirmed missing overnight – up from 38 who remained unaccounted for on Friday evening. The Australian government’s Department of Foreign Affairs has been urgently working with local authorities to contact Australian woman Cara Severino, 25, who became the first Australian reported missing who has been confirmed safe. Severino contacted her parents, Debbie and Frank Severino, on Friday morning, informing them she was hiking away from the disaster zone to Kathmandu with a group of Nepali hikers – a trek of more than 110km. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email The Red Cross has said about 600 people are dead and as many as 93,000 people may have been affected by Wednesday’s flash floods on the Nepal-Tibet border, with a huge rescue operation that is being hampered by fears of new flooding. Dfat has received more than 450 calls in relation to the disaster. Nepal’s disaster management agency says there are 1,924 people unaccounted for – 517 of those people are foreign tourists. About 7:30pm on Friday evening, the authority said 121 foreigners had been rescued – none of them were Australians. View from Kathmandu hospital Outside the hospital in Kathmandu yesterday, there were scenes of anxiety as families put up posters of loved ones, and authorities hung pictures of the dead that need to be identified. One woman said her cousin was on his way back from Australia because his brother had gone missing. Like many others, she was putting pictures of him up, in case he was brought back to the hospital. Australian charities are starting to pump in aid, with the Emergency Action Alliance – a peak body representing major Australian charities – raising funds to build emergency shelters, get food and safe drinking water, hygiene supplies and medical care to communities. But conditions on the ground are difficult and unpredictable owing to the scale of the damage and the heavy monsoon. Rescue operations in Nepal and China resumed as of Saturday morning after being suspended due to the risk of further flooding. “The gravity of the situation is worse now because whole towns have swept away,” Australian Nepalese Multicultural Centre vice president Keshav Kadel said. “Now there is nothing, it’s just a mudslide.” Four Dfat crisis response team officers are expected to arrive in Kathmandu later on Saturday to support consular efforts on the ground. Four rapid response team members are also expected to arrive in Kathmandu – humanitarian response specialists with expertise in communications, logistics and planning. These extra deployments add to about 20 personnel Australian already has on the ground with the Australian embassy in Kathmandu. On Friday night, the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, spoke with the Nepali foreign minister, Shisir Khanal, to affirm that Australia would provide further humanitarian assistance, including to aid rescue and recovery efforts, where required. Australia has pledged $5m in aid and support for the disaster, with $2m going to the World Food Programme to provide emergency food and water provisions, and the remaining to the Emergency Action Alliance. Australia’s assistant minister for foreign affairs and trade, Matt Thistlethwaite, said on Saturday morning that the aid was being provided on request of the Nepalese authorities. Speaking to ABC News Breakfast, Thistlethwaite said Australian officials in Beijing were also working with the Chinese Government, but that China had not so far requested support. “We’re doing our best to support both the Nepalese and Tibetan diasporas here in Australia,” Thistlethwaite said. “Yesterday I held two online forums, one with the Nepalese community one with the Tibetan community to outline the latest situation, to advise of the support that Australia is providing, the $5m in humanitarian aid, and the best way for us to keep in contact with them. We’re providing them with the latest information through our officials. “I also attended a vigil last night with the Nepalese community in Strathfield and obviously there was quite a bit of despair and anxiety in that community, but we’re doing our best to support the Tibetan and Nepalese communities here in Australia.” The Australian government’s 24-hour consular emergency centre can be contacted on 1300 555 135 within Australia or +61 2 6261 3305 from overseas.

At least 90 Americans missing in Nepal flood among 2,000 unaccounted for

At least 90 Americans were still missing on Friday among almost 2,000 people unaccounted for following the catastrophic flash flood along the Nepal-Tibet border on Wednesday. With the official death toll creeping towards 600 on Friday and expected to continue rising, there were survivors, victims and missing people from many nationalities. “We can confirm that three American citizens have been safely rescued in Nepal. We are not aware of any US citizen deaths at this time,” the state department said on Thursday, USA Today reported. At least 90 Americans who were in the affected area remained unaccounted for. The Guardian has approached the state department for additional comment. Many of the Americans who are missing were on a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash, a sacred site in Tibet revered by several faiths, including Hinduism and Buddhism. Twenty-two Americans returning from a pilgrimage hosted by the Isha Foundation, were among 80 foundation members not yet located, founder and spiritual leader Sadhguru Vasudev said in a statement on Thursday. The India-based spiritual organization has a US campus in Tennessee. Leslie Crespi, a community liaison for the foundation’s US campus, said: “We had communication with the coordinator of the group at about 9.05am Nepalese time [Wednesday] saying that they had arrived there. And then by 9.14am is when this flash flood hit.” Crespi described the trekkers as “like family”, adding that it was a “lifelong dream to go and be there” in Nepal for many of them. Among the missing Americans is 45-year-old Venus Rajnikant Patel. His brother, Dennis, said Patel, who had recently moved from St Louis to Cincinnati, had been planning the pilgrimage for two years. Patel’s friend Jolene Gosha said his hotel had been in the flood zone and “we’re just hoping, hoping, that by some chance he was able to climb his way out of it … I don’t want to give myself false hope because I know the reality is that he’s probably not with us.” Meanwhile, the family of 72-year-old Jitendra Patel of Long Island in New York were still trying to reach him, his son Sunny Patel said. Patel said his father called on Wednesday morning to say he had crossed into Tibet, and the family later realized he was in the flood zone. “My heart sank,” Patel said, adding that he “didn’t think it was possible that my dad would be there at ‘ground zero’” of the flooding disaster. The family is “maybe hopeful”, he said, but they have not heard from him and their WhatsApp messages remain unanswered. “It gets worse by every hour, obviously,” Patel added. Also missing are Rekha and Rashi Shashidharan, a New York mother and 14-year-old daughter who were also on a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash. They had spent several days in Kathmandu acclimating to the altitude before traveling towards Tibet with a tour group, Shekhar Agrawal, Rekha’s brother, told CNN. Agrawal last spoke to them around 7.30am local time on Wednesday before they planned to cross into Tibet. “After that, there was radio silence, nothing, no contact whatsoever,” Agrawal said, adding that he believed they may have still been at their hotel when the flood hit. Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said the US “stands ready to support the government of Nepal with needed humanitarian assistance”. Meanwhile, the US embassy in Nepal said that the state department would “provide $500,000 (approximately 76m Nepali rupees) in assistance through a global grant to Catholic Relief Services, which will help flood-affected communities with emergency shelter and relief supplies, as well as water, sanitation, and hygiene support”. The Associated Press contributed reporting

‘So desperately loved’: ADF member among dozens of Australians missing in Nepal floods as families pray for safe return

The families of an Australian defence force member and two Sydney boys who went missing with their parents in Nepal remain hopeful they will be found safe. Dozens of Australians are missing after devastating flooding on the Nepal-Tibet border. Nepal’s disaster management authority said on Friday that the total number of people missing had risen sharply to more than 1,900 swelled by 933 workers on hydropower projects on the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli rivers where a wall of water powered down on Wednesday morning. The number of people killed is at least 584. One Australian woman contacted her family on Friday morning to tell them that she had survived the flood, the first of those reported missing to be confirmed safe. Among the missing Australians is Karan Bhardwaj, a 40-year-old Brisbane-based member of the Royal Australian air force who was travelling in Nepal with Kailash Journeys. “Karan is a dad to my beautiful seven-year-old nephew, as well as a brother, uncle and brother in law,” said his family member Jen, who did not want her surname published. “He is so desperately loved by his family and right now we are desperately praying, hoping and believing that Karan is safe, alive and somehow making his way back to us.” Shylaja Muralitharan, 42, her husband, Chandrasekaran Muralitharan, 47, and their two sons Ashwin, 14, and Aarush, 11, were taking part in a pilgrimage when the flood hit on Wednesday. Shylaja’s younger sister, Vaishnavi, said that she had lost contact with the family shortly after breakfast on the morning of the flood. The family of four planned to head towards an immigration checkpoint on the Tibet-Nepal border soon after, as part of the group of 15 Australians trekking with the Himalayan Glacier Adventures tour. “Just like everyone else that’s part of that group, we’re really worried, but hopeful,” Vaishnavi said. “Hopeful that they’re safe and just waiting to be rescued. “It’s a very difficult time for our whole family … I just want to make people aware that they’re there, and we’re waiting, and we just want them to return.” Vaishnavi, who asked that her surname not be published, confirmed the family were close with other members of the group who had also travelled from Sydney for the Hindu pilgrimage to Mount Kailash in Tibet. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email The family had been training together for the long walk, she said. “They had been planning for some time, and preparing, because it’s quite a trek. “They were all working very hard together to make sure they could successfully complete it. “We just didn’t expect anything like this.” Vaishnavi said it was difficult to get clear information about what was being done to find those missing. She has spoken with Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials. “We do want to know what efforts are being made … we’re not aware of what is actually happening there.” Australian woman Sumi Adhikari was at an immigration office at the Gyirong Post crossing when the flood waters hit. She was travelling with an Isha Foundation pilgrimage to the region. Her husband, Nava Pandey, has travelled to Nepal and is desperately seeking information about her whereabouts. “She was in the same area when the flood happened,” said a flyer produced by Adhikari’s family, and published with their permission. “If anyone has seen her or has any information about her, please contact the family immediately.” Bharat Mangwani, 42, was travelling with the Isha Foundation as part of a pilgrimage to Lake Manasarovar when his family lost contact with him on Wednesday morning. He was last seen at Gyirong before the group was set to depart for Kathmandu and then Delhi, his close friend Kushagra Tiwari said. Mangwani’s family, including his nine-year-old son and three-year-old daughter, have travelled to India with a family friend, while his wife has gone on to Kathmandu to look for any information. “All of us are praying for him and hopefully he comes back to us soon,” Tiwari said. Suhasini Kandimalla, a mother of two from Springfield, near Brisbane, has also been reported missing. Her sister, Supreethini Kandimalla, said that she was doing the hike with another Springfield local. While she was a New Zealand citizen, Suhasini had been approved for Australian citizenship, her sister said. She had planned to attend a citizenship ceremony for it to be granted soon after she returned. “I don’t know if it was a religious calling for her to do it,” Supreethini told the Guardian. “But she certainly loved the treks in New Zealand too, and would go on lots of long hikes.” A Brisbane man, Narayan Panthi, is also missing in the region. According to Nepal police, he was travelling with Kathmandu Holiday but he has also been conducting charity work in the capital with an education fund, the NeNas Foundation. Panthi’s cousin, Amrit Bhusal, said his family was devastated but “holding on to hope and praying for positive news”. “We are still hoping,” Bhusal said. “We are still searching. We are still praying for Narayan to come home safely.” Bhusal said Panthi was “helping disadvantaged children in Nepal reach their full potential through education”. New South Wales couple Venkatraman Balakrishnan, 52, and his wife, Chitra Venkatraman, 46, were also among the 15 Australians travelling to Mount Kailash. So too were Sreedharan and Lakshmi Iyer, and their adult sons Rishab, 23, and Rudhra, 20. The brothers played cricket for West Pennant Hills Cherrybrook Cricket Club in Sydney’s north-west. “WPHCCC is aware of the reports that two of our players, Rishab and Rudhra Iyer, along with their family members and other Australians, are unaccounted for in the ongoing floods in Nepal,” the club said in a statement. “We continue to live in hope, and our thoughts are currently with them, their loved ones and all affected by this tragedy in Nepal.” The University of Newcastle’s vice-chancellor, Alex Zelinsky, said Rishab and Rudhra were both medical students the at the university. “We are thinking of them, their families, their fellow students and teaching staff, as well as the many people who have been impacted by this devastating event and we hope that both students can be located soon,” Zelinsky said in a statement. Separate groups of Australians – 11 travelling with Trekkers Society and six with Kailash Journeys – are also unaccounted for. Both tour companies have been contacted for comment. Several other Australians were travelling with other tour groups. It is understood the majority of missing Australians are from New South Wales, but there are also some from Victoria and Queensland. The founder and chief executive of Himalayan Glacier Adventures, Sagar Pandey, said he had lost all contact with his tour group of 47 people, which included the 15 Australians. Pandey told the Guardian on Thursday he had flown by helicopter over the Rasuwa area, where the tour was staying, since the flood and had little hope they survived. “To be honest … you would think there was no human civilisation there at all. “The flash flood swept away everything, everything. You couldn’t see any human creations. “Still, I have a hope.” The Isha Foundation confirmed that 11 Australians were among a group of 80 missing pilgrims who had been in an immigration building when the flood hit. The foreign minister, Penny Wong, spoke to her Nepali counterpart, Shisir Khanal, on Friday evening to convey Australia’s deepest condolences following the devastating floods. She outlined Australia’s humanitarian assistance package in which Australia was “rapidly mobilising consular and humanitarian support in response” to the flooding. Wong said the government would send an initial team of three humanitarian response specialists “within the next 48 hours’” to help Australian staff already on the ground. “The extraordinary scale of this disaster and the remoteness of the affected region mean immense challenges lie ahead for the response and recovery.”

‘The flood took everything I have’: survivors grieve for relatives and homes swept away in Nepal

The three women sat together in the army tent and wept. They cried out for their sons, their husbands, their homes. As flash floods coursed through the Himalayan mountains on Wednesday morning, a monstrous black wave took everything from them. As a melting glacier high up in the Himalayas between Tibet and Nepal splintered and crashed into the valley below, it set off a deadly cascade of water, mud and debris down the Bhote Koshi River. The impact of the glacier collapse was so strong that experts initially reported it as an earthquake. The Nepali village homes that lined the riverbank and clung to the mountainside stood little chance. Sangke Dolma Tamang, 61, had been cheerily cooking snacks in her village of Mailung in the Rasuwa district when the floods came without warning. The whole family ran uphill for safety, but as she grabbed for her husband, he slipped from her grip and was washed into the dark, fast-moving waters. “Others tried to pull him to safety, but the flood swept him away,” she said, tears rolling down her weathered cheeks. There was, she said, nothing left of her village now. She had spent a night sheltering on higher ground, until an army helicopter arrived and brought to her safety at the barracks. Her son too was missing since the disaster, and she waited anxiously for any news. “Now I have nothing left to live for,” said Tamang. “The whole house is gone. We couldn’t salvage anything.” Two days after the disaster, at least 579 people have been confirmed dead and more than 1,900 are still missing, the numbers rising by the day. Many in Nepal fear that the true scale of the disaster has yet to emerge, as the worst-hit areas in districts such as Rusawa are only accessible by helicopter. The situation remains even more opaque in Tibet, which is under tight Chinese media control. Though it was at the centre of the disaster, Chinese authorities insist only five people there have died. In the army barracks in the town of Bidur, where Nepal’s rescue efforts were being coordinated, helicopters carrying those rescued from flooded areas continued to arrive every few minutes, while others carrying vital supplies of food and clean water flew out and high up into the mountains. On Friday morning, ground rescue efforts were halted over fears that the river levels were rising once again. But the Nepali army spokesperson, Brig Gen Raja Ram Basnet, said the helicopter rescues would continue for as long as people were missing. He accepted that the death toll was hard to calculate. “Right now, our focus is mostly on finding the living,” he said. Among those recently brought to safety was 60-year-old Murali Maiya Tamang, who had been in Rusawa and was found hanging in a tree. As the flash floods came down the valley, she had watched as her house was washed clean away. She convulsed with tears as she waited desperately for news of her son, who was in their village when the floods struck and has been missing since. “My husband had already died in Nepal’s 2015 earthquake,” she said. “Now this flood has taken away the only son I had left. I am all alone now. What is the point of living now?” Many in the barracks waited of news of their fathers, brothers and husbands who had been working on vast hydroelectric projects along the Bhote Koshi River, many of which were washed away and the tunnels filled with mud. On Friday, footage showed rescuers pulling some workers to safety from within the tunnels. A few miles from the army barracks stood the remains of the town of Bidur, on the banks of the Trishuli River. It was one of the last towns to be hit by the flash floods, but it took just a few minutes for it to be reduced to mangled debris. The ruins of a bank, a government office and an ATM booth stood still half submerged in mud. Rescuers said there were bodies buried inside, but it was still too dangerous and the terrain too unstable to collect them. On Friday afternoon, Nepal’s newly elected home minister, Sudan Gurung, surveyed the damage. “It is so sad to see such a heavy loss of human lives,” he told the Guardian. “Our priority right now is rescuing people. We are searching for everyone who is still missing, assuming that they are all alive. We are searching for everyone, whether they are Nepali citizens or international nationals.” Dozens of local people made attempts to return to the site of their homes, in a bid to collect any remnant of their lives. Most just found a deep abyss of mud. Picking through the deep mud and devastation of the town, Ashok Chaurasia, a shopkeeper, said he had heard the terrifying roar of the water before he saw it. The dark muddy waters already snapped at his heels as they ran uphill for safety, a bridge over the river collapsing behind them. He survived by just 20 seconds, clinging on to the wall of a monastery for dear life. His nephew and his sister-in-law were not so lucky. Yet even as he blessed his survival, he wept at his losses. “We had a three-storey house here, and now there isn’t even a single brick left,” he said. “Nothing can be seen. We have nothing to eat or wear. The flood took everything I have.”

Venezuelan opposition up in arms over reports US wants big stake in oil and gas

Reports that the US is preparing to claim a big stake in Venezuela’s massive energy reserves have sparked an outcry, with critics describing the move as “predatory” and a “rapacious” land grab. Several media outlets this week reported that the Trump administration – which abducted Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, in January and has steered the South American country ever since – hopes to secure long-term access to its oil and gasfields. Venezuela has the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves with an estimated 303bn barrels, compared with Saudi Arabia’s 268bn and Iran’s 208bn. On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal said Trump officials were in “advanced talks” with Venezuelan officials to take “a direct stake in more than a dozen oilfields” containing 90bn barrels, nearly a third of Venezuela’s energy reserves. “This is real and being discussed at the highest levels of the US and Venezuelan governments,” a source told Reuters, which said the fields being negotiated were in the Orinoco Belt and Lake Maracaibo regions. Axios claimed the deal would be “a legacy-defining moment for President Trump”, with one unnamed official telling the US outlet: “Calling this deal huge would be an understatement … It is massive.” Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with the negotiations, said one deal under discussion was a 100-year lease on several oilfields. The reports caused unease and anger among members of Venezuela’s opposition, who are already up in arms about Trump’s failure to bring about genuine political change after capturing Maduro. “It’s a land grab – a massive land grab,” said one well-known opposition figure who asked not to be named because of the sensitivities of criticising the US. “It’s revolting because this is not the United States one would have [expected]. This is not the United States of the Marshall plan. This is a rapacious, mafioso United States,” they added. Since January’s special forces raid on Caracas, Venezuela has been led by an interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice-president and minister of petroleum. Other key members of Maduro’s regime have also retained positions of power, including the interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, who has been collaborating with Trump officials – despite having a $25m (£18m) US bounty on his head for alleged drug trafficking. Meanwhile, the exiled opposition leader, María Corina Machado, whose movement is believed to have won the 2024 presidential elections, has been sidelined. Ricardo Hausmann, an exiled former minister and opposition supporter, wrote on X: “An illegitimate interim government with an illegitimate hydrocarbons law has no legitimacy to strike this unconstitutional deal. It will be a fiasco for all involved.” The economist Francisco Rodríguez urged Venezuela’s national assembly to reject what he called a “predatory deal”. “Handing over Venezuela’s oil wealth to the US contravenes the constitution and is not in the interest of the Venezuelan people – much more when it is done at gunpoint,” Rodríguez said. Luz Mely Reyes, a prominent journalist and government critic, sarcastically called the “surrender” of Venezuela’s natural riches “the deal of the century”. Gregory Brew, an energy historian and Eurasia Group analyst, anticipated “quite a lot of suspicion and rejection of any deal that would hand the United States government effective control over Venezuelan resources”. Brew said the reported deal reminded him of how BP, then the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, controlled the oil resources of Iraq and Iran at the start of the last century. “Anglo-Persian was given a concession by the shah of Iran in 1901 … in exchange for what was essentially a bribe to the Persian government, and it gave the company sweeping rights. The company was essentially in total control of any oil it found and would be able to retain virtually all the profits of any other oil it found and exploited and exported,” Brew said. “From Trump’s point of view, the control over oil is something of an end in and of itself,. But if you do try to rationalise it, I think US dominance over Venezuelan oil reserves allows the US to regard Venezuelan reserves as its own reserves: a source of oil from which the United States can draw and that nobody else has access to. I think that’s how the administration is conceiving of this – excluding China, excluding Russia, but I think also excluding other potential customers for Venezuelan oil,” he said. “It sounds colonial, because it is.” Venezuela’s post-Maduro conversion into what many call a US protectorate is the most dramatic play in Trump’s push to reassert Washington’s influence over Latin America as part of the so-called “Donroe Doctrine”. That policy is a 21st-century adaptation of the 19th-century Monroe doctrine by which President James Monroe sought to keep European powers out of the Americas. Trump’s version is about countering China’s growing footprint in the region and imposing US will through economic and military pressure. Maduro’s downfall has brought some change to Venezuela, with hundreds of political prisoners freed under Rodríguez and talks about reforming the regime-controlled supreme court taking place. But no date has been set for a fresh presidential election and Machado has been unable to return from exile. “Delcy’s been doing a fantastic job,” Trump told reporters last month, claiming Venezuela was “not really ready” for a vote.