3 days ago
Dozens evacuated in Switzerland's Valais canton following mudslide
Around 30 people were evacuated from their homes in the upper Val de Bagnes in canton Valais in Switzerland after heavy rainfall unleashed a major mudslide.
Residents of the village of Les Epenays will be "housed elsewhere for an indefinite period. It depends on nature, it makes the laws," Antoine Schaller, deputy secretary general of the municipality of Val de Bagnes, told local news.
The area saw heavy storms last week, after which mud, wood and large stones tore away the temporary emergency bridge in the upper Val de Bagnes, but residents said buildings were spared.
"The concern is the volumes coming down. And then there's the detachment zone in the mountain, where an entire section is moving at a rate of about two meters per day," said Pierre-Martin Moulin, General Secretary of Val de Bagnes.
It comes just over a week after a landslide cause by a glacier collapse buried most of the Swiss village of Blatten, renewing attention on the increasing dangers of global warming.
On 29 May, a large chunk of the Birch Glacier above the village had broken off, causing the landslide which also buried the nearby Lonza River bed, raising the possibility of dammed water flows.
Swiss glaciologists have repeatedly expressed concerns about a thaw in recent years, attributed in large part to global warming, that has accelerated the retreat of glaciers in Switzerland.
The landlocked Alpine country has the most glaciers of any country in Europe, and saw 4% of its total glacier volume disappear in 2023. That was the second-biggest decline in a single year after a 6% drop in 2022.
In 2023, residents of the village of Brienz, in eastern Switzerland, were evacuated before a huge mass of rock slid down a mountainside, stopping just short of the community. Brienz was evacuated again last year because of the threat of a further rockslide.
Frederick Forsyth, the British author of "The Day of the Jackal" and other bestselling thrillers, has died at the age of 86 after a brief illness, his literary agent said on Monday.
Jonathan Lloyd, his agent, said Forsyth died at home early Monday surrounded by his family.
"We mourn the passing of one of the world's greatest thriller writers," Lloyd said.
Born in Kent in 1938, Forsyth served as a Royal Air Force pilot before becoming a foreign correspondent.
He covered the attempted assassination of French President Charles de Gaulle in 1962, which provided inspiration for "The Day of the Jackal," his bestselling political thriller about a professional assassin.
Published in 1971, the book propelled him into global fame.
It was made into a film in 1973 starring Edward Fox as the Jackal and more recently a television series starring Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch.
In 2015, Forsyth told the BBC that he had also worked for the British intelligence agency MI6 for many years, starting from when he covered a civil war in Nigeria in the 1960s.
Although Forsyth said he did other jobs for the agency, he said he was not paid for his services and "it was hard to say no" to officials seeking information.
"The zeitgeist was different," he told the BBC. "The Cold War was very much on."
He wrote more than 25 books including "The Afghan," "The Kill List," and "The Dogs of War" that sold over 75 million copies, Lloyd said.
His publisher, Bill Scott-Kerr, said that "Revenge of Odessa," a sequel to the 1974 book "The Odessa File" that Forsyth worked on with fellow thriller author Tony Kent, will be published in August.
"Still read by millions across the world, Freddie's thrillers define the genre and are still the benchmark to which contemporary writers aspire," Scott-Kerr said.
