WASHED AWAY: Unable to identify many of the remains, Nepal has begun mass burials of the dead from last week’s flood. There is little hope of finding all the bodies in the flood rubble and some of the remains cannot be identified. The number of those written off as dead is likely to rise.

  Nepal now says 900 people are dead and 4700 missing. Hundreds of workers are believed to be trapped inside Nepal’s hydropower tunnels. 

  China says that on its side of the Nepal-Tibet border at least 261 foreign citizens from 23 countries are among the hundreds missing in Tibet. 

  The foreigners missing in Tibet include 104 Nepalis, 49 Indians, 33 Latvians, 18 Americans, and 15 British citizens, according to Xinhua, China’s state news agency. 

HERE AT HOME: One person is dead and 15 missing this morning after a flash flood swept through the Grand Canyon. Waves of water, boulders, and debris from crushed buildings flowed down the Colorado River in an area popular with hikers and campers.

  Foot bridges were destroyed and at least 62 people had to be evacuated by air.

HOT WAR: The US and Iran exchanged fire again yesterday after American missiles struck an installation that the Pentagon said was about to launch sea mines. Iran fired back at US military installations.

   Several US military leaders told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that continuing large-scale operations against Iran risks weakening the ability to deal with threats in other places, including in the states, the Washington Post reports.

  The warnings from the heads of the Army, Navy and Air Force and the four-star commanders overseeing US operations throughout Europe, Asia, and Latin America appear in the August 14the edition of the Secretary of Defense Orders Book (SDOB), a twice-monthly report.

  The leak about the report suggest that somebody thinks Hegseth and possibly even President Trump are not taking it seriously.

  The SDOB details the worldwide availability of warships, aircraft, personnel, and weapons systems. The Post reports that the deployment of forces in the Middle East is being extended possibly into next year. Leaders of the European Command, the Pacific Command, and Southern Command, along with the Navy’s top admiral, responded with what is characterized in the SDOB as a “non-concur.” In other words, they think it’s a bad idea.

OIL DREAMS: President Trump posted yesterday that oil from Venezuela will replenish the strategic oil reserves that have been drawn down to keep prices low at the gas pump, but that is unlikely to happen any time soon.

  Much of the oil infrastructure in Venezuela is a mess because of years of corruption and mismanagement. It could be years before the oil flows again in amounts to fulfill Trump’s promise. 

  He posted, “One of the things I am going to do with the Venezuelan Oil is fill up the Strategic National Reserves which, because of Sleepy Joe Biden, has been virtually emptied,” he wrote. “The ‘topping out’ process will begin very shortly, and is a Gift from Venezuela to the People of the United States.”

INFINITE SCROLL: 

— President Trump said he’s going to report NBC “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker to the FCC for challenging his account of how many politicians he endorsed won their elections. “Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social. “Unfortunately, she is not the only one.”

  Welker had said on air that Trump’s endorsements have had “mixed results.”

  In a social media screed Trump said his success on endorsements has been 99 percent. He wrote, “The Radical Left News is going out of their way to harass, demean, and libel anything ‘TRUMP.’”

— Trump issued another attack on Canada on his social media over the weekend writing, “I don’t want Canadian cars, I don’t want Canadian parts, I don’t want Canadian anything. They’ve been ripping us off for decades, and it’s going to stop.”

— In the department of “No Surprise,”  a National Park Service report supports President Trump’s plan to build a victory arch in the sightline between the Washington Monument and Lincoln and Jefferson memorials. But the Park Service report says, “The same characteristics that make Memorial Circle sensitive from a preservation perspective are also the characteristics that make it the historically appropriate location for the undertaking.”

— Google Maps re-named Lake Ontario “Lake of America” in accordance with President Trump executive order changing the name of the lake between the US and Canada. Apple and MapQuest so far are sticking with “Ontario.”

THE SPORTS PAGE: North Carolina upset Texas Christian University in the season opener for Coach Bill Belichick’s effort to make UNC a college football contender.

  UNC lost to Texas Christian by 34 points last year but topped them 15-10 Saturday in Dublin, Ireland … of all places. Belichick, the former coach of the New England Patriots has been known mostly in recent years for having a girlfriend a third of his 74 years just might become known again for winning football games.

THE SPIN RACK: SpaceX over the weekend successfully launched NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a $4.3-billion addition to the family for the Hubble and James Webb telescopes. Hopes for the Roman telescope are that it will increase the view of planets outside our solar system from 6,300 to more than 100,000. — The latest oddity in New York City is the sighting of people crawling out of the sewer manholes, sometimes wearing fishing waders. The sewer explorers who are obviously not city employees have been seen at least four times.

BELOW THE FOLD: Donald Trump’s order re-naming lake Ontario as Lake America has kept the internet humorists busy, but this is one of our favorites:

• “President Trump expected to re-name San Andreas Fault Jo Biden’s fault.”