Today Hindus Celebrate Diwali, The Festival Of Lights (PHOTOS)

by Libby Zay on

Across the world today, Hindus are celebrating Diwali, one of the religion’s most important holidays. Popularly known as the “festival of lights,” Hindus mark the occasion by decorating their homes with flowers, paper lanterns, powders and earthen oil lamps called Diyas, which signify the triumph of good over evil. Other traditions associated with the holiday include cleaning your house, wearing new clothes, sharing sweets with your family and lighting off firecrackers to drive away evil spirits.

Officially, the holiday celebrates the homecoming of the God Ram after vanquishing the demon king Ravana. That’s the abridged version of the story, as it took the God Ram 14 years to do so. The holiday also honors the Hindu goddess of wealth, Lakshmi.

In India, the festival also marks the end of the harvest season, so many people give thanks for the year gone by and pray for a good harvest in the year to come. However, the festival is celebrated across the globe – from Nepal to New Zealand, and also in Fiji, Britain, Sri Lanka, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States.

Interested in seeing more of Diwali? Click through the gallery below to see how the festival is being celebrated in various countries, including India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

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Woman Falls Asleep On Flight To Paris, Wakes Up In Pakistan

by Libby Zay on

A woman on a Paris-bound flight fell asleep and woke up when the plane landed back in her starting point of Lahore, Pakistan. What’s more, the plane not only stopped in France, but also touched down in Italy before completing the journey.

Express News, a Pakistani television news channel, first reported about the sleepy passenger, described as a middle-aged French woman who is married to a Pakistani. Her relatives are infuriated that nobody from Pakistan International Airways (PIA) bothered to wake her when she reached Paris.

Upon returning back to Lahore, she had completed a 7,700-mile round trip that took 18 hours.”It is a passenger’s responsibility to check about the destination and disembark when the plane arrives at the particular airport,” a representative from the airline told Agence France-Presse.

The airline, who believes a French subcontractor is to blame, has since promised to take the woman back to Paris free of charge and set up a committee to investigate how the crew failed to notice the woman during a two-hour stopover at Charles de Gaulle Airport.

Photo by Don Fulano, flickr.

[Thanks, Imran3000!]

28 Climbers Summit K2 In One Day

by Kraig Becker on

Standing 8611 meters (28,251 feet) in height, K2 is the second tallest mountain on the planet behind Everest. It also happens to be one of the most difficult and deadliest peaks as well, which has earned it nicknames such as the “Savage Mountain” and the “Mountaineer’s Mountain.” But last week the savage was tamed when a record-setting 28 people managed to successfully summit on a single day.

Located in a remote region of Pakistan’s Karakoram range, K2 is only accessible for a brief period of time each year during the summer. Climbers usually arrive in Base Camp around mid- to late-July with the hope of taking advantage of a narrow weather window to reach the summit. In years past Mother Nature has not been so cooperative, often keeping anyone from reaching the top. Last year, only four climbers managed to climb the mountain and they were the first since 2008 when 11 people were killed in a tragic accident.

2012 has not been a particularly good year for climbers in Pakistan, as unusually cold and wet weather prevented many teams from achieving their goals. But for those climbing on K2 last week the conditions were nearly perfect for making an ascent. As a result, a record number of mountaineers were able to reach the second-highest point on Earth and add one of the toughest mountains in the world to their resume.

So far this season there have been 30 total summits of K2 with a few climbers still hoping to top out in the next few days. To put that in perspective, there were nearly 500 successful summits of Everest this past spring, which is an indication of the difference in difficulty between the two peaks. Everest may be 237 meters (777 feet) taller but K2 is orders of magnitude more challenging.

[Photo credit: Kevin Mayea via WikiMedia]

Dust Storms Descend On The Middle East

by Dan Morgridge on

A spate of dust storms caused massive disruptions and several fatalities in the Middle East this week. In Pakistan, winds reaching up to 68mph struck the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad, destroying roofs, uprooting trees, upending billboards, and reducing visibility to under 100 meters. Flights out of Islamabad International Airport were delayed, and at least fifteen fatalities were recorded.

Elsewhere, in Kuwait, heavy dust storms shut down the Basra ports, paralyzing tankers and costing the country some 1,000,000 barrels a day in exports. Flights out of Kuwait International Airport were continuing with normal, albeit limited service. This follows a late May dust storm that shut down Baghdad’s airport only days before a critical nuclear talk. And a dust storm near Mecca raised temperatures to 113 degrees before giving way to a rainstorm – possibly the hottest rainfall on record at 109 degrees F.

Dust storms can seriously impact travel in the Middle East, and visitors are cautioned against the dangers of going out into a storm without proper preparation. The gallery below documents some of the biggest storms in the region to date.

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Karakoram Glaciers Defy Trends, Actually Grow In Size

by Kraig Becker on

Scientists are once again demonstrating that we actually don’t really have a clue about how our planet works. A team of researchers from the University of Grenoble in France has released a new report that indicates that glaciers in the Karakoram mountain range are actually growing in size. This is, of course, counter to what is being observed elsewhere across the planet and defies the theories behind global warming.

The scientists who conducted the study used satellite imagery collected from 1999 through 2008 to compare the land surface elevation over that period of time. Their observations indicate that the mass of the glaciers in the Karakoram continues to grow, even as others in the nearby Himalaya Mountains and around the world are actually in retreat.

Critics of the study are quick to point out that this method of research hasn’t proven to be reliable just yet. There are a number of factors that can interfere with the imagery including cloud cover and the amount of snow on the ground. They say that the only way to be sure that the glaciers are growing is to visit them in person and take measurements by hand. That isn’t easy in a place like the Karakoram, which is amongst the most remote and unexplored regions on the planet.

Located along the borders of China, India and Pakistan, the Karakoram runs about 310 miles in length and features some of the tallest mountains on the planet, including the infamous K2, which is second only to Everest in height. The high concentration of peaks in a relatively small area has made the mountain range nearly impassable at points and has hindered exploration over the years. That rugged terrain would make it very challenging to get an accurate measure of the glaciers there, which is necessary in order to verify the findings in this study.

[Photo credit: Guilhem Vellut via WikiMedia Common]