A human foot washed up on the shore of a Vancouver-area lake on Saturday, raising to nine the number of severed feet found in British Columbia's waterways in the past four years. The foot, clad in a size 12 Cougar hiking boot, is the first of the missing feet to turn up in freshwater rather than on the coast. Authorities say they don't suspect foul play, and have distributed images of the shoe to the media in hopes that someone who might be able to link the footwear to a missing person will co... Read More
The Australian Senate voted 36-32 on Tuesday to approve a tax on carbon emissions. Australia follows the European Union as the world's second-biggest economy to impose a tax on emission. The new laws will charge $23.70 per ton of carbon emitted by the country’s 500 biggest polluters. The tax is seen as a victory for Prime Minister Julia Gillard, but opposition leader Tony Abbot has already said he will repeal it if he is elected in 2013. In 2015, the plan will change to an emissions trad... Read More
The inspector general for the U.S. Department of State has launched an inquiry that will examine whether an environmental impact statement issued last month in support of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline violated federal laws. The report was approved by the State Department but conducted by a contractor, Cardno Entrix, which has close ties to TransCanada, the company behind the Keystone XL project. The pipeline would carry oil more than 2,000 miles from Canada's tar sands fields to refineries... Read More
Researchers at Austria's Innsbruck University think that Europe's oldest natural mummy probably died as the result of a climbing fall, not from an arrow wound as previously assumed. The 5,300-year-old mummy, known as Ötzi the Iceman, was excavated from a glacier in the Italian Ötztal Alps 20 years ago and was roughly 45 years old when he died. If the new theory holds, he would be the world's first known mountaineering fatality.
Read more at the Austrian Times
The climbing documentary Cold, a short film that chronicled the first-ever winter ascent of 8,000-meter peak Gasherbrum II, swept three categories including the Grand Prize, at the Banff Mountain Film Festival this weekend. The film follows alpinists Cory Richards, Simone Moro, and Denis Urubko as they climbed Gasherbrum II last February. It also won awards as the year's Best Climbing Film and for Excellence in Audio Post-Production. "I cannot believe that a dark, short, sort of experimental, ... Read More
