‘Super Sherpa’ climbs to clean up Everest

Apa Sherpa has stood on top of the world more times than anyone in history, and now he is heading back up Mount Everest, not for the fame or glory, but in the name of environmental protection. Apa, 49, has become increasingly concerned about the damage inflicted on the world’s highest mountain by both climate change and the waste left by careless climbers.

This spring season he hopes to conquer Everest for the 19th time, and he will use the trip to focus attention on how climate change is affecting the Himalayas - and also bring back as much rubbish as he can carry.

“I am not looking for recognition or doing this just to beat my own record. My objective is to highlight the environmental degradation of the mountain and draw attention to the issue of global warming,” he told AFP.

Decades of expeditions have left Everest less than pristine, with discarded equipment, food containers, human excrement and even the corpses of unlucky adventurers littering its slopes.

And in one stark example of how the mountain has been hit by global warming, climbers have observed the steady break-up of the Khumbu icefall, a treacherous maze of cliffs and crevasses on the southern side of the peak.

Apa said he has experienced less snow on the mountain each time he has reached the summit since his first success in 1990. “The snows are melting on Everest. I cannot imagine Everest turning into a naked rock,” he said. “Also the beauty of Everest is deteriorating as climbers leave their garbage on the mountain. We must discourage such practices.”

“For us Sherpas, Everest is not just the mountain. Everest is our god. I want to see Everest clean and safe. Due to heavy commercialisation of Everest, the sacred spiritual aspect of the mountain is fading away and this has become very worrying for the mountain people,” he said.

The communities living around the mountain are essential to the climbing business, which rests — literally — on the backs of indigenous Sherpas like Apa who work as support climbers for foreign expeditions.

“You never know when the weather turns bad there but the mountain needs care and the risk I am taking is worth it,” he said.

-AFP

Safe drinking water project in Polonnaruwa

Safe water will be made available to 58,500 people in the Polonnaruwa district by the Polonnaruwa Water Supply Scheme under the Township Infrastructure Development Project in 2011.

The project is funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), through the government for the Secondary Towns and Rural Community based Water Supply and Sanitary Project.

The Polonnaruwa Water Supply Project is one of the urban water supply schemes to be implemented under this project.

Reports show that more than 5,000 children die everyday from diseases caused by drinking unsafe water.

Over one billion people lack access to an improved water source. Unsafe water, sanitation, and hygiene are responsible for the vast majority of diarrhoeal diseases, which cause nearly two million children to die every year.

Water-borne infections such as cholera, typhoid fever, and dysentery also burden the public health system.The safe drinking water projects are useful for both emergency relief distribution and for sustained social markets.

The National Water Supply and Drainage Board has already signed a contract with a Korean company to construct the Polonnaruwa Water Supply Project comprising an unpurified water transmission main treatment plant, treated water plant and head works on a design and build basis.

‘Bo’ becomes US First Dog

After months of anticipation, a six month-old Portuguese Water Dog named Bo is now calling the White House home.

According to The Washington Post, which published confirmation of the White House dog news on Sunday, President Obama’s daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, chose the name because their cousins have a cat named Bo and because Mrs. Obama’s father was nicknamed Diddley, as in Bo Diddley.

The dog is a gift from Sen. Ted Kennedy, who owns three dogs of the same breed, known for high spirits and said to be a good fit for kids with allergies (such as Malia). Kennedy had been lobbying the Obamas to get a Portuguese Water Dog (or PWD) for months.

The newspaper reports that the Obama girls are delighted “they’ve been waiting anxiously since their dad promised them a dog during his presidential campaign” and that the family, first-time dog owners, are still deciding where Bo will sleep and who will walk and feed him. Under a veil of secrecy, the Post reports, Bo actually made a trip to the White House earlier to meet the family. “The Meeting,” as it was called by staffers, was a success.

Programme to deal with electronic waste

Have any of you wondered what happens to the huge amounts of unused electrical and electronic equipment that pile up at State institutions without being disposed of for years.

Tons of post-consumer electronic items at these institutions have reached the end or neared the end of their “useful life”. Among them are mainly computers, printers, VCRs, copiers, fax machines, mobile phones and typewriters.The Central Environment Authority is formulating a programme to deal with these electronic waste.

It hopes to deal with the menace of electronic refuse on a reduce, recycle and reuse basis, but presently they are exploring the possibilities of exporting them.

The Central Environment Authority might seek the participation of the public in its efforts to manage electronic waste because these materials need to be disposed of effectively and without causing delay.

Rapid technology change, low initial cost, and even planned obsolescence have resulted in a fast-growing surplus of electronic waste around the globe.Up to 38 separate chemical elements are incorporated into electronic waste items.

Earth tremors due to new plate

The tremor felt in Kataragama, Matara, Moneragala, Badulla, Nuwara Eliya, Batticaloa, Ampara and Hambantota, last week could be due to the formation of a new plate under the sea off Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka has been experiencing tremors frequently and could expect this risk in future, according to the Geological Survey and Mines Bureau (GSMB). The new plate that was forming was discovered when surveys were made in the seas off Sri Lanka to demarcate the fishing area of the country.

This tremor which was felt in many areas in the Southern, Eastern and Uva provinces was registered under 4 on the Richter scale and has been recorded at the Pallekele monitoring station. However, it has not been recorded at the California headquarters.

Tiles of many houses and a temple had been displaced as a result of the tremor which occurred at around 8.50 a.m. on April 15 morning and lasted for a couple of seconds.

A tsunami scare was also reported from coastal areas in Polhena, Paramulla, Devinuwara, Gandara and Dikwella soon after the earth tremor. Glass window panes in some houses were reported to have been blown off by the tremor.

The plates consist of an outer layer of the Earth, the lithosphere, which is cool enough to behave as a more or less rigid shell. Occasionally the hot asthenosphere of the Earth finds a weak place in the lithosphere to rise buoyantly as a plume, or hotspot.

The Earth releases its internal heat by convecting, or boiling much like a pot of pudding on the stove. The hot asthenospheric mantle rises to the surface and spreads laterally, transporting oceans and continents as on a slow conveyor belt.

The speed of this motion is a few centimetres per year, about as fast as your fingernails grow. The new lithosphere, created at the ocean spreading centres, cools as it ages and eventually becomes dense enough to sink back into the mantle.

The subducted crust releases water to form volcanic island chains above, and after a few hundred million years will be heated and recycled back to the spreading centres.

The oceanic ridges are the asthenospheric spreading centres, creating new oceanic crust. Subduction zones appear as deep oceanic trenches. Most of the continental mountain belts occur where plates are pressing against one another. This is when an earthquake occurs.

Birth and death anniversaries from April 19 - April 30

April 19

Death of Lord Byron, English poetin 1824.

April 20

Birth of Adolf Hitler in 1889.

April 21

Birth of Charlotte Bronte, English novelist in 1816.

April 23

Death of William Shakespeare, English dramatist and poet in 1616.

Death of William Wordsworth, English poet, known as the Bard of Avon in 1850.

April 24

Birth of Sachin Tendulkar, Indian cricketer in 1973.

April 26

Birth of William Shakespeare, English playwright and poet in

1564.

Death of Philip Gunawardene in 1972.

April 28

Birth of Saddam Hussain, former President of Iraq in 1937.

April 30

Death of Adolf Hitler in 1945. Birth of Malani Fonseka, veteran local actress in 1947.

Special events which took place in history, from April 19 - April 30

April 20

The Davasa Group of Newspapers was closed down in 1974.

April 21

The Sacred Kapilavasthu Relics were brought to Sri Lanka for exposition in 1978.

More than 100 killed in Pettah bomb blast in 1987.

April 22

The Buddhist and Pali University was inaugurated in 1982.

April 24

Late Mother Teresa arrived in Sri Lanka in 1986.

April 26

Sacred Relics of Moggallana and Saripuththa were brought to our country from Burma in 1956.

National Day of Tanzania.

April 27

Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India arrived in Colombo on her third visit to the country in 1973.

April 28

The Ceylon Petroleum Corporation was declared open in 1962.

April 29

The New Parliament at Sri Jayawardenapura, Kotte was ceremonially opened in 1982.