International

This Friday in Nepal, excavators continue searching through the mud for victims of the massive flood from two days ago. The police have raised the death toll to 469, while lowering the number of missing persons to 910. On the Tibetan side of the Himalayas, meanwhile, Chinese authorities suspended rescue operations for hours after detecting an imminent risk of overflow at an altitude of 2,900 meters. It is believed to be a natural dam formed by debris from the first flood, containing two million cubic meters of water, which is already showing signs of leakage.

On February 28, the United States and Israeli Armed Forces launched a risky military campaign against Iran with the declared objective of overthrowing the Islamic regime, eliminating its nuclear program once and for all, and ending the threat capacity of its allied militias in the region. Emboldened by a swift and successful operation in Venezuela in January, when they kidnapped the dictator Nicolás Maduro in one night, President Donald Trump promised the American people that this would be a new “excursion” lasting “four or five weeks.” By the end of March, when the deadline arrived, he said it would take “maybe two more weeks to finish the job.” Since then, Trump has repeatedly declared that the Pentagon has emerged victorious, despite the reality on the ground showing a very different picture.

The king is dead, long live the King. Minutes after Harald of Norway was officially declared deceased, his son, and until now crown prince, Haakon, in accordance with the Norwegian constitution, has automatically assumed the head of state, becoming the fourth king of the modern era of Norway after his great-grandfather, Haakon VII, his grandfather, Olav V, and his own father. This very Friday, Haakon VIII will convene the Council of State to sign the acceptance act and deliver his first message to the nation. The until now crown prince, who has just turned 53, receives the Viking throne at the worst moment for the Norwegian monarchy weakened by the situation faced by the until now princess Mette-Marit, who, besides recovering from a lung transplant, has to overcome the situation of her eldest son Marius Borg, who is serving house arrest after being convicted of rape and abuse, and her own crisis after her connections with the sexual criminal Jeffrey Epstein were revealed.

Harald of Norway will go down in history as the first heir to the throne who dared to challenge dynastic laws by breaking a centuries-old tradition in European courts and marrying a commoner. It is known to be his only act of rebellion in his 89 years of life. Today, the third king of modern Norway leaves behind his widow Sonia Haraldsen, the young woman he fell in love with in the late 1950s and with whom, after a ten-year effort and obtaining his father’s permission, he married in 1968.

The extraordinary flood on Wednesday in the Himalayas left a trail of 392 dead so far, and more than 1,400 missing. The toll becomes more tragic as Nepal shakes off the mud and China supplies data sparingly. Also explanations.

The Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, who was serving a life sentence for genocide during the bloody Bosnia war of 1992-1995, died this Thursday at the age of 84 in the United Nations detention center in The Hague, according to the Belgrade television network Informer TV this Thursday.

The Kremlin denied on Thursday that Russia has plans to attack a NATO country, and its spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, described the reports published in this regard as a “distortion of reality.” According to Western media, these alleged plans of Moscow would be the reason for the lightning trip that the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, made to Russia last Tuesday.

Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794), father of modern Criminal Law, argued that “the more just and useful the punishment is, the sooner it is and the closer it is to the committed crime.”

Rescue operations continue tirelessly after the devastating flood of the Bhote Koshi river, in the Rasuwa district, in the Nepal area bordering Tibet. The rescue of those still trapped continues frantically, in operations where a few minutes can make the difference between life and death, in a natural disaster that has left hundreds dead and missing.

A deadly flash flood that occurred on Wednesday near Nepal’s border with Tibet may have been triggered when the lower part of a glacier broke off and crashed into the valley floor, hundreds of meters below, experts said, citing satellite images from Planet Labs.