Category: Nation & World

DEVIGHAT, Nepal — Rescue teams and military helicopters searched Thursday for hundreds of missing people along the mountainous Nepal-China border, where a deadly torrent of water and mud several stories high swept through communities a day earlier following a glacier collapse.

Videos of the disaster showed people running before the floodwaters swallowed them up and washed out buildings and bridges. More than 390 people were killed, according to authorities in Nepal and China, and more than 1,400 were missing, including hundreds of foreigners and pilgrims. Hundreds of others have been displaced across the Himalayan region.

The steep slopes and lush valleys below the Himalayan mountain range — home to many of the world’s highest peaks and remaining glaciers — are especially vulnerable to flooding and landslides. Melting glaciers have become more common because of human-caused climate change.

Images showed what appeared to be the second floors of buildings in Nepal’s hard-hit Nuwakot district slathered in mud after the torrent rushed by. Riverbanks and village streets were covered in mud. Debris hung from tree branches and wires. Vehicles were buried, and some stunned survivors were caked in mud.

Before-and-after images aired by state broadcaster China Central Television showed a multistory building and more than a dozen vehicles covered in mud. A two-lane road running along a river in a valley in Tibet’s Shigatse prefecture was completely buried. Aerial footage also showed that a lake had formed and expanded on the China-Nepal border, with authorities warning of a possible dam break.

Nirajan Paudyal, a journalist based in Nepal’s capital of Kathmandu, worried for his parents and other relatives in the district’s village of Soley.

“I fear there won’t be any update,” Paudyal said.

U.S. President Donald Trump said the flooding was terrible to see, describing how “strong, well-built buildings were wiped out like they were toothpicks.”

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said the U.S. spoke with Nepalese leaders and offered to provide “anything they want.”

Helicopters deployed for rescue because of damaged roads

The torrential floods that ran miles through mountains left at least 389 people dead and more than 460 injured in Nepal, according to police. Another 910 people are reported to be missing in Nepal. Authorities in Tibet, an autonomous region of China, reported at least three dead and 558 missing.

Nepalese officials said dozens of bridges were destroyed and nearly 25 miles of roads were damaged, complicating search efforts.

The Nepalese army has rescued more than 100 people by helicopter, army spokesperson Brig. Gen. Raja Ram Basnet said. Army teams also evacuated people trapped inside facilities linked to the Trishuli hydropower project, he added.

Dozens of injured people were transported to Kathmandu for medical care.

Rescuers found bodies in Chitwan district hundreds of miles downstream from the hardest-hit areas.

Bishal Kumar Bhandari, chairman of the Nepal Red Cross Society, said the agency has shifted its focus from rescue to large-scale relief operations in the flood-hit districts. He said that around 1,200 people were displaced from at least three villages.

In Tibet, the roaring mudslide that struck Wednesday engulfed a multistory port building and swallowed a bus parking lot at the land border crossing of Gyirong Port. Mud left in the surrounding areas was more than 5 feet deep on average, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported. Roads leading to the crossing were all damaged, while secondary collapses or landslides might occur as rain continued in the area, it added.

China’s premier, Li Qiang, arrived Thursday in Gyirong to direct rescue efforts, alongside 500 military and paramilitary personnel. Military helicopters circled overhead, searching for survivors, assessing the disaster and mapping out possible rescue and evacuation routes.

Chinese authorities also warned that the newly formed lake at the confluence of the Tsogyal and the Purupqiangzangbu rivers is overflowing and may burst. The lake contained 70 million cubic feet of water as of Thursday morning and was expected to receive another 106 million cubic feet in the next three days, China’s Ministry of Water Resources said.

The ministry warned there was a high risk the dam could fail, causing further flooding.

The United Nations’ humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, announced Thursday on X that he ordered the release of $2 million from the U.N.’s Central Emergency Response Fund to help with medical care, shelter, and water. He called the floods “horrifying.”

“We pledge to support national efforts to deliver emergency aid and support,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters.

More than 1,400 are missing, including hundreds of foreigners

Many people in the disaster zone waited to hear whether their loved ones were alive.

Shova Shrestha, 33, has spent more than a day seeking word of her husband, Rajan Shrestha. She said his phone rang when she first called after the floods, but it later became unreachable. Since then, she has watched every helicopter that landed in Bidur, the capital of Nuwakot district, hoping he might be among the survivors.

“I keep looking at each helicopter, hoping he will step out of it,” Shova said.

Among the missing are 517 foreigners, according to Nepal’s tourism board.

They include 178 people from India, more than 60 from the U.S., and people from 30 other countries, including Ukraine, the U.K., South Africa, and Japan, the board said.

Many of the missing may have been on a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash in Tibet, a sacred site for Hindus, Buddhists, and others.

Seventy-seven people from one pilgrimage group were caught in the floods at the immigration office at the border, according to a post on X from Indian spiritual guru Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev.

A visibly emotional Sadhguru said in a video that the group included 22 Americans and others from various countries. He said that there was no official information on their whereabouts.

The U.S. State Department said 90 Americans were unaccounted for in China and Nepal after the flood. The department said it was unaware of any U.S. deaths and that three Americans had been rescued.

The Indian Ministry of External Affairs said Thursday that 288 of the country’s people, including some workers on a power project, were missing.

Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Lin Jian said that nearly 100 Chinese citizens were missing in Nepal. According to preliminary information, 260 of those missing in Tibet were foreigners, he said.

A glacier collapse may have caused floods

The U.S. Geological Survey first reported a magnitude 4.4 earthquake early Wednesday, about 40 miles north of Kathmandu, near the border.

The agency later updated its analysis to say the seismic event was instead a magnitude 5.2 glacier collapse that sent debris flowing downstream.

Climate experts at the Kathmandu-based International Center for Integrated Mountain Development said an avalanche from a glacier likely caused Wednesday’s flash flood.

In an emailed statement, they said water levels at one point on the Trishuli River rose by as much as 27 feet in half an hour.

The increasingly unstable Himalayan ice system threatens communities, infrastructure and water supplies across one of the world’s most densely populated regions.

The region saw similar flash floods in August 2025, when a glacial lake in Tibet overflowed because of high temperatures. Nine people were killed, and critical infrastructure, including a bridge connecting Nepal and China, was damaged.

A judge in California has ordered Bill Cosby or his lawyers into court next month to address questions about his assets as a woman who sued him for sexually assaulting her seeks to enforce payment of a $59 million judgment she was awarded earlier this year.

In March, a civil jury made the award after finding that Cosby had drugged and sexually assaulted the woman, Donna Motsinger, a former server at a Sausalito restaurant, after escorting her to one of his comedy shows in 1972.

In court papers, lawyers for Motsinger said Cosby, 89, hasn’t paid anything toward the judgment and, citing bank records, raised concern that in the past he and his family had moved assets around in a way that could hinder their ability to collect the judgment.

“Cosby has paid none of the judgment, while showing a clear record of liquidating assets and then immediately dissipating the proceeds,” Motsinger’s lawyers wrote in court papers.

Lawyers for Cosby did not respond to a request for comment.

A hearing in the effort to enforce the judgment had originally been scheduled for January in Los Angeles Superior Court. But Motsinger’s lawyers, citing the financial transactions outlined in the court papers, asked the judge in the case, Bradley S. Phillips, to move up the date. In an order issued Tuesday, the hearing was set for September.

Cosby has consistently maintained that any sexual contact he had with women was consensual. He has lodged an appeal of the trial finding.

Judgments become due at the time they are awarded, though enforcement of them is left to the party who won to arrange. The lawyers for Motsinger wrote in the complaint that Cosby had failed to respond to post-judgment questions meant to identify his assets.

One of the lawyers, Jesse Creed, detailed financial transactions in court papers that, while they occurred before the award of the judgment, were indicative, he argued, of an effort to transfer assets in ways that could prevent them from being subject to an enforcement action. For example, he cited bank records obtained by subpoena that showed that proceeds from the sale of a New York town house were wired into a Cosby account last November and within 48 hours, $1.29 million was transferred to other accounts, including those belonging to friends.

Though dozens of women have come forward to accuse Cosby of sexual abuse, he was only criminally charged in one case. He was convicted, but in 2021 that conviction was overturned for procedural reasons after Cosby had served three years of a three- to 10-year sentence at a prison outside Philadelphia.

In that case, he was convicted of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee to whom Cosby had become a mentor. He was freed after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that a “non-prosecution agreement” with a previous prosecutor meant he should not have been charged.

Cosby promoted the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision as a full exoneration, and over the years, Cosby’s lawyers have depicted him as someone who unfairly became a target of the emotions stirred by the #MeToo movement.

But the Motsinger case is one of two recent civil court findings that reinforce an image of him as a person who wielded his celebrity to take advantage of women.

After his release from prison, Cosby was the subject of a civil trial in 2022 brought by another accuser, Judy Huth. In that case, the jury found that Cosby had sexually assaulted Huth in 1975, when as a 16-year-old girl she accepted his invitation to join him at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.

In Motsinger’s lawsuit, she described how Cosby had attacked her when they were both in their 30s, after giving her wine and a pill that had left her incapacitated. Cosby did not testify at the trial.

Years ago, Motsinger’s case would have been time-barred because she did not make the accusation until after the expiration of the statute of limitations for such suits. But her case became possible because California is among the states that have amended the statutes in sexual assault cases so accusers can come forward even after a lengthy passage of time.

Cosby says he has recently run into financial difficulties. During a deposition in the Motsinger case, he described being unable to get the high-profile work he once enjoyed as a comedy star whose television series “The Cosby Show” became a major success.

But an expert witness Motsinger’s lawyers called to the stand before the jury’s final decision this year estimated that Cosby was worth roughly $128 million.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.