built

Bettiah, India – Neyaz Miya was adjusting a kitchen handle. Mehadi Hassan was fixing a bracket for a bed.

They were at different construction sites – Miya in a half‑constructed home, a little higher up the hill, while Hassan was on the ground floor of Ganesh Hotel, closer to the Trishuli River that flowed through Syafrubesi, a bustling market town near the Nepal‑Tibet border, now wiped off the map by the August 26 flash floods.

More than 1,200 bodies have been recovered since then, at least 4,000 people remain missing, and more than 13,000 have been rescued.

“First came the terrifying loud sound. Then the ground trembled, and dark clouds descended upon us,” recalls 34‑year‑old Miya, who ran further up the hill with his phone and slippers that morning, five or six others running alongside him.

Hassan, lower on the slope, did not wait to reach for his slippers or his phone. He just ran, climbing a narrow, stair‑like path, up the hill, stopping only when he reached roughly 60 metres (200ft) above the road.

At some point, Miya and Hassan found each other. Around them were 60 to 70 other survivors who had also gathered high up on the hill.

A decade earlier, Miya had arrived in Syafrubesi as a carpenter. Three years later, he brought Hassan with him – both men from Bihar’s Bettiah district. Over the years, they built the town’s interiors – sofas, beds, almirahs, and kitchens for hotels and homes.

On that Wednesday morning, they watched all of that washed away. The multi‑storey hotels where they had worked – Red Panda, Garden Hotel, Buddha Hotel, Sunrise Hotel – were all swallowed by the flood.

“The town was gone in a blink,” Miya recounts, now sitting in his home in Turhapatti village of Bihar, India, just across the Nepal border. “There were only three kinds of people who survived that day: Those who were out of town, those who were at work and managed to run, and those who lived a little higher up the hill.”

Based on what he witnessed, Miya says only a few hundred people in Syafrubesi, a town that had a population of 2,271 in the 2011 census, likely survived.

Miya and Hasan are among them. Three of their close friends and colleagues, also migrant workers from Bihar, are not.

A workday like no other

When the floods reached Syafrubesi, the men were already at work: Their shifts began at seven in the morning.

“To start at seven, we would wake up at four or five,” Miya recalls. They would leave with empty stomachs and were fed tea with doughnuts or biscuits at the construction site by building owners. Their first break came at 11am, when they returned to the rented one‑room space (3,500 Nepali rupees or $23 a month) that housed five to seven migrants at a time.

On the morning of August 26, they left for work alongside 34‑year‑old Arman Ansari, 20‑year‑old Samir Ansari, and 52‑year‑old Mukhtar Ansari, all migrants from Miya’s Turhapatti village.

In the rented room, two teenage boys, Arman’s 14‑year‑old son, Salman Alam, and his friend Shibu Alam, 17, remained asleep. They had come a month earlier to visit the hills.

“My father had cooked meat bhaat (rice with meat),” Salman recounts. He was waiting for his father to return at 11am so they could eat together.

Arman, his father, was working beside Hassan on the ground floor, pasting sunmica onto the same bed. Samir and Mukhtar were on the top floor of the Full Moon Hotel.

When Hassan ran out of the under-construction building and up the hill, he believed Arman was behind him. But by the time Hassan and Miya met higher up, there was no sign of the other three: Arman, Samir and Mukhtar.

Miya and Hassan found the boys, Salman and Shibu, terrified, on the hill. “Salman was crying, howling and searching for his father,” Hassan said.

The flood, which came with a high speed, took half an hour to recede. Soon, helicopters started hovering above them, airlifting the critically injured.

The four of them – Miya, Hassan and the boys – walked down the hill on foot to search for the three missing in the debris. They found nothing but sludge. Miya’s furniture-cutting tools and machines, worth 80,000 Nepali rupees ($530), were buried in the debris.

When they got back to their room, perched high on a slope, they found that it had survived.

But the army had taken charge, and soldiers herded survivors away from tenements near the river. “They said it [the flood] might come again,” Miya recalls.

They slept that night in a government school building in a village, he says. “At night, we were given daal bhat (rice and daal), and we wrapped ourselves in tarpaulin and slept.”

The next morning, a helicopter took them to another village. From there, another helicopter carried them to an army compound in a town. In the evening, they teamed up with five other migrants and hired an SUV to reach Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, each paying 3,500 rupees ($23).

The next morning, on August 28, they hired another SUV, which charged them 950 rupees ($6) each for a distance of 290km (180 miles) to Birgunj, a town on the India-Nepal border. They then crossed the border on foot before boarding buses for their villages.

It wasn’t the homecoming Indian migrants who work in Nepal usually plan.

‘No regular work’ back home

Turhapatti is among thousands of villages tucked along the 1,715km (1,066-mile) stretch of the India-Nepal border, where generations have crossed back and forth in search of work.

The two countries share an open border, and on both sides, especially in Bihar, the bond is known as a roti-beti ka rishta (a relationship of food and daughters), alluding to ties of livelihoods and matrimonial kinship. People live, work, and marry across the border.

Kathmandu is as close to Turhapatti as is Patna, the capital of Bihar. Per its 2021 Population and Housing Census, Nepal had 700,000 foreign-born residents, 97 percent of them from India.

Miya and Hassan say the wages for a carpenter or a mason on the Indian side are between 600-700 rupees, while for the same work in Nepal, wages are about 900 rupees. That drives migrant workers from India over the border into Nepal.

Nepal, for its part, is facing a major out-migration crisis — its per capita income is the lowest in South Asia, barring Afghanistan, and hundreds of thousands of young men and women leave each year to find work elsewhere. This creates a demand for migrant workers from Bihar, India’s poorest state that lies just across the border.

In Turhapatti, Miya owns only 0.03 hectares (0.06 acres), not enough to feed his family of six children, wife and parents. In recent years, he transitioned from being a carpenter to a contractor, which allowed him to bring in more workers from Bihar.

He had been sending 30,000 Indian rupees ($315) back to his family every month.

Hassan has even less back home: He inherited a 6×8-metre (20×25ft) room from his father and no agricultural land. “There is no regular daily work here,” he says. He would send 15,000 Indian rupees ($157) home from Nepal each month for his wife and four children.

Their story echoes in most homes in Turhapatti. The village had a population of 16,000 people in the 2011 census, India’s latest one. In nearly every household, men have left to work in other parts of India and abroad as carpenters, masons, or labourers mixing cement and sand into mortar.

The destinations are Kashmir, where close to 700 men from the village work; Nepal, with nearly 600; and thousands scattered across Indian cities: Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai. About 100 men have migrated to Dubai, Oman and Saudi Arabia.

The houses they built in Turhapatti stand in stark contrast to those of those who remain in India. The marble-fronted and iron-gated homes belong to men working in the Gulf, while semi-permanent dwellings belong to those who stayed behind.

Migrants in Nepal fall in between: Miya has been able to raise a brick house.

‘My body shivers at the thought’

This economic reality is what drove Arman Ansari to Syafrubesi. On July 26, Arman left for Nepal with Samir and Mukhtar. Arman’s son and his friend Shubu went with the three adults; the teenagers were on a trip to the hills.

Now, Arman’s brother-in-law. Jameel Miya, a carpenter in Kathmandu, scours the city’s hospitals for Arman’s body, telling authorities that his brother-in-law’s right hand and chest had deep scars, cut by shards of glass when he was young.

Arman’s wife, Sahrun Khatun, has only her last phone call with Arman to hold on to. They spoke two hours before the floods swept him away. “He was about to get his wages on September 1 and return home,” she says.

Salman, who had tagged along with his father to see the hills, hasn’t been able to sleep since the flood.

“The moment I close my eyes, I feel the flood is coming for me,” he says.

Mukhtar’s family lives a few lanes away.

Since the floods, Kasmun Khatun, Mukhtar’s wife, has been glued to the internet for any news of her missing husband. Joining her in that remote search are her daughter Asmana (18) and son Sadre Alam (14).

Her eldest son, Osama, 25, a tailor in Kathmandu, has been busy searching for his father in city hospitals.

“After waiting for a week and watching the videos, I submitted my DNA samples,” he says over a phone call. Osama manages to send home 6,000 rupees ($63), but that is no longer enough – his mother needs eye surgery that has already been delayed and cannot be put off much longer.

“The guardian has gone, all of a sudden,” he says, referring to his father.

At the far edge of Turhapatti stands the home of Samir Ansari, the youngest among the missing migrants and youngest of his five migrant brothers.

The Ganesh Hotel project he was working on was only three days from completion.

“He said he found another site to work on,” recalls his father, Hasmuddin Miya, remembering their last phone call on the evening of August 25.

Samir was a mason who specialised in marble tiles, a skill he had learned in Kashmir while working under his elder brothers at construction sites.

The three families are preparing to host a bhoj, the funeral feast – a custom of feeding hundreds of people – having given up on hope.

Meanwhile, the two survivors, Miya and Hassan, are already making calls to find work again. This time, their search turns towards Nepal’s plains. They pledge never to return to the hills.

“My whole body shivers at the thought of going there,” says Hassan.

The Victorians’ love of seaside resorts inspired a developer to try and build a ‘mega resort’ for the rich and powerful of the time, but many of the plans for this seaside town never came to fruition

Victorians loved the seaside. Time at the beach was the perfect antidote to the dirty, smoggy cities that were rapidly expanding, and the sea air was touted as a cure for everything from respiratory problems to exhaustion.

Another thing that was expanding at the time was Britain’s railway lines, and entrepreneurs were quick to build seaside resorts to accommodate Victorians’ love of beaches. One such visionary was Sir Robert Perks, a politician who looked at a stretch of Kent coast and decided it would make an incredible resort for the wealthiest in society at the time.

The spot was given the name Littlestone-on-Sea, named after a nearby headland called Little Stone, and initially it comprised of a home for Robert, accommodation called the Grand Hotel, a church, and some terraced houses. However, the Grand Hotel didn’t turn out nearly as grand as planned, and it was just the first project that didn’t quite live up to the vision.

Robert teamed up with a surveyor named Henry Tubbs to launch Littlestone Golf Course in 1888, which is still open to this day, and at one end there’s a distinctive local building the Littlestone water tower, which was supposed to supply fresh water to the golf course and the impressive seaside town that was envisioned.

Unfortunately, the water from the 120ft tall tower was too salty to use, and over time it was abandoned. However, in the Second World War, the structure found a new purpose. It became a lookout post that protected Kent’s shores, and the addition of platforms meant guards could keep lookout from many levels. Nowadays, it has been turned into a unique home.

Other plans for Littlestone included a large housing development, a lively promenade, and a favourite of Victorians – a pier. However, parts of the design for the pier were eventually used in Eastbourne, so it wasn’t a total waste of time.

Nowadays, Littlestone is far from the bustling resort that was imagined by the Victorian entrepeneurs, but it certainly has its own charm. Its vast shingle beach is lined with colourful beach huts, and the long flat promenade is popular for families and dog walkers.

From the shore you can spot the Mulberry Harbour Phoenix Caisson, a temporary breakwater that was built during the D-Day Normandy landings in World War 2. Few of these structures remain, making it a popular site for those interested in military history.

The town itself has a handful of shops, cafés, and restaurants. There’s a small selection of seaside hotels, as well as a caravan park that’s much loved by families looking for a peaceful break at the seaside.

So, while Littlestone may not have become a playground for the rich, it developed its own character over time and is still much-loved by visitors who want a more low-key seaside experience.

Have a story you want to share? Email us at webtravel@reachplc.com

UN watchdog says Syria ‘failed to report nuclear material, facilities and activities’ under Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

The United Nations nuclear watchdog has confirmed that Syria tried to construct a nuclear reactor in the eastern province of Deir Az Zor under ousted former President Bashar al-Assad.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in a confidential report seen by news agencies on Tuesday, said it visited several sites in Syria in August and carried out verification work.

Based on observations at the Deir Az Zor site, the agency said it confirms “that the cooling infrastructure which has now been uncovered is consistent with that of a nuclear reactor”. The agency said it would continue to monitor the activities at the site “as the excavation work progresses”.

Syria was believed to have operated an extensive undeclared nuclear programme under al-Assad that included a nuclear reactor built by North Korea in Deir Az Zor.

The site only became public knowledge after Israel launched air strikes in 2007 that destroyed the facility. Syria later levelled the site and never responded fully to the IAEA’s questions about it.

Israel is believed to have its own undeclared atomic weapons programme that makes it the only country in the Middle East with nuclear bombs. Israel neither confirms nor denies having atomic weapons.

Following al-Assad’s removal in early December 2024, the new government agreed to give IAEA inspectors access to suspected former nuclear sites.

The agency took samples at the site in 2024 and reported last year that they contained uranium particles.

In its Tuesday report, the IAEA said it was also able to “establish that the former Syrian authorities had failed to report nuclear material, facilities and activities”.

Besides the nuclear reactor under construction at Deir Az Zor, the IAEA listed a fuel fabrication plant, where the nuclear fuel for the reactor was manufactured, and a location where the nuclear fuel, as well as uranium scrap and waste, were stored.

During the visit to Syria, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi and a team of senior inspectors also visited a previously undeclared site.

The new Syrian administration notified the agency of the site’s existence in a July 17 letter and invited the IAEA “to cooperate with the Syrian authorities in the inspection and verification of the site and of any nuclear material to be potentially found”.

The IAEA said in its report that this new site contained “natural uranium metal in the form of fuel rods with cladding”.

The agency verified the material and confirmed “the presence of around 73 tonnes of natural uranium metal”. The agency reported that “all of this nuclear material is currently subject to Agency containment and surveillance measures”.

The new Syrian authorities have also expressed an interest in developing a civilian nuclear energy programme and said any nuclear material found in the country would remain in Syria’s custody under international safeguards.

Ministers have announced where more than 70,000 social and affordable homes will be built in England over the next 10 years as part of an initial allocation of almost £10bn, in a bid to address the housing crisis.

Funding has been granted to Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, North East England, and Liverpool. An additional £6bn was previously announced for London.

It is the first part of a wider plan to build 300,000 social and affordable homes across the nation, under the government’s £39bn social housebuilding programme.

Earlier this year, before he became prime minister, Andy Burnham had called for the entire 10-year £39bn affordable housing budget for England to be spent on homes for social rent – which means the cost of the unit is about half that of market rents, and there are strict criteria for who can apply for it.

“I would actually devote all of it to social housing,” Burnham told The Social Housing Podcast in May.

But of the new homes announced on Monday, 60% would be for social rent.

Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook told BBC Breakfast he did not accept Burnham had failed to meet his previous commitment, saying the government had taken a “pragmatic approach” and wants to “get money out the door”.

He said the next tranche of funding would be more focused on council houses – which are usually also classed as homes for social rent.

It is understood ministers decided against giving councils more of the funding announced in the first tranche because they did not believe councils would be in a position to build the required number of social homes.