Category World News

Seven Italian climbers are missing in Nepal’s Himalayan mountains after heavy snowstorms and avalanches have killed at least nine people in recent days.

Three Italian climbers were among five foreigners and two Nepali guides who were confirmed killed on Monday when a huge avalanche smashed through a base camp near the summit of Mount Yalung Ri in Nepal’s Himalayan range, according to reports.

Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Wednesday that local authorities had confirmed the deaths of the three Italian climbers, but there “remains no news of seven other Italian nationals” who have been reported missing.

“In recent days, several areas of the Nepalese Himalayas have been affected by a series of avalanches that have struck numerous mountaineers, including Italian citizens,” the ministry said.

“Communication between local authorities, rescue teams, and the diplomatic missions of the countries involved continues to be extremely challenging,” the ministry added.

Nepal’s Department of Tourism director, Himal Gautam, said there was no immediate information about the fate of the seven people reported missing.

Nepal’s Himalayan Times newspaper reported on Wednesday that the bodies of an Italian and a French climber were recovered from the site of the avalanche that struck a group of 12 people at their base camp on Mount Yalung Ri on Monday.

The seven people killed at the camp included three Italians, two Nepalis, a German and a French climber and, according to the newspaper, five others were rescued, including three Nepalis and two French nationals.

7 climbers, including 5 foreigners killed in Yalung Ri avalanche pic.twitter.com/eM424vMQjp

French survivor Isabelle Solange Thaon, 54, who lost her husband, Christian Manfred, in the avalanche on Yalung Ri, told The Associated Press news agency that she was lucky to have survived with another French climber, Didier Armand.

“We were lucky,” Thaon said from her hospital bed in the capital Kathmandu, adding that she had jumped over rocks and swam in the snow of the avalanche until help arrived to pull them out.

“Unfortunately, Christian died … because rocks hit his head,” she said of her late husband.

Mount Yalung Ri, located in the Rolwaling Valley of northeastern Nepal, is a 5,600-metre (18,370-foot) peak considered suitable for novice mountaineers.

On Friday, in western Nepal, contact was lost with two Italian climbers, who were later confirmed to have died while attempting to scale the 6,887-metre (22,595-foot) Panbari mountain.

Nepal was hit last week by unseasonal rains and heavy snow due to the impact of Cyclone Montha, which left many trekkers and tourists stranded on popular Himalayan trekking routes.

United States President Donald Trump has suggested that he is open to assisting New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, but warned that the trailblazing democratic socialist will need to be “respectful” of Washington to succeed.

Trump made the comments on Wednesday as Mamdani announced his transition team following his historic election as the first Muslim and first South Asian mayor of the US’s largest city.

Responding to Mamdani’s victory night remarks pledging to stand up to Trump, the US president described the mayor-elect’s comments as a “dangerous statement”.

“He has to be a little bit respectful of Washington, because if he’s not, he doesn’t have a chance of succeeding,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier.

“And I want to make him succeed. I want to make the city succeed,” Trump added, before quickly clarifying that he wanted New York City, not Mamdani, to succeed.

Earlier on Wednesday, Trump suggested that his administration would “help” the new mayor, even as he branded him a “communist”.

“The communists, Marxists, and globalists had their chance, and they delivered nothing but disaster, and now let’s see how a communist does in New York. We’re going to see how that works out,” Trump said in a speech to the American Business Forum in Miami, Florida.

“We’ll help him, we’ll help him. We want New York to be successful. We’ll help him a little bit, maybe.”

Trump railed against Mamdani in the run-up to Tuesday’s mayoral election in New York, describing him as a “communist lunatic” and threatening to cut off federal funding to the city if he won the race.

Mamdani, whose platform includes free universal childcare, free buses, and government-run grocery stores, has rejected the communist label, describing himself as a democratic socialist.

While Mamdani will be responsible for governing a city of about 8.5 million people, his election has been widely seen as having implications nationwide amid the Democratic Party’s struggles to reconcile its centrist and progressive factions and effectively counter Trump.

In his victory speech, Mamdani cast his election as a model for how to defeat Trump, addressing the TV-loving president directly by telling him to “turn the volume up”.

In a speech laying out his priorities on Wednesday, Mamdani, who is set to take office on January 1, reiterated his determination to oppose Trump, while also indicating his willingness to engage with the administration.

“I will not mince my words when it comes to President Trump,” the mayor-elect said.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has called for sexual harassment to be made a crime nationwide after being groped on the street while greeting supporters near the presidential palace in Mexico City.

Sheinbaum, 63, said on Wednesday that she had pressed charges against the man and would review nationwide legislation on sexual harassment following the attack by a drunk man who put his arm around her shoulder, and with the other hand touched her hip and chest, while attempting to kiss her neck.

Mexico’s first woman president removed the man’s hands before a member of her staff stepped between them. The president’s security detail did not appear to be nearby at the moment of the attack, which was caught on camera.

The man was later arrested.

“My thinking is: If I don’t file a complaint, what becomes of other Mexican women? If this happens to the president, what will happen to all the women in our country?” Sheinbaum told her regular morning news conference on Wednesday.

In a post on social media, the president said the attack was “something that many women experience in the country and in the world”.

Presenté una denuncia por el episodio de acoso que viví ayer en la Ciudad de México. Debe quedar claro que, más allá de ser presidenta, esto es algo que viven muchas mujeres en el país y en el mundo; nadie puede vulnerar nuestro cuerpo y espacio personal.

Revisaremos la… pic.twitter.com/jcs6FweI6q

Translation: I filed a complaint for the harassment episode that I experienced yesterday in Mexico City. It must be clear that, beyond being president, this is something that many women experience in the country and in the world; no one can violate our body and personal space. We will review the legislation so that this crime is punishable in all 32 states.

Sheinbaum explained that the incident occurred when she and her team had decided to walk from the National Palace to the Education Ministry to save time. She said they could walk the route in five minutes, rather than taking a 20-minute car ride.

She also called on states across Mexico to look at their laws and procedures to make it easier for women to report such assaults and said Mexicans needed to hear a “loud and clear, no, women’s personal space must not be violated”.

Mexico’s 32 states and Mexico City, which is a federal entity, all have their own criminal codes, and not all states consider sexual harassment a crime.

“It should be a criminal offence, and we are going to launch a campaign,” Sheinbaum said, adding that she had suffered similar attacks in her youth.

The incident has put the focus on Mexico’s troubling record on women’s safety, with sexual harassment commonplace and rights groups warning of a femicide crisis, and the United Nations reporting that an average of 10 women are murdered every day in the country.

About 70 percent of Mexican women aged 15 and over will also experience at least one incident of sexual harassment in their lives, according to the UN.

The attack also focused criticism on Sheinbaum’s security detail and on her insistence on maintaining a degree of intimacy with the public, despite Mexican politicians regularly being a target of cartel violence.

But Sheinbaum dismissed any suggestion that she would increase her security or change how she interacts with people following the incident.

Here is how things stand on Thursday, November 6:

Fighting

• The Russian Ministry of Defence said encircled Ukrainian troops in the cities of Pokrovsk and Kupiansk should surrender as they have no chance to save themselves otherwise.
• Russia said its forces were advancing north inside Pokrovsk in a drive to take full control of the Ukrainian city, but the Ukrainian army said its units were battling hard to try to stop the Russians from gaining new ground.
• Ukraine has acknowledged its troops face a difficult situation in the strategic eastern city, once an important transport and logistics hub for the Ukrainian army, which Russia has been trying to capture for more than a year.
• Russia sees Pokrovsk city as the gateway to its capture of the remaining 10 percent, or 5,000 square-kilometres(1,930 square miles), of Ukraine’s eastern industrial Donbas region, one of its key aims in the almost four-year-old war.
• A Ukrainian drone attack caused minor damage to oil pumping stations in two districts of Russia’s Yaroslavl region, Mikhail Yevrayev, the regional governor, said.

Energy

• Ukraine has resumed gas imports from a pipeline that runs across the Balkan peninsula to Greece, to keep its heating and electric systems running through the winter after widespread damage from intensified Russian attacks on Kyiv’s energy infrastructure.
• Data from the Ukrainian gas transit operator showed that Ukraine will receive 1.1 million cubic metres (mcm) of gas from the Transbalkan route on Wednesday, after the import of 0.78 mcm on Tuesday. The route links Ukraine to LNG terminals in Greece, via Moldova, Romania and Bulgaria.
• Poland is working on a deal to import liquefied natural gas from the United States to supply Ukraine and Slovakia, an agreement that would further tighten the European Union’s ties to US energy, the Reuters news agency reports, citing two sources familiar with the negotiations.

Nuclear weapons

• Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his top officials to draft proposals for a possible test of nuclear weapons, something Moscow has not done since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
• Putin’s order – made in response to US President Donald Trump’s announcement last week that Washington would resume nuclear testing – is being seen as a signal that the two countries are rapidly nearing a step that could sharply escalate geopolitical tensions.
• The US notified Russia in advance of its test launch of an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on November 5, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported, citing Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.
• Russia-US relations have deteriorated sharply in the past few weeks as Trump, frustrated with a lack of progress towards ending the war in Ukraine, has cancelled a planned summit with Putin and imposed sanctions on Russia for the first time since returning to the White House in January.
• Trump said he “may be working on a plan to denuclearise” with China and Russia, during a speech at the American Business Forum in Miami.

Sanctions

• Bulgaria is drafting legal changes that will allow it to seize control of sanctioned Russian oil firm Lukoil’s Burgas refinery and sell it to a new owner to protect the plant from US sanctions, local media reported.
• Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna called on China to stop its economic support of Russia’s war in Ukraine and urged Beijing to join European and US efforts to pressure President Putin into a ceasefire.
• “China says that they are not part of this military conflict, but I was very clear that China has huge leverage over Russia, every week more and more, because the Russian economy is weak,” Tsahkna told Reuters.

Economy

• Ukraine plans to replace its kopek coins to shake off a lingering symbol of Moscow’s former dominance, Central Bank Governor Andriy Pyshnyi said, adding that he hoped the change could be completed this year.
• Ukraine introduced its hryvnia currency in 1996, five years after it gained independence from the Soviet Union, minting its own coins but retaining the former Soviet name kopek – kopiyka in Ukrainian. The new coins will be known by the historical Ukrainian term “shah”.

The agency made the announcement on Wednesday as it struggles with staffing issues brought on by air traffic controllers’ unpaid work and delays across the country.

The agency, according to FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, is not going to wait until a problem arises because the shutdown is putting pressure on staff and “we can’t ignore it.”

Later on Wednesday, Bedford and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy will discuss how to safely implement the reduction. They will meet with airline leaders.

Widespread delays

13, 000 air traffic controllers and 50, 000 TSA officers were forced to work unpaid because of the shutdown, which is currently in its 36th day. This has resulted in longer lines at airport security screening, increased staff shortages, and widespread flight delays.

The action aims to relieve air traffic controllers of pressure. If additional air traffic issues arise after Friday, the FAA has also warned that it may impose more restrictions on flights.

Duffy had earlier warned on Tuesday that if the government shutdown lasted for another week, it could cause “mass chaos” and force him to shut down some of the country’s airspace, a drastic move that could end American aviation.

Airlines have repeatedly called for the shutdown to end, citing concerns about aviation safety.

In extended trading, the shares of major airlines, including United Airlines and American Airlines, dropped by about 1%.

Since the shutdown started on October 1st, an industry group estimated that more than 3.2 million passengers have experienced flight delays or cancellations as a result of increasing air traffic controller absences. Legislators have been concerned about the impact on operations from airlines.

Airlines claim that the government shutdown hasn’t had a significant impact on their business, but they’ve warned that if it drags on, bookings may decrease. On Wednesday, there were more than 2,100 delays.

According to FAA’s Bedford, 20 to 40% of controllers at the agency’s 30 largest airports were late arriving for work on Tuesday.