China and Nepal have finally come up with a solution to a longstanding dispute over the height of Mount Everest.
The world’s highest mountain lies on the border between the two countries and they have disagreed for years over its exact height, which Nepal puts at 8,848m — nearly 4m more than the measurement used by China.
PHOTO: AFP
COMPROMISE
Officials reached a compromise at talks in Kathmandu this week by agreeing the two measurements referred to different things — one to the height of Everest’s rock and the other to the height of its snowcap.
“The Chinese side — led by Li Qingyuan — accepted Nepal’s claim that the snow height of Mount Everest is 8,848m, while the Nepali side recognized the Chinese claim that the rock height of the mountain is 8,844.43m,” a senior official at Nepal’s Department of Surveys told the Kathmandu Post Daily.
Thousands of people have climbed Mount Everest since the first ascent in 1953 by Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, but its exact height has been a source of dispute ever since the first measurement was made in 1856.
FIRST SURVEY
The broadly accepted height of 8,848m was first determined by an Indian survey in 1955 and measured the mountain’s snowcap, rather than the rock beneath it.
Geologists believe Everest is still growing as India is gradually pushed beneath China and Nepal by the shifting of the continental plates.
In May 1999 a US expedition using GPS technology measured the height of Everest as 8,850m, a figure that is now used by the US National Geographic Society, though it has yet to be officially accepted by Nepal.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS