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Nepal Plans to Restrict Everest Permits to Experienced Climbers

FILE PHOTO: A mountaineer holds on to the rope during an ice climbing session at Everest base camp, Nepal April 15, 2025. REUTERS/Purnima Shrestha
FILE PHOTO: A mountaineer holds on to the rope during an ice climbing session at Everest base camp, Nepal April 15, 2025. REUTERS/Purnima Shrestha
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Nepal Plans to Restrict Everest Permits to Experienced Climbers

FILE PHOTO: A mountaineer holds on to the rope during an ice climbing session at Everest base camp, Nepal April 15, 2025. REUTERS/Purnima Shrestha
FILE PHOTO: A mountaineer holds on to the rope during an ice climbing session at Everest base camp, Nepal April 15, 2025. REUTERS/Purnima Shrestha

Nepal will issue Everest permits only to climbers with experience of scaling at least one of the Himalayan nation's 7,000-meter (22,965 ft) peaks, according to the draft of a new law aimed at reducing overcrowding and improving safety.
Nepal, which is heavily reliant on climbing, trekking and tourism for foreign exchange, has faced criticism for permitting too many climbers, including inexperienced ones, to try to ascend the 8,849-meter (29,032 ft) peak, Reuters reported.
This often results in long queues of climbers in the 'death Zone', an area below the summit with insufficient natural oxygen for survival.
Overcrowding has been blamed for the high number of deaths on the mountain. At least 12 climbers died, and another five went missing on Everest's slopes in 2023 when Nepal issued 478 permits. Eight climbers died last year.
Under the proposed law, an Everest permit would be issued only after a climber provides evidence of having climbed at least one 7,000-meter mountain in Nepal.
The sardar, or the head of local staff, and the mountain guide accompanying climbers must also be Nepali citizens.
The draft law has been registered at the National Assembly, the upper house of parliament, where the ruling alliance holds a majority required to pass the bill.
International expedition operators have urged Nepal to allow any 7,000-meter peak, not just those in the Himalayan nation, for the Everest permit.
"That wouldn't make any sense. And I would also add mountains that are close to 7,000 meters to that list and that are widely used as preparation, like Ama Dablam, Aconcagua, Denali and others," said Lukas Furtenbach of Austria-based expedition organizer, Furtenbach Adventures.
Furtenbach, currently leading an expedition on Everest, said mountain guides from other countries must also be allowed to work on Everest, as there are not enough qualified Nepali mountain guides.
"It is important that mountain guides have a qualification like IFMGA (International Federation of Mountain Guides Associations), no matter what nationality they are. We do also welcome Nepali IFMGA guides to work in the Alps in Europe," he told Reuters.
Garrett Madison of the US-based Madison Mountaineering also said a 6,500-meter peak anywhere in the world would be a better idea.
"It's too difficult to find a reasonable 7,000-meter plus peak in Nepal," Madison said.

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Varieties

British Sculptors Achieve Notable Victory in Global Ice Carving Competition

The team sculpted a kraken eating a boat
The team sculpted a kraken eating a boat
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British Sculptors Achieve Notable Victory in Global Ice Carving Competition

The team sculpted a kraken eating a boat
The team sculpted a kraken eating a boat

Two stonemasons have won a snow sculpting prize as part of Team GB's entry to the World Snow Festival in Switzerland, according to BBC.

Sheffield sculptors Lily Marsh and Steve Roche were part of Great Britain's four-person team, which won the public vote and came third in the technical judging at the competition in Grindelwald.

They competed against 10 nations with the Spanish team taking first place in the technical category.

Sculptor Lily Marsh said it was “refreshing” to swap stone for snow. “Normally it's very dusty and it's much quicker to move the materials so I really enjoyed it,” she said.

The team - led by Christine Close, a sculptor based in France - carved a kraken eating a boat as part of the myths and legends theme set by the competition organizers.

They worked with a large block of snow, starting with a small model.

“We used big chisels on the end of broom handles. A bit like gardening hoes.

You use those to stab at it and shave stuff way,” explained Roche.

“And we used a length of chain that had nuts and bolts set in it with two handles at the end like a big chain saw to carve off the really big bits that we needed to get rid of at the start of the design,” he added.

Despite the low temperatures, Roche said the work kept the team warm.

“I was working in a T shirt most days. I was moaning it was too warm. I got sunburned. I had to go to the shop to get sun cream because it was so bright,” he said.

After the judging, sadly the sculptures did not last and were left to melt in the snow, said Marsh.

“It's quite a liberating thing because often you can get precious about the stuff you make or get worried about it not being good enough and actually it's quite a good practice to make something and know that it's definitely going to melt. It releases you from that worry a bit,” he said.

Varieties

How a Syrian Refugee Chef Met Britain's King Charles

Imad Alarnab, a chef and restaurant owner who fled Syria in 2015, hosted King Charles III at his Soho restaurant. Ben STANSALL / AFP
Imad Alarnab, a chef and restaurant owner who fled Syria in 2015, hosted King Charles III at his Soho restaurant. Ben STANSALL / AFP
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How a Syrian Refugee Chef Met Britain's King Charles

Imad Alarnab, a chef and restaurant owner who fled Syria in 2015, hosted King Charles III at his Soho restaurant. Ben STANSALL / AFP
Imad Alarnab, a chef and restaurant owner who fled Syria in 2015, hosted King Charles III at his Soho restaurant. Ben STANSALL / AFP

Pots clanged and oil sizzled inside the London kitchen of Syrian chef Imad Alarnab, as the former refugee who fled his country's civil war recalled hosting King Charles III.

When the chef left his war-torn homeland in 2015, he never imagined that one day he would watch as cameras flashed and wide-eyed crowds greeted the monarch arriving at his Soho restaurant last year.

Alarnab, 48, said he had asked the king to come to the popular eatery when he met him at Buckingham Palace before an event honoring humanitarian work in 2023.

"I told him 'I would love for you to visit our restaurant one day' and he said: 'I would love to'... I was over the Moon to be honest".

The chef has come a long way since he arrived in London after an arduous journey from Damascus with virtually no money in his pocket.

Fearing for his life, he had escaped Syria after his family was uprooted again and again by fighting.

His culinary empire –- restaurants, cafes, and juice bars peppered across the Syrian capital -- had been destroyed by bombing in just six days in 2013.

Alarnab spent three months crisscrossing Europe in the back of lorries, aboard trains, on foot and even on a bicycle before he reached the UK.

"When I left, I left with nothing," he told AFP, as waiters whirled past carrying steaming plates of traditional Syrian fare.

Starving and exhausted, he spent the last of his money on a train ticket to Doncaster where his sister lived.

'Love letter from Syria'

To make a living, Alarnab initially picked up any odd jobs, such as washing and selling cars, saving enough to bring his wife and three daughters over after seven months.

His love of cooking never left him though. In France, while he was sleeping on the steps of a church, Alarnab had often cooked for hundreds of other refugees.

"I always dreamed of going back to cooking," he said.

So it wasn't long before he found himself back in the kitchen, cooking up a storm across London with his sold-out supper clubs, bustling pop-up cafes, and crowded lunchtime falafel bars.

He now runs two restaurants in the city –- one in Soho's buzzing Kingly Court and another nestled in a corner of the vibrant Somerset House arts center.

"I was looking for a city to love when I found London," Alarnab said, adding it had offered him "space to innovate" and add his own modern twist to classic Syrian dishes.

Far from home, Alarnab said his word-of-mouth success had grown into a "love letter from Syria to the world" that needs no translation.

"You don't really need to speak Arabic or Syrian to know that this is the best falafel ever," he said, pointing to a row of colorful plates.

-'There is hope' -

For Alarnab, spices frying, dough rising and cheese melting inside a kitchen offered an unlikely escape from the real world.

"All my problems, I leave them outside the kitchen and walk in fresh."

When he fled Syria, Alarnab thought going back to Damascus was forever off the table.

Yet he returned for the first time in October, almost a year to the day after longtime leader Bashar al-Assad was toppled in a lightning opposition offensive -- ending almost 14 years of brutal civil war.

He walked the familiar streets of his old home, where his late mother taught him to cook many years ago.

"To return to Damascus and for her not to be there, that was extremely difficult."

Torn between the two cities, Alarnab said he longed to one day rebuild his home in Damascus.

"I wish I could go back and live there. But at the same time, I feel like London is now a part of me. I don't know if I could ever go back and just be in Syria," he said.

Although Syrians still bear the scars of war, Alarnab said he had seen "hope in people's eyes which was missing when I left in 2015".

"The road ahead is still very long, and yes this is only the beginning -- but there is hope."

Varieties

El Nino May Return in 2026 and Make Planet Even Hotter

FILE - Villagers fetch water from a makeshift borehole in Mudzi, Zimbabwe, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Ufumeli, File)
FILE - Villagers fetch water from a makeshift borehole in Mudzi, Zimbabwe, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Ufumeli, File)
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El Nino May Return in 2026 and Make Planet Even Hotter

FILE - Villagers fetch water from a makeshift borehole in Mudzi, Zimbabwe, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Ufumeli, File)
FILE - Villagers fetch water from a makeshift borehole in Mudzi, Zimbabwe, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Ufumeli, File)

The warming El Nino weather phenomenon could form later this year, potentially pushing global temperatures to record heights.

There is a 50- to 60-percent chance of El Nino developing during the July-September period and beyond, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The World Meteorological Organization will issue an update on El Nino on Tuesday.

Here's what you need to know about El Nino and its cooler sister, La Nina:

- Why the name? –

El Nino and its cooler sister La Nina are two phases of a natural climate pattern across the tropical Pacific known as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

Peruvian and Ecuadoran fishermen coined the term El Nino ("the boy" or "the Christ Child") in the 19th century for the arrival of an unusually warm ocean current off the coast that reduced their catch just before Christmas.

Scientists chose the name La Nina as the opposite of El Nino. Between the two events, there is a "neutral" phase.

- El Nino -

El Nino can weaken consistent trade winds that blow east to west across the tropical Pacific, influencing weather by affecting the movement of warm water across this vast ocean.

This weakening warms the usually cooler central and eastern sides of the ocean, altering rainfall over the equatorial Pacific and wind patterns around the world.

The extra heat at the surface of the Pacific releases energy into the atmosphere that can temporarily drive up global temperatures, which is why El Nino years are often among the warmest on record.

"All else being equal, a typical El Nino event tends to cause a temporary increase in the global mean temperature on the order of 0.1C-0.2C," Nat Johnson, an NOAA meteorologist, told AFP.

El Nino occurs every two to seven years.

It typically results in drier conditions across southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, and northern Brazil, and wetter conditions in the Horn of Africa, the southern United States, Peru and Ecuador.

- Another record? -

The last El Nino occurred in 2023-2024, contributing to making 2023 the second highest year on record and 2024 the all-time high.

Carlo Buontempo, director of the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, told AFP in January that 2026 could be "another record-breaking year" if El Nino appears this year.

However, El Nino's impact would be higher in 2027 than in 2026 if it develops in the second half of this year, said Tido Semmler, a climate scientist at Ireland's National Meteorological Service.

"It takes time for the global atmosphere to react to the El Nino," he said.

"Having said this, there is a risk of 2026 being the warmest year on record even without El Nino, due to the global warming trend," Semmler told AFP.

"2027 would face an increased risk of getting a record warm year if El Nino developed in the second half of 2026," he added.

- La Nina -

The latest La Nina episode was relatively weak and short lived, starting in December 2024 and due to enter a neutral phase during the Februady-April period.

La Nina cools the eastern Pacific Ocean for a period of about one to three years, generating the opposite effects to El Nino on global weather.

It leads to wetter conditions in parts of Australia, southeast Asia, India, southeast Africa and northern Brazil, while causing drier conditions in parts of South America.

La Nina did not stop 2025 from being the third hottest on record.

- New calculation –

The NOAA adopted in February a new way of determining El Nino and El Nino events.

The old Oceanic Nino Index (ONI) compared the three-month average sea surface temperature one region of the Pacific with a 30-year average in the same area.

But as the oceans have been warming rapidly, that old 30-year average can be out of date.

The new method, the Relative Oceanic Nino Index (RONI), compares how warm or cool the east-central Pacific is compared to the rest of the tropics.

The NOAA said RONI is a "clearer, more reliable way" to track El Nino and La Nina in real time.