We are unsure of what caused the ferry to capsize, the extent of the injuries of the wounded and the nationalities/identities of the seven people confirmed to have died. We will bring you any new information as it comes.
Here are some images of rescuers and army personnel in Nepal trying to locate the thousands of people who are still missing.
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.”
Voters in Iceland have rejected the government’s proposal to hold accession talks with the European Union after a closely fought campaign that has divided the country. After a long and anxious night for those on both sides of the debate, the no camp ended up with 52.8% of votes and the yes camp with 47.2%. Voter turnout was high at 82.5%. After the final results were released on Sunday morning, the Icelandic government said it would be holding a press conference to “review the results of the referendum” at 1pm local time. The result deals a blow to Brussels, which had been keen to welcome a wealthy new member and which had appeared willing to compromise with Iceland on thorny issues to facilitate its accession. It quickly attracted the attention of anti-EU European leaders. The government in Reykjavík had framed its membership plan as a “now or never” moment, and the prime minister, Kristrún Frostadóttir, told voters in August that a no vote would put all EU speculation aside. On Sunday, she told the public broadcaster RUV she hoped the result 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 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. Yes campaigners said joining the bloc could ease high interest rates and offer more security in a world unsettled by war in Ukraine and the US president, Donald Trump’s rhetoric about annexing another Arctic island, Greenland. But campaigners for no said EU membership would threaten the country’s sovereignty and fishing waters. Their victory was hailed on Sunday by the far-right French leader Marine Le Pen. “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,” Le Pen wrote on X. Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, wrote on the same platform: “Congratulations to Iceland on voting to keep their independence.” Iceland first applied to join the EU in 2009 when a financial crisis hit the country’s small, exposed economy. A Eurosceptic government ended talks in 2013. The current government pledged to hold a referendum when it came into office, but it ended up being held much earlier than expected. Geopolitical turmoil over Greenland, war in the Middle East and US import tariffs brought urgency to an issue Icelanders had debated on and off for decades. Hulda Þórisdóttir, a politics professor at the University of Iceland, said she was not surprised by the results 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,’” said Hulda. “But, very importantly, it seems clear to me that the no campaign was much, much better funded.” Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this story.
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 were 768 confirmed deaths, and reports of some bodies swept downstream possibly as far as India. Nepal said it had begun the grim task of burying some of the hundreds of bodies after first taking DNA samples so that families could later reclaim them and perform traditional funeral rites after identification. The disaster, which struck the border on Wednesday morning, was caused by a glacial collapse, sending 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 the 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. 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 against time 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 devastating 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 into the 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 temporarily 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 injured patients’ lists in the hope of finding them. Dil Maya Lama stood weeping outside the help desk at the hospital, searching for information about her missing 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 anxiously 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
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.”
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.”
The striking photograph showed a lone Black woman, her fist raised, standing in the path of hundreds of uniformed neo-Nazis on parade in 2016, and it made headlines across the globe. At the time, it was held up as a symbol of the resistance to the far right. But 10 years on, as Sweden gears up for elections in which the far right is expected to emerge as the second most-voted-for party, the woman in the photo sees it as a sign of the bewildering change that has gripped the Scandinavian country. “Ten years ago, people would say, ‘Oh we dislike the far right, the Sweden Democrats, we despise Nazis,’” said Tess Asplund, 52. “And now, they’ve become normalised. It’s like, what happened?” Her comments hint at the recent reshaping of Swedish politics, where the far right – once a pariah – has steadily marched into the halls of power. “I’m sad, afraid and ashamed of Swedish citizens,” said Asplund in an interview at a cafe in central Stockholm. “It’s pure racism.” Ahead of a general election on 13 September, polls suggest that the centre-left opposition has a lead over the ruling rightwing coalition, meaning a change of government could be on the cards. But the Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots, is expected to garner the second-most votes in the country. In the 2022 elections, it also came second, paving the way for it to play a supporting role in a minority-run coalition. The party has long been dogged by accusations of harbouring violent racists and swastika-wearing Nazi sympathisers. It has used its leverage in government to consistently target migrants, including asylum seekers, as well as Muslims, ushering in ultra-restrictive migration policies and a discourse that routinely disparages the millions of people from around the world who have made Sweden their home and seek to contribute to it. Earlier this year, the Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, mused that if his four-party coalition won the upcoming election, the far right could enter government, in what was seen as a watershed moment for Swedish politics. It was a sharp contrast to the Sweden that Aspland had stood up for on 1 May 2016. She and scores of others had travelled to the central Swedish city of Borlänge to rally against a planned march by the Nordic Resistance Movement, one of the country’s largest neo-Nazi groups. As she faced off against them, her act of defiance was caught on camera by photographer David Lagerlöf of Expo, the anti-racism foundation in Stockholm. It soon went viral, with Swedish media likening it to another iconic image of resistance: a 1985 photo in which photographer Hans Runesson captured a woman taking aim at a skinhead with her handbag in the south-western city of Växjö. Media requests poured in from around the world. In Sweden, people began stopping Asplund on the streets, thanking her for her gesture, though she also grappled with a stream of online harassment and death threats on her home telephone line. For Asplund, who has spent much of her life campaigning against racism, it was a sobering frontline encounter with the far-right spectrum of Sweden, which ranges from the extremist Nordic Resistance Movement, which in 2024 was designated as a terror group by the US, to the Sweden Democrats, who have long worked to make over their image. A 2023 study noted that the presence of the two groups, both of which have shared roots in their militant opposition to immigration, probably works to bolster their causes by keeping issues of immigration and integration on Sweden’s political agenda. Or, in the words of Mohammad Aluaudt Allah, a Syrian refugee who was kicked unconscious on a street in central Stockholm last year, the politicians who blame immigrants for all of the country’s issues have “created a sense of impunity for violent Nazi groups”. “They may feel that they are being given permission to exercise their hatred and attack us,” he told newspaper Dagens Nyheter. The view was echoed by Asplund. “The Nordic Resistance Movement, they’re kind of small now, we don’t hear so much about them any more,” she said. “They don’t have to be big because Sweden Democrats are big, so they’ve got people doing their work in the government. The Nazis are in the shadows.” The resulting rhetoric had then been amplified by some in media, she said, pointing to those who had uncritically swallowed the far right’s blaming of all social and economic ills on migration. What had emerged was a hardened Sweden, one where, for example, dozens of young people who had lived their whole lives in Sweden had been deported to their parents’ countries of birth after they failed to meet the increased earnings thresholds for migrants. “Thirty years ago, we would be on the street fighting against this. Now it’s like, ‘That’s sad for him or her.’ It’s a shift that really scares me,” she said. “If Olof Palme were alive today, he would turn over in his grave,” she added, citing the assassinated former leader of Sweden’s Social Democratic party, who is credited with many of the progressive policies long associated with Sweden, from the robust social welfare system to a pro-refugee discourse that welcomed those escaping dictatorships and war. She noted, however, that her disappointment and shame did not extend to everyone in Sweden. “We are many, many people here fighting for human rights and against racism,” she said. But in some ways, the photo – hailed in 2016 for capturing one of the conflicts of our time – seemed to pit Palme’s Sweden against the march of the far right. In the years since, Asplund despaired that it may have been the far right who had emerged victorious. “I’m afraid and heartbroken because when I speak to people they’re like, ‘Oh for God’s sake, forget that. It was 20 years ago that there were Nazis and skinheads, now it’s gone,’” she said. “They’ve normalised it. It’s not my safe Sweden any more, it’s not the Sweden that I’m used to.”