First Thing: Aid operations in aftermath of deadly Nepal floods hampered by conditions

Good morning. Thousands remain missing and the delivery of aid has been hampered by treacherous conditions in communities almost wiped out of existence by the flash flooding in Nepal and Tibet. A week after the disaster, survivors who fled up mountainsides are still being collected by army helicopters and evacuated.

The mountain village of Syabru Besi was among those destroyed, with even the road to the village gone. According to local government officials, at least 500 people there are missing, a quarter of the population. The village resembles nothing more than a muddy riverbed, with just one building left standing.

Israel’s defence minister has said his country is seeking Donald Trump’s support to approve plans to expel Palestinians from the Gaza Strip in what has widely been condemned as a potential war crime. Israel Katz said there was “no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration”.

Trump discussed a US takeover of the Gaza Strip in early 2025 that would have involved removing Palestinians from the territory, but has since pulled back from the idea. A 20-point peace plan the White House drew up last year did not call for Palestinians’ deportation, an act that would be widely seen as ethnic cleansing.

A survivor of child sexual abuse has sued Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, alleging that its Grok chatbot used pictures of her abuse to generate new illegal pornographic images that depict her. Attorneys for the plaintiff accuse xAI of both generating child sexual abuse material of their client and of ingesting child sexual abuse images depicting her.

Margaret Mabie, an attorney for the plaintiff, said: “The difference here between many criminal cases that you’ll see with AI-generated material is that you cannot prove that the kid in the material is real. But here, because you can associate it with the series, we know that it is an identifiable victim who is still alive and was a real child in the photo.” Neither xAI or SpaceX, which acquired the company in February, returned requests for comment regarding the lawsuit.

JD Vance has said he was “doing as much of God’s work as possible” and that he was OK “if that leads to the end times”, which he says “are coming”. The US vice-president made the comments during a podcast interview with Bryce Crawford, a 22-year-old evangelical host.

Vance said: “I think there are things about the world that make me feel, like, not shocked if the antichrist was walking among us.” He pointed to AI, using the example of an acquaintance who uses AI as a marriage counselor, which he described as “kind of satanic”.

Vance, who published a spiritual memoir earlier this summer about his conversion to Catholicism, said: “I think you got to just kinda try and have an attitude of: the end times may be coming, in fact they are coming, it’s just a question of whether they’re coming thousands of years down the road, or a few months down the road.”

The company says it is slashing 10% of its workforce to make operations “simpler and faster”, and is also asking most of its staff to come into an office, meaning less than about 1% of employees will be working remotely.

Our contributors share their favorite accommodations from fall and winter’s past, listing 10 stays they would book again in a heartbeat. And if you aren’t going away, we’ve got six coffee-making upgrade suggestions to level up your skill.

I pity the fool who does not read this incredible Simon Hattenstone interview with 74-year-old Mr T.

As Adam Gabbatt puts it, two hallmarks of Donald Trump’s second term are the president’s enthusiasm for putting his name and face on things, and his cavalier approach to established law. This can be summed up by the fact that Trump and the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, appear to be ignoring various laws and 250 years of tradition that have previously prevented the likeness of living people from appearing on US currency.

The UN has said the El Niño is “supersizing before our eyes” and likely to be the largest in at least 1,000 years and will pile extra heat into an atmosphere where temperatures are already rising rapidly due to global heating. The combination means 2027 is set to “blow apart” the record and be the hottest year ever recorded.

Misfits Together, by Bastille’s Dan Smith and To Kill a King’s Ralph Pelleymounter, is set amid the 1950s’ “red scare” and gives a nuanced and intimate portrait of the pair’s famous relationship, while revealing parallels between the volatile state of the US during the 50s and now.

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