A Count That Rises and One That Falls

Today’s opening is the only one possible by order of magnitude. Along the border between Nepal and China, rescuers have recovered 362 bodies, 359 on the Nepalese side and 3 in Tibet, while search efforts concern more than 1,400 people of whom there is no news. These are figures bound to shift: we publish them as the most recent verifiable at the time of writing, and should they be revised downward we will report it as a correction, not as progress.

We devote a second piece to the same story, in Italy, for a reason that is not patriotic but methodological: the Farnesina has moved officials from New Delhi to Kathmandu and has reduced from about ten to three the cases of Italians reported as unreachable. This is a decrease, and must be stated as such — untraced persons are not, for that reason, confirmed safe.

The subsequent hierarchy follows the scale of consequences, not emotion. The death of Ratko Mladic in The Hague produces two opposing readings within the same country, Sarajevo and Banja Luka: this is why it belongs in Europe and nowhere else. We stick to the political and diplomatic story, not the judicial matter, which this newspaper does not cover. London’s authorization for MBDA to transfer classified data on the Scalp for assembly in Ukraine, with the resulting Russian reaction, marks a change in the nature of Western support: it moves from weapons to blueprints.

In Economy, Nvidia’s $96.2 billion in quarterly revenue, with $89 billion from data centers alone, remains the hardest figure to place on a scale of comparison: we report it with the table and without advice, which is not our trade. In Health we publish the Istituto Superiore di Sanità’s bulletin on West Nile: 312 confirmed cases, 156 neuro-invasive forms, 13 deaths. Surveillance data, no behavioral guidance.

On Hormuz, Centcom declares international routes cleared of mines. It is a unilateral announcement by a party involved, and we treat it as such: on August 27 we wrote that the Pasdaran considered the Strait still closed. The doubt remains, and it stays in the text.

A piece on Yayoi Kusama had been prepared for Culture and dropped during production; the section is covered by the article on the artist’s death, announced by her studio twelve days later, with the sole source stated in the piece. Rounding out the edition are the letter from one hundred organizations on cyber defenses, the Monte Carlo draw, and the preview of Venice 83, where the restoration of Tinto Brass’s work is funded by a distribution platform.

All ten sections have an article today. The Briefs are added.