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Weekly Update: China warns of ‘ecological catastrophe’
BEIJING: An “ecological catastrophe” is developing in Tibet because of global warming, and most glaciers in the region could have melted away by 2100 if no efficient measures are taken, state media said on Tuesday.
The stark message is the result of surveys performed by a group of 20 scientists from China and the United States over a 40-month period, the China Daily reported.
“The full-scale glacier shrinkage in the plateau region will eventually lead to an ecological catastrophe,” Yao Tangdong, China’s foremost glaciologist, said according to the paper.
Tibet’s glaciers have been receding over the past four decades due to global warming, but the alarming development has picked up rapidly especially since the early 1990s, the paper said.
The joint Sino-US scientific team said it discovered a number of separated ice island at levels above 7,500 meters from sea level that used to be connected with the glaciers.
If global warming continues at its current pace, most of the plateau’s glaciers will have disappeared from the face of the Earth by the turn of the next century, he warned.—AFP
12 Asians among world’s most powerful business women
HONG KONG: A dozen Asians have been included in the latest Fortune list of the 50 most powerful businesswomen in the world outside of the United States.
Xie Qihua, chairman and president of China’s largest steelmaker, Shanghai Baosteel Group, is the highest listed Asian, occupying second-place on list.
Among the other Asian women on the list were Ho Ching, executive director of Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, Yang Mianmian, president of China’s Haier Group, Mary Ma, chief financial officer of China’s Lenovo Group, Sowako Noma, president and CEO of Japan’s Kodansha and Marjorie Yang, chairman and CEO of Hong Kong’s Esquel Group.—AFP
SpaceShipOne wins big prize
MOJAVE (California): The world’s first private rocket ship blasted into space on Monday for the second time in five days, snatching a 10-million-dollar prize and ushering in a new era of space tourism.
In a flawless mission, SpaceShipOne, piloted by former US navy test pilot Brian Binnie, also smashed the sub-orbital flight altitude record, reaching 112 km, judges announced.
To win the X Prize, the same reusable manned spacecraft needed to make two journeys into space within two weeks while carrying the equivalent weight of two passengers.—AFP
Disney sued over deadly roller coaster accident
LOS ANGELES: A wrongful death lawsuit was filed against the Walt Disney Co. and the Walt Disney World Co. in southern California over a September 2003 roller coaster accident that killed a 22 year-old man and injured 10 others, according to court documents.
The suit, filed in Orange County Superior Court, seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages on behalf of Marcelo Torres, 22, of Gardenia, California, who was fatally injured when a car on Disneyland’s “Big Thunder Mountain Railroad” ride derailed on September 5, 2003.
After the accident the ride was shut down for months, and opened in March.
According to the California Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA) inspectors, the accident was caused by a series of human errors, including lax maintenance and inadequate training.—AFP
Nobel prize winner wants to donate award money
WASHINGTON: US researchers Richard Axel, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday, said he would like to donate his 1.1-million-euro prize to a charity.
Axel, along with US researcher Linda B. Buck were awarded the prestigious prize for their pioneering work on mammals’ sense of smell.
Axel, 58, works at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at New York’s Columbia University.—AFP
Head lice provide clue to prehistoric lives
WASHINGTON: A study of an ancient human pest — head lice — suggests that the ancestors of today’s American Indians may have met and fought with pre-humans long extinct elsewhere, scientists said on Tuesday.
The researchers said people carry two distinct families of head lice, and the easiest explanation is that one species of lice evolved on a different species of pre-human.
“Kids today have head lice that evolved on two species of cavemen,” said Dale Clayton, a professor of biology at the University of Utah who led the study.
Clayton’s team discovered that modern humans have two types of head lice. One is found worldwide and thus must have evolved on the ancestors of our species, Homo sapiens. A second family o f louse is found so far only in the Americas.—Reuters
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