The Sierra Club announced on Friday that long-time chairman Carl Pope will step down next year. Pope served as executive director for 17 years, the longest stint in the organization's history, before assuming chairmanship in 2010. He was criticized by club members for the partnerships he arranged with major corporations, including a $1 million deal with Clorox. Membership has fallen from 714,000 in 2005 to just more than 600,000 today. Acting executive director Michael Brune has indicated that... Read More
Authorities from Grand Canyon National Park discovered a dead man after bird watchers from a conservation group spotted two endangered California condors behaving strangely near the man's body. Rangers found the man along the Colorado River near Navajo Bridge. Officials from the Coconino County medical examiners office are investigating the circumstances of his death. California condors, the largest bird species in North America, faced extinction in the 1980s when hunting and poisoning dropped... Read More
Jamaica's Steve Mullings is facing a possible lifetime ban from track and field after anti-doping officials on Thursday found no reason to dismiss the sprinter's June positive test for furosemide. Mullings, 28, served a two-year ban from 2004 to 2006 for elevated levels of testosterone. In June, he recorded the year's fourth fastest 100-meter sprint, 9.80, after failing to crack the top 50 a year earlier. Mullings trains in the United States with star sprinter Tyson Gay under coach Lance Braum... Read More
Two South Korean climbers died on Friday after they plunged from the north face of Cholatse in Nepal's Himalayas. Kim Hyung-il and Chang Ji-myeong were attempting to summit the mountain in 36 hours, according to the Korean Alpine Federation. Other members of the team went looking for the men after losing contact and found their bodies on the mountain at an altitude of 16,896 feet. Kim, the leader of the K2 Extreme team, had participated in the search for three other Korean mountaineers presume... Read More
The last of 91 beached whales died on Wednesday in New Zealand. The mass beaching began Saturday, when 24 sperm whales and two minke whales ran aground in Tasmania, and continued when 65 pilot whales became stranded on New Zealand’s South Island. Rescue efforts were hampered by weather, and only two whales were returned to the ocean. The incidents do not appear to be related and biologists are unsure what may have caused the beachings.
Read more at AFP
