week7-喜馬拉雅山雪崩

32 Dead, 85 Missing In Himalayan Trekking Disaster After Unseasonal Blizzard

BY ARI PHILLIPS POSTED ON OCTOBER 17, 2014 AT 10:42 AM

October in Nepal is a peak season for trekkers to gather and work their way up the Himalayan mountains. Skies are usually clear and sun shines though. However, heavy snowfall on Tuesday followed by a series of avalanches has caused a nightmare scenario, leaving at least 32 people dead and 85 missing.

Most of the fatalities happened as the blizzard reached a point on the Annapurna Circuit, 100 miles northwest of the capital, Kathmandu. A well-known trekking route in central Nepal, the area is about 14,800 feet above sea level and close the the circuit’s highest point, the Thorung La pass. Helicopters have saved survivors stranded in lodges and huts along the route, with at least 200 trekkers already rescued according to authorities. Tourists from countries around the world, including Israel, Indonesia, Germany, Spain, India, Canada, Russia, and Poland, were caught on the mountain. This is the worst disaster in the history of Nepal’s mountain-climbing industry — snowfall from the storm topped six feet in some places.

“I was sure I was going to die on the way to the pass because I lost my group, I lost all the people I was with and I could not see anything,” said Linor Kajan, an injured trekker from Israel, who said she was stuck in waist-deep snow. “One Nepalese guide who knows the way saw me and asked me to stay with him. And he dragged me, really dragged me to the tea shop. And everybody there was really frightened.”The blizzard was the tail end of Cyclone Hudhud, which hit the Indian coast a few days earlier and was reportedly one of the strongest storms on record to hit the region. The equivalent of a category 4 hurricane, Hudhud made landfall on October 12 in Andhra Pradesh, India.

Climate scientists are hesitant to link any one weather event to climate change, but they have pointed out in the past that the Himalayas are especially vulnerable to the increased storm intensity expected to result from climate change.

“Storms in that region are getting stronger,” John Stone, an IPCC lead author and adjunct professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, told the Toronto Star. “It is not inconsistent with what scientists have been saying … by making the atmosphere contain more energy, we have increased the likelihood of more frequent and severe storms.”

The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, a regional agency based in Kathmandu that serves eight countries, released a report in May showing that rising temperatures caused Nepal’s glaciers to shrink by almost a quarter between 1977 and 2010 — at an average loss of about 15 square miles per year. The report also pointed out that Nepal’s average temperature change has been two to eight times greater than the global average. The report says that these changes could bring more intense and frequent floods, avalanches, and landslides.

This is not the first time a deadly blizzard has struck trekkers during the hiking season. In 1995 and 2005 more than a dozen climbers and guides were killed by storms. Then earlier this year in April an avalanche killed 16 Nepalese guides near a base camp on Mount Everest in the deadliest disaster in the mountain’s history. This avalanche was not caused by a storm, but melting ice on the famous Khumbu Icefall.

“Accurate weather forecasting has reduced the risk of being surprised by a killer storm like the one that struck in 1996,” wrote Jon Krakauer, author of a book about a deadly 1996 storm event on Everest, in the New Yorker. “But the pronounced warming of the Himalayan climate in recent years has made the Icefall more unstable than ever, and there is still no way to predict when a serac is going to topple over. And Sherpas spend much, much more time in the Icefall than their Western employers.”

Of this disaster, former British Gurkha officer and avid trekker General Sam Cowan said“no one should have ventured out to cross Thorung La with the weather as threatening as it was, nor should their trekking guides have allowed it.”

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/10/17/3581110/unseasonal-blizzard-deadly-himalayan-avalanche/

Structure of the Lead：

   WHO- trekkers

   WHEN-on Tuesday

   WHAT-leaving at least 32 people dead and 85 missing

   WHY-heavy snowfall on Tuesday followed by a series of avalanches has caused a nightmare scenario

   WHERE-the Himalayan mountains

   HOW-heavy snowfall

Keywords：

   1. trekker：登山者

   2. snowfall：降雪

   3. avalanches：雪崩

   4. blizzard：暴風雪

   5.  lodges：小屋

   6. Sherpas：夏爾巴人

   7. topple：倒塌

   8. serac ：冰塔

 

Week6-ISIS

Kurdish peshmerga forces launch offensive to retake Isis held areas

• Agence France-Presse
• The Guardian, Wednesday 17 December 2014 19.12 GMT

Iraqi Kurdish forces launched a broad offensive on Wednesday aimed at recapturing areas near the Syrian border that have been held by Islamic State (Isis) for months, officials said.

Among the goals is the Sinjar area, which was home to many members of the Yazidi minority before Isis attacked in early August and forced most of them to flee.

The risk of a genocide against the Yazidis was one of the reasons Barack Obama put forward for launching a campaign of air strikes against Isis.

The two-pronged push was launched from Rabia, on the border with Syria, and Zumar, on the shores of Mosul dam lake, said senior officers in the Kurdish army known as the peshmerga.

“Peshmerga forces launched an operation to liberate some important areas in Sinjar and Zumar at 7am (04.00 GMT),” a peshmerga brigadier general said.

“The attack is ongoing and has the support of coalition jets which have been targeting Isis positions in Zumar and Sinjar (regions) since last night,” he said.

The peshmerga had already recaptured three small villages, the officer added.

The chief of staff of Massud Barzani, the president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, said the aim was to reclaim the entire Sinjar area.

“The plan to liberate Sinjar was reviewed by the Kurdish leader and the peshmerga field commanders. God willing, we will liberate it soon,” Fuad Hussein said.

Sinjar was the scene in August of one of the most dramatic episodes of the assault on Iraq the jihadists launched in early June.

Isis fighters killed hundreds of residents, abducted and enslaved hundreds of Yazidi women and girls and forced tens of thousands of people to seek refuge on Mount Sinjar.

Civilians remained besieged for days in the searing summer heat with little to eat and drink.

The majority of those trapped on the mountain fled when Kurdish forces opened a corridor but, four months on, little has improved for those who are still on the mountain.

Yazidi fighting units that were formed in the wake of the August attack have struggled to control land in the Sinjar area and retreated to the mountain once again in September.

Their only lifeline has been army helicopters flying in daily with supplies and out with civilians who continue to seek refuge on the mountain as a result of Isis attacks on surrounding villages.

A few thousand people are still atop Mount Sinjar. Some are residents of the mountain but most are fighters, from various regional Kurdish groups or recently-formed Yazidi militias.

“We are ready, we are waiting for the advancing forces from Rabia and Zumar,” said Dawood Jundi, a field commander with the peshmerga.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/17/kurds-peshmerga-offensive-isis-sinjar-territory-mosul

 Structure of the Lead：

WHO-Iraqi Kurdish

   WHEN-on Wednesday

   WHAT-forces launched a broad offensive

   WHY-aimed at recapturing areas near the Syrian border 

   WHERE-Syrian border that have been held by Islamic State (Isis) for months

   HOW-not given

Keywords：

         1. recapture：奪回

   2. Syrian：敘利亞的

   3. genocide：種族滅絕

   4. brigadier：旅長

   5. coalition jets：聯軍飛機

   6. target：瞄準

   7. fled：逃離

   8. retreat：撤退

Week5-EBOLA

Ebola still spreading in western Sierra Leone, Guinea's forest: U.N

BY STEPHANIE NEBEHAY

GENEVA Tue Dec 9, 2014 4:01pm EST

(Reuters) - More foreign health workers are needed to help tackle the Ebola epidemic, which is spreading quickly in western Sierra Leone and deep in the forested interior of Guinea, a senior U.N. official said on Tuesday.

The death toll from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has risen to 6,331 in the three worst hit countries, with Sierra Leone overtaking Liberia as the country with the highest number of cases, the World Health Organization says.

"We know the outbreak is still flaming strongly in western Sierra Leone and some parts of the interior of Guinea. We can't rest, we have to still push on," said David Nabarro, the U.N. Special Envoy on Ebola.

More treatment centers are opening in Sierra Leone but they need additional trained staff, he told a news briefing.

"We don't yet have the full number of functioning treatment centers and places where people who are ill can be kept away from others," he said.

"We are anticipating several hundred beds to come on stream in the next few weeks, and that will lead to the situation calming down."

The deadly virus is spreading especially in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown and Port Loko, where a more intense response is needed, said Nabarro, a veteran public health expert.

"Although I hate predictions, I am at least confident that unless something goes radically wrong we will see an improvement there (in Freetown). It's a bit like what Monrovia was like 4 to 6 weeks ago and I think that it will certainly calm down."

The rise in the spread of Ebola in western Sierra Leone reflects the fact that tribal-led communities have yet to fully accept the outbreak and take action to avoid infection, he said.

"There are reports coming through of places where people who are sick, staying at home and perhaps infecting their families."

The second "particularly troublesome" area is the northern part of Guinea's interior, a region known as Guinea Forestiere where the epidemic began nearly a year ago, Nabarro said.

"We have been working very closely with Mali to try to make sure if cases perchance cross the border that they can be dealt with very quickly."

Mali has reported eight Ebola cases, six fatal, to date.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/09/us-health-ebola-who-idUSKBN0JM24X20141209

Structure of the Lead：

   WHO-a senior U.N. official

   WHEN-on Tuesday

   WHAT-More foreign health workers are needed to help tackle the Ebola epidemic

   WHY-Ebola epidemic, which is spreading quickly

   WHERE- in western Sierra Leone and deep in the forested interior of Guinea

   HOW-not given

Keywords：

   1. tackle：阻截

         2. interior：內部

   3. toll：傷亡人數

   4. veteran：經驗豐富的

   5. radically：根本

   6. perchance：或許