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With 350+ dead and 1,300 missing, Nepal carnage seen as climate disaster

27 August 2026 at 18:34
This aerial view shows houses laying partially submerged in muddy water along a riverside after flash floods at Trishuli Bazar in Nepal's Nuwakot district on August 26, 2026. Photo by Prabin RANABHAT / AFP via Getty Images
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This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Aug. 27, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.

Scientists and climate action campaigners on Thursday pointed to the collapse of a glacier as a likely cause of disastrous flash flooding in Tibet and Nepal’s Rasuwa district, where emergency workers are searching for more than 1,300 missing people after water and mud poured into the Trishuli River valley, crashing through villages where thousands of people live and sweeping away bridges, homes, and miles of roads.

An initial assessment by geologists and glaciologists found that in satellite imagery taken before the flooding, a glacier was seen about 4,000 feet above the valley where at least 353 people were later killed Wednesday by the rushing waters and mudslide.

The glacier appeared about 2 million square feet smaller after the flooding, while the valley was “strewn with ice and mud” and the nearby river was “swollen beyond its banks, submerging the surrounding vegetation beneath murky brown floodwaters.

The scientists said an “ice avalanche”—a massive chunk of ice that fell off a glacier in the mountainous region and into the valley below, was likely at least partially to blame for the flash flooding, but noted that it was too early to rule out other or additional causes.

The satellite imagery appeared to show that “a glacier in the area basically snapped off in a clean break, allowing it to fall just over a vertical kilometer to the valley bottom,” Daniel Shugar, a geologist at the University of Calgary in Canada, told The New York Times. “The bottom looks like a bomb exploded—it’s just deposits from the broken-up glacier.”

The chunk of ice was likely about 2,000 feet wide, Shugar told the Times, and fell nearly 4,000 feet—a fall that would have “pulverized” the ice into water.

Aakriti Dotel, national network coordinator for the climate action group Nepalese Youth for Climate Action said the floods were “another painful reminder of the growing climate crisis facing Nepal and the Himalayas.”

“As our glaciers melt and extreme weather events become increasingly unpredictable, communities living downstream are bearing the devastating consequences,” said Dotel. “We mourn the lives lost and the livelihoods affected and call for urgent global climate action. There must be stronger support for vulnerable mountain communities, and accountability from those most responsible for the climate crisis.”

The disaster stunned officials in the area, where there had been no rainfall before the floodwaters and mudslide overtook the region.

Intense videos circulating on social media Wednesday showed people attempting to run away as water and mud crashed into villages in the region.

🇳🇵🌊 Nepal flash flood kills at least 95, hundreds missing

➤ A massive flash flood swept away villages in Nepal’s mountainous Rasuwa district near the Tibet border Wednesday, killing at least 95 people and leaving hundreds missing, including 384 tourists and eight South Korean…

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 26, 2026

Tom Fletcher, the United Nations humanitarian chief, said he had mobilized $2 million from the UN Global Emergency Fund “to save lives with emergency medical care, shelter, water.”

The secretary-general of the Nepal Red Cross told CNN that about 20,000 houses have been “swept away” in the region.

“These people do not have anything,” said Rishi Khanal. “To feed them for some time, some days is a very serious thing to us… The shelter problem is there. The drinking water problem is there.”

A truly desperate assessment out of Nepal from the Secretary General of @NepalRedCross: pic.twitter.com/QrJ4vZhmSz

— Becky Anderson (@BeckyCNN) August 26, 2026

A police officer in the village of Syabrubesi told the Times that waves of water crashed into his police station Wednesday morning, right after he got off the phone with a friend who had warned him a flood was headed toward the town.

“One of my senior officers and I were together when the wave struck. I was thrown out, but he was unlucky and was buried or swept away,” he told the newspaper. “I cannot explain how big the waves were. They engulfed several-meters-high buildings in a fraction of seconds… It wasn’t just water. It was a combination of boulders, sand, and thick sludge.”

Seven people were working at the station when the flood hit, and the officer is one of three who have been found alive. He said he was concerned that the other four are among the missing.

Homes, schools, government buildings, and the office of a hydropower project are among the infrastructure destroyed in Syabrubesi.

More than 160 glaciers in Nepal have entirely melted in recent decades, as scientists have warned that continued fossil fuel extraction is heating the planet and causing dangerous extreme weather. The area of the country’s glaciers also shrank by about one-quarter between 1970-2010.

At The Conversation, Levan Tielidze, a research fellow in glacial geomorphology at Monash University, wrote that “it’s too early to say this was the exact cause. But we know that the great ice stores of the Himalayas—known as the world’s ‘third pole’ because it contains the largest amount of snow and ice after the Arctic and Antarctic—are no longer safe.”

Tielidze continued:

What happened in Nepal is likely due to an enormous ice-and-rock landslide sweeping down a mountain pass and gathering up ice, water, rock, trees and dirt.
The landslide was so large it was originally thought to be an earthquake, as the seismic energy registered as a 4.4 magnitude quake on seismographs.
By the time it reached Gyirong Port—a China-Nepal border crossing—the wall of debris resembled a tsunami of dirt. Early estimates suggest the wave may have been 30 meters high.

Rising global temperatures have been linked to previous collapses of glaciers, including in Switzerland last year when the Birch Glacier wiped out nearly an entire town of 300 residents, who had evacuated before the disaster. Eleven mountain climbers were also killed by a glacier collapse in Italy in 2022.

“Every destabilized glacier in a warming Himalaya is a ticking time bomb that can go off unannounced, and when it does, those least responsible for the climate crisis pay with their lives,” said Savio Carvalho, head of campaigns and networks for 350.org. “This moment of grief has a clear message for world leaders: Delay is deadly. Rich countries must finally deliver the finance and protection they owe frontline communities. Without a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, the planet will continue to heat up and lives can be lost in a flash.”

Germany: 3 Afghan men gang filmed themselves laughing as they gang raped a young girl

27 August 2026 at 15:21

A young German woman from the feminist group Lukreta has posted a video decrying yet another gang rape by foreigners in her country, this time involving three Afghan suspects who are accused of gang raping a 17-year-old girl in Dortmund, filming the rape, and then laughing as they traumatized the victim.

The three men – 20-year-old Quais W., 19-year-old Burhanulla N., and 25-year-old Kambiz H. – are currently on trial in Dortmund Regional Court involving a range of serious charges, including rape and the filming of a pornographic video of a minor.

🇩🇪🔴 "Three Afghan men raped a 17-year-old girl in Dortmund, filmed the act, and even laughed while doing so."

A young German woman says the case was "covered neither by public broadcasters nor by the political Left."

Why? Because the suspects were Afghan.

The suspects are… pic.twitter.com/7rOIcag13I

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) August 26, 2026

The three men reportedly lured the girl to their apartment in September 2024 in the city of Dortmund under a false pretext. However, once in the apartment, the suspects got the girl so intoxicated with alcohol that she lost consciousness.

“During the night, the witness lost consciousness as a result of alcohol consumption. The accused then took advantage of this situation,” said prosecutor Fabian Weishaupt.

The three men then systematically raped the girl and filmed themselves laughing. One of them even opened the unconscious girl’s eyes with his finger.

According to Bild, the three suspects all have extensive criminal records, including robbery, attacks against law enforcement, drug trafficking, assault, and other offenses.

As for the Lukreta feminist group, one of their members stated that the case was “covered neither by public broadcasters nor by the political Left even though it can hardly be surpassed in terms of abnormality and misogyny.”

“The reason, of course, is that the three perpetrators are all of Afghan origin and known to the police,” she said.

In other words, the media and left-wing feminist groups are very careful when perpetrators of such attacks are foreigners, but only because such cases are rapidly fueling the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. The data is also clear. Remix News reported that last year, a record-high number of suspects involved in gang rape were foreigners, reaching 53 percent for the first time.

The young woman from Lukreta also has little faith in the German justice system and questions whether the Afghan men will be deported if convicted, stating: “Whether the three Afghans will even be justly convicted is questionable. What is certain, however, is that in the event of deportation, far-left Antifa activists will be at the airport to prevent the flight of the rapists.”

The post Germany: 3 Afghan men gang filmed themselves laughing as they gang raped a young girl appeared first on Remix News.

France: Romanian national sentenced to 12 years for running over elderly woman and then stealing husband’s necklace as he delivered first aid

By: admin
27 August 2026 at 11:03

A Romanian man in his forties was sentenced to twelve years of imprisonment after a violent burglary in the French city of Peyrolles-en-Provence left a 65-year-old woman with severe injuries. The Aix-en-Provence criminal court handed down the heavy sentence in an immediate appearance hearing, citing the gravity of the facts and the defendant’s criminal history.

On Aug. 16, 2026, around 3:20 p.m. elderly couple Dominique and Chantal B. were at their home when they discovered an intruder inside. Chantal B., aged 65, surprised the Romanian and immediately alerted French police.

According to Joël Scherer, deputy commander of the Bouches-du-Rhône gendarmerie, the incident escalated quickly.

“A 65-year-old woman surprised the suspect in her home. She immediately calls the gendarmes. The individual then flees. The lady tries to record his license plate. Seeing this, the accused did not hesitate to run her over,” he said.

The woman had positioned herself to record the vehicle’s registration as the man attempted to drive away. While her husband reached for the Romanian suspect’s keys in the ignition, the perpetrator deliberately drove into the woman, running her over.

Chantal B. suffered multiple fractures, including to the pelvis and vertebrae, and was airlifted by helicopter to Hôpital Nord in Marseille, according to local newspaper La Provence.

Instead of fleeing immediately, the Romanian stopped his vehicle a short distance away, returned to the scene, and snatched a gold necklace from the husband’s neck while the husband was administering first aid.

After the suspect fled, police quickly obtained his license plate information and pursued him during a high-speed car chase. The man rammed a roadblock set up by officers, collided with a police service vehicle, and he was then immobilized and arrested in the Saint-Paul-lès-Durance area.

The defendant, already known to authorities for prior offenses involving violent thefts and burglaries, appeared before the Aix-en-Provence tribunal in an expedited procedure. Prosecutors emphasized the deliberate nature of the violence against a vulnerable elderly homeowner and the additional theft committed while the victim lay injured.

The case has drawn attention for the outrageous actions of the Romanian, including returning to the scene solely to steal jewelry from the husband who was trying to save his wife. Local authorities have not publicly released the defendant’s full name.

The post France: Romanian national sentenced to 12 years for running over elderly woman and then stealing husband’s necklace as he delivered first aid appeared first on Remix News.

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