Nepal flood disaster and US-Iran Gulf strikes dominate world news

Nepal counts 903 dead and 2,500 missing as mass burials begin, while US forces strike Iranian launchers near the Strait of Hormuz.

Nepal flood disaster and US-Iran Gulf strikes dominate world news — Nepalese rescue forces, assisted by experts from India and China, continue searching for the missing in tunnels and villages that have been completely erased, five days after the deadly floods. The confirmed death toll has reached 903, with over 2,500 people listed as missing, and mass burials have begun. In Bharatpur, a makeshift morgue holds 270 bodies, almost all unidentified. The scale of the disaster has overwhelmed local capacity, with an Israeli woman also reported missing in Nepal, according to the Foreign Ministry.[^1][^2] Meanwhile, in the Persian Gulf, the US military struck two Iranian launchers on Larak Island after Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces were seen preparing to fire towards the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday. The strike came amid a broader exchange of fire that has drawn in regional actors. US President Donald Trump said that Iran striking Gulf neighbors was a 'very good thing' because 'they lost all the support they had.' He also stated, 'If I weren't president, Israel would be gone. There would be no Israel, and there would probably be no Middle East.'[^3][^4] UAE presidential adviser Anwar Gargash responded on Monday that the policy of targeting Gulf states and Jordan has failed, stating that 'a state of neither war nor peace cannot be a sustainable solution.'[^5] In a separate development, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov published an article on Monday stating that NATO's increased military activity in the Arctic constitutes a direct security threat to Russia. Lavrov specifically cited the NATO Arctic Sentry mission, launched in February 2026 to bolster the alliance's presence in the far north. The statement adds another layer to the escalating great-power competition, as the US-Iran confrontation in the Gulf shows no signs of de-escalation. The question remains whether the diplomatic channels can absorb these overlapping crises before a miscalculation triggers a wider conflict. School year opens with security fears, teacher gaps, and contested data — Keren Kafri, a mother of three daughters from the north, described a threatening message her daught