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An Australian woman who set out to climb Mount Everest to prove that “vegans can do anything” died Saturday after developing altitude sickness. Maria Strydom, 34, had reached the final camp from the summit before she and her husband, Robert Gropel, both began suffering from high-altitude pulmonary edema, which caused fluid to build up in Strydom’s brain, the Washington Post reports.

Dr Strydom, who also goes by Marisa, was on a seven-week expedition with her husband Robert Gropel - who has also been injured during the trek. The 34-year-old's family say the couple's GPS tracker stopped working on Friday. A single transmission from the tracker on Saturday gave them hope but a Google search on Saturday night delivered the devastating news that Dr Strydom had died, her sister Aletta Newman told AAP. ... Conflicting media reports attributing her death to altitude sickness, snow blindness and a stroke only added to the distress of the Strydom family, who have yet to hear...

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-04-29/marco-rubio-goes-to-bat-for-corinthian-colleges

A major earthquake has struck eastern Nepal, near Mount Everest, two weeks after more than 8,000 died in a devastating quake. The latest earthquake hit near the town of Namche Bazaar, near Mount Everest. The US Geological Survey said it had a magnitude of 7.3. An earthquake on 25 April, centred in western Nepal, had a magnitude of 7.8. The latest tremor was felt in northern India and Bangladesh. In the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, which was badly damaged last month, people rushed out of buildings as the quake struck at 12:35 local time (07:50 GMT).

Mount Everest record holder Apa Sherpa ran for his life when a huge earthquake hit Nepal, and now fears for the future after the disaster cut short the climbing season for the second year in a row. “Everyone here is scared and depressed, we have lost everything,” the climber told AFP by telephone from Thame, deep in the Everest region, one of the villages that is home to the Sherpa ethnic group. The tight-knit community of around 50 families has produced some of the world’s greatest mountaineers, including Sherpa, who is something of a celebrity having reached the top of...

The family of mountaineering great, the late Sir Edmund Hillary, say he'd be horrified and saddened by the devastating earthquake in Nepal. New Zealand and Nepal have developed a close relationship over the years, mainly through the work of Sir Ed. His son, Peter, was in Nepal when the powerful magnitude 7.8 quake struck on Saturday evening New Zealand time. The quake, centered outside the capital, Kathmandu, killed more than 1,900 people and destroyed infrastructure, homes and historical buildings. Images of Nepal in ruins would have devastated Sir Ed. To us he was the mountaineer who conquered Mt Everest, but...

At least 22 climbers have died and 217 others were missing near the base camp of Mt Everest where hundreds of climbers, including many foreigners, are stranded after an avalanche triggered by Nepal's massive earthquake swept down the world's highest peak. More than 60 climbers were injured and many foreign adventurers, hikers and guides at the base camp were feared missing when the avalanche swept down the Everest and buried under snow a section of the mountaineering camp yesterday. While 17 people were killed at the base camp, five more casualties were reported on Sunday from areas below the base...

Climbers on Mount Everest ran for their lives on Saturday when a massive 7.9-magnitude earthquake struck Nepal and set off at least one avalanche. At least eight people died and more than two dozen were injured in the avalanche on the world's highest mountain, according to The Associated Press. Jelle Veyt was just getting back to base camp when suddenly the earth "shook for a couple of seconds — badly," the Belgian climber told NBC News. A sherpa just a few feet ahead turned and pointed behind him, Veyt recalled, saying he then turned around himself and saw a "huge...

An avalanche triggered by a deadly earthquake in Nepal on Saturday buried a part of the base camp for climbers bound for Mount Everest, killing at least eight people, Nepal's tourism ministry said. "The toll could go up, it may include foreigners as well as sherpas," tourism official Gyanendra Shrestha said.

Saturday’s earthquake has triggered avalanches in Mount Everest according to a Tweet posted by Alex Gavan, a mountaineer. He claims, “running for life from my tent” and further says there were “many, many” people up the mountain at the time. Alex Gavan, who describes himself as a mountaineer, said a “huge avalanche” had hit from Pumori, a mountain lying close to Mount Everest on the Nepal-Tibet border.

Construction project is believed to be under consideration and is part of proposed extension to link China with Nepal by railChina is considering extending a railway line linking the country to Nepal via a tunnel under Mount Everest, according to Chinese state media. The proposal is the latest in a series of ambitious rail schemes Beijing is reportedly examining. It comes amid scepticism about whether some of the projects will ever get off the ground and at a time of a growing Chinese presence in Nepal, which has caused some concern in rival regional power India. The Qinghai-Tibet railway already...

Poorna is a member of India's lowest Dalit caste previously known as 'untouchables'A 13-year-old poor Indian schoolgirl has become the youngest female to summit Mount Everest, following a difficult and dangerous climb from China's Tibetan side, her expedition organiser said Monday. Malavath Poorna, the daughter of a tribal farm labourer, reached the top of the world's highest peak on Sunday after climbing from the Tibetan side of the mountain, said Mohammed Ansari, technical coordinator for her team. Poorna and 16-year-old friend S Anand Kumar, a member of India's lowest Dalit caste previously known as "untouchables", climbed the mountain with ten...

KATHMANDU, May 20 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - M ountaineering tourism in Nepal faces a threat from global warming as melting glaciers feed the risk of more deadly disasters such as the avalanche on Mount Everest that killed 16 people last month, scientists said on Tuesday. More than 2,000 foreign mountaineers flock to the Himalayan nation sandwiched between India and China each year, mainly to climb the world's highest mountain, generating revenue of $3.4 million in permit fees for the impoverished country. Rising global temperatures have shrunk the total area of Nepal's glaciers by almost a quarter between 1977 and 2010,...

An avalanche swept down a slope of Mount Everest on Friday along a route used to ascend the world's highest peak, killing at least 13 people in the mountain's deadliest disaster. NBC News confirmed that all of the dead were Sherpa guides. The guides had gone early in the morning to fix the ropes for hundreds of climbers when the avalanche hit them just below Camp 2 around 6:30 a.m. local time, Nepal Tourism Ministry official Krishna Lamsal told The Associated Press. Tilak Ram Pandey, an official at the ministry's mountaineering department, later told Reuters that some other people were...

"The government has decided in order to clean up Mount Everest, each member of an expedition must bring back at least eight kilos of garbage, apart from their own trash," he said... Decades of mountaineering have taken a toll on the peak, which is strewn with rubbish from past expeditions, including oxygen cylinders, human waste and even climbers' bodies, which do not decompose in the extreme cold.

In a never before attempted feat, the two Nepali men set their sights on paragliding from Everest's summit and then taking a near 500-mile kayaking trip on the Ganges River to the Indian Ocean in 2011. It was an excursion that would take months.

Rupee was hour away from dying when Joanne Lefson saved him; trek to 17,598 feet took 10 days and helps raise awareness of dog adoptions. Rupee, a stray dog that was rescued from a dumpsite in Ladakh, Northern India, and was said to be less than an hour away from death, has become what is believed to be the first dog to reach Mount Everest base camp, located at an elevation of 17,598 feet. The dog was just 8 months old—starving, dehydrated, and extremely weak—when Joanne Lefson adopted the pup, according to the U.K. Daily Mail. She nursed him back...

"According to NPR, the image is the result of a project by David Breashears, who has already climbed the highest mountain in the world five times. He used old images of Everest and its glaciers and combined them with new ones."

Just days after four people died on Mount Everest during a rush by climbers to take advantage of favorable weather, experts say a similar "traffic jam" scenario could play out this weekend. The four climbers were among approximately 200 who summited the world's tallest mountain this past weekend during the first of only two summit windows available this season—each just two or three days long. "Normally the summit bids might get spread out over a number of days, but what happened this year is the weather was bad"—too little snow, for example, left too much slippery ice exposed—"so teams that...