Japan man, 80, scales Everest, sets record

• View PhotoJapanese adventurer Yuichiro Miura, 80, and his son Gota (L) pose for a picture as …
• View PhotoJapanese adventurer Yuichiro Miura, 80, on Mount Everest in Nepal, May 22, 2013. …

An 80-year-old Japanese climber reached the summit of Mount Everest on Thursday, becoming the oldest person to scale the world's highest mountain, his website and a Nepalese official said.

Yuichiro Miura and his party arrived at the summit at around 9am (0315 GMT), according to the website.

"I feel like the happiest person in the world. How could I have come so far at the world's oldest age of 80," Miura said. "I have never felt like this in my life. But I've never been more exhausted than this."
"I can see the scenery of the Himalayas below me. I really thank every one of you for your support."
It was his third conquest of the 8,848-metre (29,028-foot) peak, and his latest feat means he recaptures the record he previously held for being the oldest person to climb Everest.
He previously reached the summit when he was 70 and 75.
His 2003 record was broken in 2007 when fellow Japanese Katsusuke Yanagisawa scaled the summit when he was 71 years old.

Miura conquered Everest for the second time in May 2008, just one day after Nepal's Min Bahadur Sherchan made it to the top at the age of 76.
Until Thursday morning, the Nepalese had been the world record holder, according to Guinness World Records.
Miura was now climbing back down the mountain, a Nepalese tourism official said, confirming the successful ascent.
"He reached the summit this morning and is currently descending to camp four," the official, Gyanendra Shrestha, told AFP from Everest Base Camp.
Veteran adventurer Miura came to worldwide attention in 1970 when he became the first person to ski down Everest.
His parachute-aided descent was documented in the 1975 film "The Man Who Skied Down Everest" which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary.
High-octane endeavours are in his blood -- his father Keizo skied down Mont Blanc at age 99.
More than 3,000 people have successfully scaled Everest, but the mountain claims lives regularly, with even the best climbers falling victim to its fickle weather.

Wider World by CS: อยากให้ชมพระสวย

Wider World by CS: อยากให้ชมพระสวย

อยากให้ชมพระสวย

ลงให้ชมเป็นการศึกษา พระสมเด็จบางขุนพรหมพิมพ์เส้นด้ายใหญ่กรุเก่าเนื้อปูนเปลือกหอย
ให้ท่านศึกษาจากรูปเพราะถ่ายได้ใกล้เคียงองค์จริงทั้งเนื้อหาและสีสรรค์ ตั้งใจศึกษาจากรูปแล้วโอกาสอาจจะเป็นของท่านในภายหน้า จำให้แม่นเนื้อหาและสภาพธรรมชาติพระกรุเก่าที่ไม่มีขี้กรุมารบกวน
เพราะอาจจะไม่เคยลงกรุมาก่อน แต่เราก็ยังเรียกกรุเก่าตามภาษาเซียนพระเครื่องทั่วๆไป ดูความเกร่งขององค์พระ สภาพร้าวราน การปราดเนื้อพระด้านหลังที่เรียกว่าหลังเรียบ ยังมองเห็นล่องลอยการปราดเนื้อพระ องค์นี้ดี/สวย/เด่น เข้าหลักการพระสมเด็จวัดบางขุนพรหม

ภาพประกอบองค์จริง

ม.โชคชัย ทรงเสี่ยงไชย

Huge tornado levels Oklahoma City suburb, killing scores

View Photo Gallery — Tornado near Oklahoma City causes more damage: A violent twister carved a long and destructive path on the south side of Oklahoma City in the latest of a recent rash of tornadoes. On Sunday, several tornadoes struck parts of the nation’s midsection, concentrating damage in central Oklahoma and Wichita.

By Joel Achenbach, Tuesday, May 21, 8:08 AM E-mail the writer

A massive tornado up to a mile wide chewed through Moore, Okla., a suburb of Oklahoma City, on Monday afternoon, grinding up entire neighborhoods and obliterating an elementary school where students who had huddled in a hallway with their teachers were buried in rubble.
The state medical examiner’s office said late Monday that 51 people had been confirmed killed in the tornado. That number will surely rise. “We’re sitting at 51, and the phone calls just keep coming,” said Amy Elliot, a spokeswoman for the office.

Live blog

Tornado emergency: large, violent tornado south of Oklahoma City

Jason Samenow 3:32 AM ET

A large, violent tornado has carved a long, destructive path on the south side of Oklahoma City.

Graphic

Oklahoma City tornado

Some children were pulled — wet and dirty but alive — from the shredded Plaza Towers Elementary School. But as darkness fell Monday, dozens of rescuers in hard hats continued to pick through the wreckage looking for children and staffers who might be trapped.
Families were told to convene at two churches to await reunification with their loved ones.
“Our prayers are with you, and we’re working as quickly as we can to work through the debris,” said Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin.
Helicopter footage showed a wide path of near-total destruction in a community that had endured a similarly powerful twister 14 years ago. In addition to Plaza Towers, another elementary school, Briarwood, was demolished. All students at that school were accounted for, according to local news reports.
On the Enhanced Fujita damage scale of tornadoes, this was probably a 4 or 5, at the highest ends of violence, with winds reaching 200 miles per hour, said Russell Schneider, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., about eight miles from the path of the storm.
“It’s a very wide swath of very intense damage, a large number of structures almost totally destroyed,” Schneider said. “That in and of itself is usually indicative of a violent tornado, EF4 or EF5.”
Plaza Towers Elementary School, where scores of students took shelter as the twister approached, was destroyed. Nearby, cars and trucks were heaped on top of one another and homes were reduced to foundations covered with splintered wood.
“I’m sick to my stomach,” said Jayme Shelton, a spokesman for the city of Moore, reached by telephone. “Send your prayers this way.”
Shelton said the city’s roughly 160 police officers and firefighters were going door-to-door, checking for people who might be trapped in the rubble. Search-and-rescue teams poured in from every corner of the state.
“This is terrible. This is war-zone terrible,” said a helicopter reporter for KFOR-TV (Channel 4) in Oklahoma City. “This school is completely gone. . . . This whole area is destroyed. The houses are destroyed, completely leveled.”
The tornado outbreak was part of an explosion of violent weather that slashed the nation’s midsection, inciting severe-weather alerts from Texas to Michigan. The atmospheric conditions include a powerful weather system from the west colliding with warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, a perfect recipe for tornadoes and super-cell thunderstorms, Schneider said. The bad weather will migrate to the east Tuesday.

 The Storm Prediction Center counted nine tornadoes Monday in Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas, although that was a preliminary number based on witness reports. Although much of that region of the country is rural, one monster cell ground its way directly through the southern suburbs of the Oklahoma City metropolis — an urban hit that brought to mind the Tuscaloosa, Ala., tornado of April 27, 2011 (64 dead), and the Joplin, Mo., tornado on May 22 the same year (160 dead).
The strength of the big tornado that hit Moore will be determined in coming days after closer scrutiny of the damage. The twister was on the ground for 40 minutes, ravaging a 20-mile path, Schneider said.

“This was a very unfortunate path for this powerful storm,” he said. He noted that the likelihood of severe weather and tornadoes had been forecast many days in advance and that tornado watches had preceded the twister. But this was so powerful a storm, with such devastating winds, that people needed to be in basements or, better yet, a storm shelter, to be safe.
“You really need to be below ground,” Schneider said.
The residents there had seen this kind of thing before, on May 3, 1999, when more than 40 people were killed by a tornado that struck Moore, Newcastle, Del City, Stroud and other suburbs. That tornado reportedly spawned winds that reached 318 mph, the highest ever scientifically recorded, according to a 2005 story in USA Today.
“It’s as bad as it looks,” Rep. James Lankford (R), whose district includes most of neighboring Oklahoma City, said Monday evening as he left the House floor, checking his phone for updates.

The House will pause Tuesday for a moment of silence. On Monday night, President Obama spoke with Fallin to share his concern and assure the governor that the administration is ready to assist the state’s emergency responders.
The injured were taken to multiple hospitals in the area, including 20 people, eight of them children, to Oklahoma University Medical Center, said spokesman Scott Coppenbarger.
About 60 people were taken to Norman Regional Hospital and Norman HealthPlex Hospital, said Kelly Wells, spokeswoman for Norman Regional Health Care. She described the injuries as “a lot of trauma, a lot of lacerations, a lot of broken bones. Typical tornado injuries. We’re no stranger to this out here.”
The two hospitals also received more than 30 patients from Moore Medical Center, the third hospital in Norman Regional’s network, which was destroyed by the tornado, Wells said.
By Monday evening, a Facebook page created to help connect survivors with loved ones had a growing number of posts, most from people searching for the missing.
“Looking for my Aunt Iris Irwin,” read one post.
“Looking for 5yo Harry,” read another.


Lenny Bernstein, Brady Dennis, Darryl Fears and Jason Samenow contributed to this report.

Wider World by CS: พระรอดกรุวัดมหาวัน

Wider World by CS: พระรอดกรุวัดมหาวัน

พระรอดกรุวัดมหาวัน

ดูภาพประกอบคำอธิบาย

พระรอดนั้นเป็นพระเครื่องเก่าแก่ที่สุดในประเทศไทย สร้างในสมัยพระนางจามเทวี และค้นพบครั้งแรกที่จังหวัดลำพูน การศึกษาเรื่องพระรอดนั้นต้องเข้าใจศิลปของช่างเมืองเหนือเป็นหลักการ คนทางภาคเหนือนั้นมีฝีมือทางด้านนี้มาแต่เก่าก่อน ศิลปสวยงามนั้นมาจากทางภาคเหนือทั้งสิ้น ภาคอีสาน/ภาคใต้/ภาคกลาง/ภาคตะวันออกของประเทศไทยเรานั้น ศิลปการแกะสลักสู้คนทางภาคเหนือไม่ได้ สังเกตว่าพระพิมพ์ต่างๆมักไม่สวยงามและง่ายๆในรูปแบบเช่นพระผงสุพรรณหรือพระกรุนาดูนหรือพระพิมพ์ทางภาคใต้ที่นครศรีธรรมราชเป็นต้น

ศิลปทางภาคเหนือมักละเอียดอ่อนช้อยผสมกับธรรมชาติป่าไม้และภูเขาเพราะสิ่งเหล่านี้อยู่รอบๆตัวเขามาแต่ก่อนแล้ว พระเครื่องพิมพ์ทรงทางภาคเหนือจริงๆและเป็นที่นิยมคือพระคงและพระรอด ศิลปองค์เล็กๆแต่สวยงามมีกิ่งไม้ประดับรอบองค์พระ ดังนั้นเนื้อดินที่ใช้จึงต้องละเอียดผ่านการกรองมาแล้วจึงจะสามารถพิมพ์พระออกมาได้และติดลายละเอียดได้มาก และเพื่อให้พระอยู่คงนานจึงต้องมีการผสมน้ำว่านเพื่อไม่ให้เนื้อพระแตกแยก ซึ่งก็จะทำให้องค์พระดูสวยงามและเกร่งยิ่งขึ้น พระพิมพ์ดังกล่าวข้างต้นเมื่อผ่านการผึ่งลมแล้วจึงได้มีการสุ่มไฟพอประมาณไม่ใช่การเผานะครับ พระพระองค์แค่นิดเดียวเป็นหมื่นๆองค์ก็กองไม่โตจึงแค่สุมไฟก็พอแล้ว ไม่ใช่พวกอิฐ/จาน/ชาม/ไห/โอ่งที่ต้องสร้างเตาเผา หลายๆคนไม่เข้าใจและชอบถึกทักเอาเองว่าเอาไปเผา ดังนั้นเมื่อสุมไฟ พระบางองค์จึงมีสีสรรค์ไม่เหมือนกันสุดแต่ว่าองค์ไหนโดนไฟมากไฟน้อยก็เท่านั้นเอง บางองค์ที่อยู่ปลายๆกองเนื้อดินก็ไม่เกร่งเหมือนองค์ที่ถูกไฟอย่างจัง แต่ก็สวยไปอีกแบบ

การเล่นพระรอดต้องดูเนื้อละเีอียดแบบเนื้อดินน้ำมัน ใครนึกไม่ออกก็ดูพระคงเป็นแบบอย่างเนื้อพระรอดก็จะเป็นเช่นนั้นผิดจากนี้แล้วก็คงเป็นพระปลอม ใบหน้าก็เช่นกันควรเป็นหน้าอูมๆแบบผลมะตูมและพระคงสวมชฎา เพราะเป็นพระที่กษัตริย์สร้างแต่พระคงไม่สวม บางคนตีว่าเป็นมัดผมแต่ผมเองว่าไม่น่าใช่คงต้องสวมชฎาแบบพระแก้วมรกต

ดังนั้นคนที่จะเล่นพระรอดต้องศึกษาให้ดีเพราะเป็นพระเนื้อดินการปลอมแปลงนั้นทำไม่ยากเพราะดินนั้นมีอยู่ทั่วไปและมีลักษณะต่างๆกัน การใช้วิชาการจึงเป็นตัวช่วยให้เราค้นพบพระรอดที่แท้จริงได้

ม.โชคชัย ทรงเสี่ยงไชย

Change looms for Ethiopia's ancient salt trade

By Siegfried Modola

HAMAD-ILE, Ethiopia | Fri May 17, 2013 7:21am EDT

(Reuters) - Abdu Ibrahim Mohammed was 15 years old when he began trekking with caravans of camels to collect salt in a sun-blasted desert basin of north Ethiopia that is one of the hottest places on earth.
Now 51 and retired, he has passed his camels to his son to pursue this centuries-old trade in "white gold" from the Danakil Depression, where rain almost never falls and the average temperature is 94 degrees Fahrenheit (34.4 Celsius).
But the tradition of hacking salt slabs from the earth's crust and transporting them by camel is changing as a paved road is built across the northern Afar region.
Although the road being cut through the Danakil Depression is making it easier to transport the salt, the region's fiercely independent local salt miners and traders are wary of the access it might give to industrial mining companies with mechanized extraction techniques that require far less labor.
"Most of the people who live here are dependent on the salt caravans, so we are not happy with prospective salt companies that try to set up base here," said Abdullah Ali Noor, a chief and clan leader's son in Hamad-Ile, on the salt desert's edge.
"Everything has to be initiated from the community. We prefer to stick with the old ways," he added.
The tarmac road will link the highland city of Mekele with the village of Dallol in the Danakil Depression, a harsh but hauntingly beautiful geographical wonder of salt flats and volcanoes once described as "a land of death" by the famous British desert explorer Wilfred Thesiger.
The road has cut from five hours to three the drive from Mekele to Berahile, a town two days' trek by camel from the Afar salt deposits that one of Ethiopia's main sources of the crystalline food product.
New roads like these are gradually helping to transform this landlocked Horn of Africa state, which has a unique culture and history but has been racked by coups, famines and droughts, into one of the fastest-growing economies on the continent.
As Africa's biggest coffee producer, Ethiopia's economy remains based on agriculture, which accounts for 46 percent of gross domestic product and 85 percent of employment. But its nearly 94 million population - the second biggest in Africa - is attracting the attention of foreign investors hungry for new markets.

ACCESS TO MARKET
Further south in the Danakil Depression, at the salt reserve of Lake Afdera, industrial salt production is already under way.
A company named Berhane and Zewdu PLC came to the desert plains near Hamad-Ile in 2011 aiming to produce salt there, according to Noor.
Clan leaders saw the threat to their ancient trade and lined up to oppose the project. Fearing sabotage of its equipment, the company left the following year, local people said.
But Noor still welcomed the new road.
"The new highway will give easy access to the market, which will bring benefits and development to this region," Noor said.
The development he talks of is visible in Berahile, where caravans from the salt pans come to drop off their cargo so it can be transported to the rest of the country. Most residents are involved directly or indirectly in the salt business.

Telephone and electricity networks have been extended to the town over the past four years, a new Berahile Salt Association was established in 2010 to facilitate trade and a recently built salt store is now the biggest construction in town.
"Thousands of people benefit from this work as the salt here is exported throughout the country," said the head of the association, Derassa Shifa.
For now, tradition and modernity co-exist - the organization buys salt from the caravans that make the four-day trek to the salt flats and back, then sells it to merchants who carry it away by truck.

The salt blocks, which were once used as a unit of money, are sold across Ethiopia, many of them to farmers to provide their animals with essential minerals. Ethiopia has the largest livestock population on the African continent.

Life is harsh for the thousands of camel herders and salt extractors who use traditional hoes and axes to carve the "white gold" out of the ground in the Danakil Depression.
Many of the salt diggers live in Hamad-Ile and hire out their services to different caravans.
The work, however exhausting, still draws thousands onto the baking salt flats.
"You forget about the sun and the heat," said Kidane Berhe, 45, a camel herder and salt merchant. "I lost a friend once on the salt desert because he was working too much with no protection from the sun. Eventually he just collapsed."