Packed Bus Plunges Off Nepal Highway, Killing and Injuring Scoreshttps://english.aawsat.com/world/5243777-packed-bus-plunges-nepal-highway-killing-and-injuring-scores
Packed Bus Plunges Off Nepal Highway, Killing and Injuring Scores
Nepalese police officers prepare to depart for duty in various regions ahead of the upcoming election in Kathmandu, Nepal, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
Packed Bus Plunges Off Nepal Highway, Killing and Injuring Scores
Nepalese police officers prepare to depart for duty in various regions ahead of the upcoming election in Kathmandu, Nepal, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
A packed bus on its way to Nepal's capital drove off a mountain highway in Nepal early Monday, killing 19 people including a British national and leaving another 25 wounded.
There were dozens of people on board the bus, which was heading from the resort city of Pokhara to Kathmandu when it drove off the Prithvi highway after midnight, police said. The bus rolled down a mountain slope and landed on the banks of Trishuli river near Benighat, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of the capital, Kathmandu, the Associated Press reported.
Among those who died was a 24-year-old British national, according to a statement from the Dhading district police office. Only nine bodies have been identified.
The injured included a Chinese national, who is being treated at the National Trauma Center in Kathmandu, and a 27-year-old woman from New Zealand who received minor injuries and was being treated at a local hospital.
China’s official Xinhua News Agency, citing the Chinese Embassy in Nepal, reported earlier that one other Chinese national was missing.
Rescuers reached the accident site soon after the accident, and the injured were pulled out of the wreckage and driven to hospitals for treatment, according to government administrator Mohan Prasad Neupane.
Police are investigating the cause of the accident.
Russian Attack on Ukraine’s Odesa Region Killed Two People, Injured Three https://english.aawsat.com/world/5243798-russian-attack-ukraine%E2%80%99s-odesa-region-killed-two-people-injured-three%C2%A0
This handout photograph taken and released by the State Emergency Service of Ukraine on February 23, 2026, shows a Ukrainian firefighter working to extinguish a fire at the site of a Russian attack in Odesa. (Handout / State Emergency Service of Ukraine / AFP)
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Russian Attack on Ukraine’s Odesa Region Killed Two People, Injured Three
This handout photograph taken and released by the State Emergency Service of Ukraine on February 23, 2026, shows a Ukrainian firefighter working to extinguish a fire at the site of a Russian attack in Odesa. (Handout / State Emergency Service of Ukraine / AFP)
A Russian attack on Ukraine's southern Odesa region killed two people and injured three overnight, Ukraine's emergency service and a government official said on Monday.
The two people died when a Russian drone fell on a truck stop causing a fire, the service said on the Telegram messenger.
Infrastructure Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said on Telegram that Russia had attacked port infrastructure in the Odesa region.
"This is yet another blow to civilian logistics and port infrastructure. Russia is systematically attacking facilities that have no military purpose, trying to undermine the economy of the region and the country as a whole," Kuleba said.
He said the freight transport storage area was damaged.
The Odesa region - home to a large shipping hub with terminals in the Black Sea ports of Odesa, Chornomorsk, and Pivdennyi - has been targeted since the early days of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.
Russia sharply increased the intensity of its attacks on the Black Sea ports in late 2025 when President Vladimir Putin threatened to "cut Ukraine off from the sea".
A source in the transport industry, who asked for anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, told Reuters last week that strikes on the Odesa ports in the last few months had reduced their export capacity by up to 30% from their pre-war level.
UN Chief Decries Global Rise of ‘Rule of Force’ https://english.aawsat.com/world/5243797-un-chief-decries-global-rise-%E2%80%98rule-force%E2%80%99%C2%A0
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (L) stands next to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk at the opening of the 61st session of the UN Human Rights Council at the United Nations office in Geneva on February 23, 2026. (AFP)
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UN Chief Decries Global Rise of ‘Rule of Force’
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (L) stands next to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk at the opening of the 61st session of the UN Human Rights Council at the United Nations office in Geneva on February 23, 2026. (AFP)
The United Nations leader warned Monday that "the rule of force" was spreading, as the powerful trample on international law and wield artificial intelligence and other technologies to attack human rights.
"Human rights are under a full-scale attack around the world," Antonio Guterres told the opening of the UN Human Rights Council's annual session in Geneva.
"The rule of law is being outmuscled by the rule of force."
The UN secretary-general stressed that "this assault is not coming from the shadows, or by surprise. It is happening in plain sight -- and often led by those who hold the greatest power."
He did not mention specific situations, although he did voice outrage at Russia's war in Ukraine, where he said more than 15,000 civilians had been killed in four years of violence.
"It is more than past time to end the bloodshed," he said.
Guterres also highlighted the "blatant violations of human rights, human dignity and international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory".
He charged that the trajectory in the conflict-torn territories under Israeli occupation was "stark, clear and purposeful: the two-state solution is being stripped away in broad daylight".
"The international community cannot allow it to happen," he insisted.
- Rights attacked 'deliberately, strategically' -
In his final in-person address to the UN's top rights body, Guterres said the worst conflict-hit areas were not the only places where rights were eroding.
"Around the world, human rights are being pushed back deliberately, strategically and sometimes proudly," he said.
"We are living in a world where mass suffering is excused away, where humans are used as bargaining chips, where international law is treated as a mere inconvenience."
UN rights chief Volker Turk echoed the concerns.
In a "deeply worrying trend", he warned that "domination and supremacy are making a comeback".
"A fierce competition for power, control and resources is playing out on the world stage at a rate and intensity unseen for the past 80 years," he warned.
"The use of force to resolve disputes between and within countries is becoming normalized."
Turk highlighted how "the gears of global power are shifting", calling for people to band together to protect rights and create "a strong counterbalance to the top-down, autocratic trends we see today".
- 'Democracies eroding' -
While the UN says that conflicts are multiplying, impunity is spreading and humanitarian needs are exploding, its traditional top donor, Washington, has dramatically slashed its foreign aid spending since President Donald Trump's returned to power last year. Other major donors have followed.
"When human rights fall, everything else tumbles," Guterres warned.
The crisis of respect for human rights "mirrors and magnifies every other global fracture", he said, pointing out that "inequalities are widening at staggering speed."
At the same time, "climate chaos is accelerating, and technology, especially artificial intelligence, is increasingly being used in ways that suppress rights, deepen inequality and expose marginalized people to new forms of discrimination both online and offline," he warned.
Turk meanwhile lambasted leaders, without naming them, who seem to believe "that they are above the law, and above the UN Charter."
"They claim exceptional status, exceptional danger or exceptional moral judgement to pursue their own agenda at any cost," he said, pointing to how "some weaponize their economic leverage."
"They spread disinformation to distract, silence and marginalize," he charged.
What is clear, Guterres warned, was that "across every front, those who are already vulnerable are being pushed further to the margins."
"Democracies eroding... migrants harassed, arrested and expelled with total disregard for their human rights and their humanity. Refugees scapegoated," he pointed out.
Guterres, who is to step down this year after a decade at the UN helm, called for urgent action to reverse the trend.
"Do not let power write a new rulebook in which the vulnerable have no rights and the powerful have no limits," he said.
Report: Trump Considers Targeted Strike Against Iran, Followed by Larger Attack https://english.aawsat.com/world/5243796-report-trump-considers-targeted-strike-against-iran-followed-larger-attack%C2%A0
Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff attend the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace at the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace on February 19, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Getty Images/AFP)
Report: Trump Considers Targeted Strike Against Iran, Followed by Larger Attack
Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff attend the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace at the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace on February 19, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Getty Images/AFP)
US President Donald Trump has told advisers that if diplomacy or any initial targeted US attack does not lead Iran to give in to his demands that it give up its nuclear program, he will consider a much bigger attack in coming months intended to drive that country’s leaders from power, people briefed on internal administration deliberations told the New York Times.
Negotiators from the United States and Iran are scheduled to meet in Geneva on Thursday for what appears to be last-ditch negotiations to avoid a military conflict. But Trump has been weighing options for US action if the negotiations fail.
Though no final decisions have been made, advisers said, Trump has been leaning toward conducting an initial strike in coming days intended to demonstrate to Iran’s leaders that they must be willing to agree to give up the ability to make a nuclear weapon.
Targets under consideration range from the headquarters of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps to the country’s nuclear sites to the ballistic missile program.
Should those steps fail to convince Tehran to meet his demands, Trump told advisers, he would leave open the possibility of a military assault later this year intended to help topple Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader.
In this handout photograph released by the US Navy, an F/A-18F Super Hornet, attached to Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 41, prepares to make an arrested landing on the flight deck of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) in the Arabian Sea on February 15, 2026. (AFP photo / US Navy)
Doubts
There are doubts even inside the administration about whether that goal can be accomplished with airstrikes alone. And behind the scenes, a new proposal is being considered by both sides that could create an off-ramp to military conflict: a very limited nuclear enrichment program that Iran could carry out solely for purposes of medical research and treatments.
It is unclear whether either side would agree. But the last-minute proposal comes as two aircraft carrier groups and dozens of fighter jets, bombers and refueling aircraft are now massing within striking distance of Iran.
Trump discussed plans for strikes on Iran in the White House Situation Room on Wednesday. The meeting included Vice President JD Vance; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the CIA director, John Ratcliffe; and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff.
During the meeting, Trump pressed Caine and Ratcliffe to weigh in on the broader strategy in Iran, but neither official generally advocates a certain policy position. Caine discussed what the military could do from an operational standpoint, and Ratcliffe preferred to discuss the current situation on the ground and possible outcomes of proposed operations.
During the discussions of the operation last month to seize President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, Caine told Trump there was a high likelihood of success. But Caine has not been able to deliver the same reassurances to Trump during the Iran discussions, in large measure because it is a far more difficult target.
Vance, who has long called for more restraint in overseas military action, did not oppose a strike, but he intensely questioned Caine and Ratcliffe in the meeting. He pressed them to share their opinions of the options and wanted more of a discussion of the risks and complexity of carrying out a strike against Iran.
An Iranian soldier walks next to an anti-US mural in Tehran, Iran, 23 February 2026. (EPA)
Options against Iran
Earlier, the United States had been considering options that included putting teams of special operations forces on the ground that could carry out raids to destroy Iranian nuclear or missile facilities. That included manufacturing and enrichment operations buried far below the surface, outside the range of American conventional munitions.
But any such raid would be highly dangerous, requiring special operations forces to be on the ground far longer than they were for the raid to capture Maduro. Multiple US officials said that for now, the plans for a commando raid had been shelved.
Army, Navy and Air Force officials have also raised concerns about the impact that a protracted war with Iran, or just remaining poised for such a conflict, could have on the readiness of Navy ships, scarce Patriot antimissile defenses, and overstretched transport and surveillance planes.
The White House declined to comment on Trump’s decision making.
“The media may continue to speculate on the President’s thinking all they want, but only President Trump knows what he may or may not do,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement.
Pedestrians walk past a billboard depicting a US aircraft carrier with damaged fighter jets on its deck and a sign in Farsi and English reading, "If you sow the wind, you'll reap the whirlwind," at Enqelab-e-Eslami Square in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Feb. 22, 2026. (AP)
‘Zero enrichment’
Even before the Iranians submit what appears likely to be their last proposal — officials said they expected it to be transmitted to the Trump administration on Monday or Tuesday — the two sides appeared to be hardening their positions. Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, said on Fox News that Trump’s “clear direction” to him and Jared Kushner, his co-negotiator and the president’s son-in-law, was that the only acceptable outcome for an agreement was that Iran would move to “zero enrichment” of nuclear material.
But Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, insisted anew in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the country was not ready to give up what he said was its “right” to make nuclear fuel under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
With that statement, the decision about whether the United States was about to attack targets in Iran — with the apparent goal of further weakening the government of Khamenei — seemed to come down to whether both sides could agree to a face-saving compromise about nuclear production that Washington and Tehran could each describe as a total victory.
One such proposal is being debated by both the Trump administration and the Iranian leadership. According to several officials, it emanated from Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations organization that inspects Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Under the proposal, Iran would be permitted to produce very small amounts of nuclear fuel for medical purposes. Iran has been producing medical isotopes for years at the Tehran Research Reactor, a nearly 60-year-old facility outside the country’s capital that was, in one of the strange twists of modern nuclear history, first supplied to the pro-American shah of Iran by the United States under the “Atoms for Peace” program.
If adapted, Iran could claim that it was still enriching uranium. Trump could make the case that Iran is shuttering all the facilities that would enable it to build a weapon — most of which were left open, operating at low levels, under the 2015 agreement between Iran and the Obama administration. Trump exited that agreement in 2018, leading the Iranians to eventually bar inspectors and produce near-bomb-grade uranium and setting the stage for the current crisis.
But it is far from clear whether the Iranians are willing to shrink what is now a vast, industrial-production nuclear program, on which they have spent billions of dollars, to a tiny effort of such limited scope.
And it is also unclear whether Trump would allow nuclear production limited to cancer treatment studies and other medical purposes, given his public “zero enrichment” declarations.
In this handout photograph released by the US Navy, an F/A-18F Super Hornet, attached to Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 41, prepares to make an arrested landing on the flight deck of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) in the Arabian Sea on February 15, 2026. (AFP photo / US Navy)
‘Military buildup cannot help’
Araghchi made no direct mention of the proposal when he spoke from Tehran. But he said, “I believe that still there is a good chance to have a diplomatic solution,” adding, “So there is no need for any military buildup, and military buildup cannot help it and cannot pressurize us.”
In fact, pressure is the key to these negotiations. What Trump calls the “vast armada” that the United States has built up in the seas around Iran is the largest military force it has concentrated in the region since it prepared for the invasion of Iraq, nearly 23 years ago.
Two aircraft carrier groups, scores of fighter jets, bombers and refueling planes, and antimissile batteries have poured into the region, a demonstration of gunboat diplomacy even larger than the one that preceded the forced extraction of Maduro from Venezuela in early January.
The second carrier, the Gerald R. Ford, was steaming south of Italy in the Mediterranean Sea on Sunday, and will soon be off the coast of Israel, military officials said.
Further complicating any final decision on military strikes, Arab leaders have been calling counterparts in Washington to complain about comments from Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel. In an interview with Tucker Carlson, the conservative commentator, that aired on Friday, Huckabee said Israel had a right to much of the Middle East, outraging Arab countries.
Administration officials have been unclear what their objectives are as they confront Iran, a country of more than 90 million people. While Trump often talks about preventing Iran from ever being able to produce a weapon, Rubio and other aides have described a range of other rationales for military action: protecting the protesters whom Iranian forces killed by the thousands last month, wiping out the arsenal of missiles that Iran can use to strike Israel, and ending Tehran’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah.
But American military action could also result in a nationalistic response, even among Iranians eager to see the end of Khamenei’s brutal hold on power.
European officials attending the Munich Security Conference last weekend said they doubted that the military pressure would force the Iranian leadership to give up a program that has become a symbol of resistance to the United States.
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