KATHMANDU: A bus in Nepal skidded off a mountain road and plunged into an icy river, police said Monday, killing at least 19 people, including a British tourist.

The bus, en route from the tourist city of Pokhara to the capital city Kathmandu, fell more than 200 metres (655 feet) into the Trishuli River in Dhading district in the early hours of Monday morning.

“Out of 44, in total 19 people died, and 25 are undergoing treatment,” senior local police officer Prakash Dahal told AFP, confirming one British citizen was among the dead.

One Chinese person and a New Zealander were injured, he said, without giving further details.

Mohan Prasad Neupane, information officer at the district administration office, said the rescue operation had been completed by dawn.

“The injured are undergoing treatment,” Neupane said.

In July 2024, two buses with more than 50 people on board were swept off the highway into the same river after a landslide.

Deadly crashes are relatively common in the Himalayan republic because of poor roads, badly maintained vehicles and reckless driving.

China is making a “full assessment” of the US Supreme Court’s tariff ruling and has urged Washington to lift “unilateral tariff measures” on its trading partners, warning that fighting between the two countries is “harmful”.

The comments from China’s Commerce Ministry on Monday came days after the highest US court dealt President Donald Trump a stinging defeat by striking down many of the tariffs he has used in a global trade war, including some against rival China.

Within hours of the ruling, Trump said he would impose a new 10% duty on US imports from all countries starting on Tuesday, only then to lift it to 15% in a move that seemed to surprise some of his own officials.

“US unilateral tariffs … violate international trade rules and US domestic law, and are not in the interests of any party,” the Chinese ministry said.

“Cooperation between China and the United States is beneficial to both sides, but fighting is harmful,” it added.

Trade and tariffs are expected to dominate the agenda for both China and the US ahead of a highly anticipated visit by Trump to China in late March and early April — when he will meet his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

Trump’s planned new levies are grounded in a separate but untested law, known as Section 122, that allows tariffs up to 15% but requires congressional approval to extend them after 150 days. No president has previously invoked Section 122, and its use could lead to further legal challenges.

“China will continue to pay close attention to this and firmly safeguard its interests,” the Commerce Ministry said.

Gao Lingyun, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was cited by state-run Global Times as saying the US tariff decisions are “highly arbitrary” and were being wielded as a “political weapon.”

“Tariff policy should be based on rigorous assessment, not political preference,” he was quoted as saying.

The US court’s ruling invalidated a number of tariffs that the Trump administration had imposed on Asian export powerhouses from China and South Korea to Japan and Taiwan, the world’s largest chipmaker and a key player in tech supply chains.

Uncertainty looms amid new global tariffs

South Korea said it would continue to consult with the US to maintain a “balance of interests” between the two countries, while its industry minister said there was concern among officals across industries, including cars, batteries and chips.

“The public and private sector need to work together to secure Korean companies’ export competitiveness and diversify their markets,” Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan said on Monday.

India said it had delayed plans to send a trade delegation to Washington this week to finalise an interim trade deal, chiefly because of fresh tariff uncertainty out of the US, according to a source in its trade ministry.

US tariffs on Indian goods were set to be cut to 18%, while India agreed to buy US items worth $500 billion over five years, ranging from energy supplies to aircraft and parts, precious metals and technology products.

In Europe, meanwhile, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde warned of business risks, saying companies want predictability, not legal battles. She said any new tariff plans must be clearly defined to avoid further challenges and ensure they comply with the US Constitution.

“To sort of shake it up again is going to bring about disruptions,” Lagarde said on CBS‘ “Face the Nation”.

President Donald Trump’s threats to attack Iran provide little detail on what the long-term US goal would be in the event of a sustained or even brief conflict.

Trump sent warships and dozens of fighter planes to the Middle East and has several options to choose from that could destabilise the region.

Will Trump order surgical strikes targeting Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the backbone of the regime in power, try to take out its missile programme — as Israel wants him to do — or even try to force regime change in Tehran?

Iran has threatened severe reprisal if it is attacked.

What are the options?

Trump said Thursday he would decide in 10 or 15 days whether to order strikes on Iran if no nuclear deal is reached.

The news outlet Axios has reported that Trump was presented with an array of military options that include a direct attack on Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Trump has said many times he prefers a diplomatic route leading to an agreement that addresses not only Iran’s nuclear programme but also its ballistic missile capability and its support for groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Iran has said no to making such concessions.

The United States and Iran recently held two rounds of indirect talks, in Oman and Switzerland. They have not brought the two sides’ position closer, with talks set to resume Thursday in Switzerland.

Trump is “surprised” that Iran has not “capitulated” given the massive US military buildup, his envoy Steve Witkoff has said.

“The Trump administration most likely aims for a limited conflict that reshapes the balance of power without trapping it in a quagmire,” said Alex Vatanka, an analyst at the Middle East Institute in Washington.

Vatanka said Iran is now expecting “a short, high-impact military campaign that would cripple Iran’s missile infrastructure, undermine its deterrent, and reset the balance of power after the 12-day war with Israel in June 2025.”

What is the justification?

Trump has insisted US forces destroyed Iran’s nuclear programme in attacks targeting uranium enrichment facilities.

Things changed with the January protest movement in Iran that security forces put down with huge loss of life.

Trump threatened several times to intervene to “help” the Iranian people, but did not act.

Trump boasts often of having brought peace to the Middle East, citing the oft-violated ceasefire he engineered in Gaza between Hamas and Israel.

And he has argued that regime change in Iran would strengthen what he calls a dynamic toward peace in the region.

But opposition Democrats are worried that Trump is leading America into a violent mess and demanding that he consult Congress, the only body in the United States with the authority to declare war.

US firepower in the region?

The US military now has 13 warships stationed in the Middle East: the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which arrived late last month, nine destroyers and three frigates.

More warships are on the way. The world’s largest vessel, the US aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford, was photographed sailing through the Strait of Gibraltar to enter the Mediterranean on Friday.

Besides the many planes parked on the aircraft carriers, the United States has sent a powerful force of dozens of warplanes to the Middle East, and tens of thousands of US troops are stationed across the Middle East.

These are potential targets for attack by Iran.

To what end?

Richard Haas, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said it is not clear what impact a conflict of any duration and scale would have on Iran’s government.

“It could just as easily strengthen it as weaken it. And it is impossible to know what would succeed this regime if it were to fall,” Haas wrote recently on Substack.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a Senate hearing late last month that no one really knows what will happen if Iran’s Supreme leader falls “other than the hope that there would be some ability to have somebody within their systems that you could work towards a similar transition.”

Arab monarchies in the Gulf that have close relations with Iran have warned Trump against intervening, fearing they might be targeted in reprisal attacks and wary of any destabilisation in the region.

Mona Yacoubian, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, recently told AFP that Iran is much more complex than Venezuela, which the United States attacked January 3 as it captured its leader Nicolas Maduro.

She said Iran has more diffuse centers of power and a “decapitation strike” could end up “really unleashing a mess inside of Iran.”