U.S. officials said about 90 U.S. citizens remained unaccounted for Thursday, a day after catastrophic flash floods engulfed a border area of China and Nepal, killing hundreds of people.
In a statement, the U.S. State Department said it is not aware of any U.S. deaths, but three Americans have been rescued.
Many of the missing were on a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash in Tibet, a sacred site for Hindus, Buddhists and others.
Among those on a guided tour was Venus Rajnikant Patel, a 45-year-old Indian-born U.S. citizen who recently moved from St. Louis to Cincinnati to help his family.
Patel’s friend Jolene Gosha said she and her friends knew Patel was in Nepal and were devastated when they realized he was staying at a hotel along the border where the floods swept through.
“We’re just hoping, hoping that by some chance he was able to climb his way out of it,” Gosha said. “I don’t want to give myself false hope because I know the reality is that he's probably not with us.”
Gosha described Patel as an avid traveler who loves dancing and frequently organizes surprise “flash mob” performances for his friends’ weddings and birthdays.
“He’s always smiling from ear to ear,” Gosha said. “He’d dance so goofily and didn’t care who was watching.”
Indian spiritual guru Jaggi Vasudev, also known as Sadhguru, said in a post on X that 77 people returning from Mount Kailash with groups organized by his Isha Foundation were at an immigration center in Gyirong, Tibet, when the floods struck. The Isha Foundation told ABC News that 22 of those 77 people were Americans.
The Isha Foundation is a spiritual organization based in India and has a U.S. campus called the Isha Institute of Inner-sciences, a yoga and meditation retreat center in the mountains near McMinnville, Tennessee.
Talking to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, President Donald Trump said U.S. officials have spoken with Nepalese leaders and offered to provide “anything they want.”
Trump said there were 50 or 60 Americans in the area but added that a full accounting hasn’t been completed.
Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Collin Binkley in Washington contributed to this report.
People walk past damage in the aftermath of flash floods in Devighat in the Nuwakot district in Nepal, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
Damage is seen in the aftermath of flash floods in Devighat in the Nuwakot district in Nepal, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
A government helicopter conducts a rescue mission amidst the devastation left by flash flooding in Nepal's Nuwakot district, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday he is renaming Lake Ontario to be known as “Lake America” in the United States as he exacerbates his trade war with Canada.
The Republican president signed an executive order directing the Interior Department to update the lake's name in the U.S. geographic naming service. Trump cannot force Canada to follow his preferred naming convention, however.
Trump has been floating the idea of the name change in recent days as the U.S. announced it was imposing 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods over the weekend after talks between the countries broke down. Trump has been needling America’s northern neighbor since he returned to the White House last year, suggesting the ally with whom the U.S. once had warm relations should instead be absorbed as the 51st state.
Canada responded to Trump’s import taxes this week by imposing retaliatory tariffs on $20 billion worth of American goods, including steel, dairy products, appliances and farm equipment.
Trump, who signed the order as he was sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, had a large sign behind him propped on a stand with a map of the Great Lakes. Over Lake Ontario, in big red letters, the map read “Lake America.”
On the other wide of the president was another map with the words, “MAKING THE GREAT LAKES EVEN GREATER.”
The lake is one of multiple Great Lakes that the U.S. and Canada share borders along.
The office of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
There is no single international body that determines names of international bodies of water and Trump has wide latitude over how the U.S. government recognizes geographic places and landmarks.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who has traded insults with Trump, this week brushed aside the prospect of Trump changing the lake's name as “a lot of rhetoric."
The name Lake Ontario comes from the Huron Indigenous people’s word “oniatarí:io,” that means “lake of shining waters.” The province of Ontario, founded in 1867, took its name from the lake.
Trump said that while his action was not meant to send any particular geopolitical message, “Canada’s been ripping us off for a long time” on trade and military issues.
“They wanted to be treated like a state and they’re not a state,” the president said. “We just can’t do that anymore.”
“We love the people of Canada,” Trump added. “I don’t think their representatives do, an appropriate job. Maybe they’ll change. I really don’t know. It doesn’t make much difference.”
The move is reminiscent of his move last year to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America."
Trump scribbled his name with a Sharpie pen on the executive order then held it up for the cameras, offering, “And we filed all the necessary papers, documents, everything else.”
“We’ve notified all of the various people that we have to notify. So, we’ve done everything that you have to do,” he said. “And this is official, effective immediately.”
The executive order Trump signed shows that the changes in fact are supposed to be made within 30 days.
He also suggested his push to rename bodies of water may not be finished.
“So, if you think about it, we have a gulf and we have a lake. Now, all we need is an ocean,” Trump said. “So maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and or the Pacific. Maybe we’ll change them.”
Associated Press writer Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
President Donald Trump holds up a signed executive order in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
President Donald Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
City Councillor Renaldo Agostino looks at the Detroit skyline across the Detroit River Monday, Aug. 24, 2026, in Windsor, Ontario (AP Photo/Mike Householder)
People look out across Lake Ontario from the harbor in Toronto, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026. (Keito Newman/The Canadian Press via AP)
President Donald Trump listens to a question from a reporter in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
