Is Danish king who gave name to Bluetooth buried in Poland?
 

The 10th century golden Curmsun disc with the name of Danish King Harald “Bluetooth“ Gormsson (Curmsun in Latin) on it, coming from a tomb at the Roman Catholic church in Wiejkowo, Poland, photographed in Malmo, Sweden, in 2015. The Bluetooth wireless link technology is named after the king. More than 1,000 years after his death in what is now Poland, a Danish king whose nickname is known to the world through the Bluetooth technology is at the center of an archeological dispute. 

(Sven Rosborn via AP)

MONIKA SCISLOWSKA
Sun, July 31, 2022 

WIEJKOWO, Poland (AP) — More than 1,000 years after his death in what is now Poland, a European king whose nickname lives on through wireless technology is at the center of an archaeological dispute.

Chronicles from the Middle Ages say King Harald “Bluetooth” Gormsson of Denmark acquired his nickname courtesy of a tooth, probably dead, that looked bluish. One chronicle from the time also says the Viking king was buried in Roskilde, in Denmark, in the late 10th century.

But a Swedish archaeologist and a Polish researcher recently claimed in separate publications that they have pinpointed his most probable burial site in the village of Wiejkowo, in an area of northwestern Poland that had ties to the Vikings in Harald's times.

Marek Kryda, author of the book “Viking Poland,” told The Associated Press that a “pagan mound” which he claims he has located beneath Wiejkowo's 19th-century Roman Catholic church probably holds the king's remains. Kryda said geological satellite images available on a Polish government portal revealed a rotund shape that looked like a Viking burial mound.

But Swedish archaeologist Sven Rosborn, says Kryda is wrong because Harald, who converted from paganism to Christianity and founded churches in the area, must have received an appropriate grave somewhere in the churchyard. Wiejkowo's Church of The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary stands atop a small round knoll.



Historians at the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen say they are familiar with the “suggestion” that Wiejkowo is Harald's burial place.

Rosborn detailed his research in the 2021 book ”The Viking King's Golden Treasure" and Kryda challenged some of the Swede's findings in his own book published this year.

Harald, who died in 985, probably in Jomsborg — which is believed to be the Polish town of Wolin now — was one of the last Viking kings to rule over what is now Denmark, northern Germany, and parts of Sweden and Norway. He spread Christianity in his kingdom.

Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson named its Bluetooth wireless link technology after the king, reflecting how he united much of Scandinavia during his lifetime. The logo for the technology is designed from the Scandinavian runic letters for the king's initials, HB.

Rosborn, the former director of Sweden's Malmo City Museum, was spurred on his quest in 2014 when an 11-year-old girl sought his opinion about a small, soiled coin-like object with old-looking text that had been in her family's possession for decades.

Experts have determined that the cast gold disc that sparked Maja Sielski's curiosity dated from the 10th century. The Latin inscription on what is now known as the “Curmsun disc” says: “Harald Gormsson (Curmsun in Latin) king of Danes, Scania, Jomsborg, town Aldinburg."

Sielski's family, who moved to Sweden from Poland in 1986, said the disc came from a trove found in 1841 in a tomb underneath the Wiejkowo church, which replaced a medieval chapel.

The Sielski family came into the possession of the disc, along with the Wiejkowo parish archives that contained medieval parchment chronicles in Latin, in 1945 as the former German area was becoming part of Poland as a result of World War II.

A family member who knew Latin understood the value of the chronicles — which dated as far back as the 10th century — and translated some of them into Polish. They mention Harald, another fact linking the Wiejkowo church to him.

The nearby Baltic Sea island and town of Wolin cultivates the region's Viking history: it has a runic stone in honor of Harald Bluetooth and holds annual festivals of Slavs and Vikings.

Kryda says the Curmsun disc is “phenomenal” with its meaningful inscription and insists that it would be worth it to examine Wiejkowo as Harald's burial place, but there are no current plans for any excavations.

A view of a 2014 stone with runic inscription in memory of Danish 10th century King Harald “Bluetooth” Gormsson, in Wolin, Poland, Saturday, July 30,2022. More than 1,000 years after his death in what is now Poland, a Danish king whose nickname is known to the world through the Bluetooth technology is at the center of an archeological dispute. A Polish researcher and a Swedish archeologist claim that they have pinpointed the probable burial site for King Harald Bluetooth Gormsson in a small village in northwestern Poland, an area that once had ties with the Vikings. (AP Photo Monika Scislowska)

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M
EXPLAINER: Bid to block book merger sets competition fight


Book Publishers Antitrust Explainer

FILE - Stephen King poses for a photo May 22, 2018, at the 2018 PEN Literary Gala in New York. The government and publishing titan Penguin Random House are set to exchange opening salvos in a federal antitrust trial Monday, Aug. 1, 2022, as the U.S. seeks to block the biggest U.S. book publisher from absorbing rival Simon & Schuster. The government’s “star” witness will be Stephen King, the renowned and genre-transcending author whose works are published by Simon & Schuster. 

Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision

MARCY GORDON
Sat, July 30, 2022

WASHINGTON (AP) — At a time of mega-mergers and flashy high-tech corporate hookups, the biggest U.S. book publisher’s plan to buy the fourth-largest for a mere $2.2 billion may seem somewhat quaint. But the deal represents such a key test for the Biden administration's antitrust policy that the Justice Department is calling an out-of-the-ordinary witness to The Stand: author extraordinaire Stephen King.

In Penguin Random House’s proposed acquisition of rival Simon & Schuster, which would reduce the “Big Five" U.S. publishers to four, the administration is burnishing its antitrust mettle and its fight against corporate concentration.

The Justice Department has sued to block the merger. The trial opens Monday in federal court in Washington.

The government contends the merger would hurt authors and, ultimately, readers, if German media titan Bertelsmann is allowed to buy Simon & Schuster from U.S. media and entertainment company Paramount Global. It says the deal would thwart competition and give Penguin Random House gigantic influence over which books are published in the U.S., likely reducing how much authors are paid and giving consumers fewer books to choose from.

An appearance at some point by King, whose works are published by Simon & Schuster, will be a highly unusual for an antitrust trial and will draw wide attention.

The publishers are fighting the lawsuit. They counter that the merger would strengthen competition among publishers to find and sell the hottest books. It would benefit readers, booksellers and authors, they say.

A look at the case:

PUBLISHING HEAVYWEIGHTS:

The two New York-based publishers each have impressive stables of blockbuster authors who’ve sold multiple millions of copies and have scored multimillion-dollar deals. Within Penguin Random House’s constellation are Barack and Michelle Obama, whose package deal for their memoirs totaled an estimated $65 million, Bill Clinton (he received $15 million for his memoir), Toni Morrison, John Grisham and Dan Brown.

Simon & Schuster counts Hillary Clinton (she received $8 million for hers), Bob Woodward and Walter Isaacson.

And King. His post-apocalyptic novel “The Stand," published in 1978, swirled around a deadly pandemic of weaponized influenza.

Bruce Springsteen split the difference: His “Renegades: Born in the USA," with Barack Obama, was published by Penguin Random House; his memoir, by Simon & Schuster.

___

THROWING THE BOOKS AT THEM

The Justice Department contends in its suit that as things now stand, No. 1 Penguin Random House and No. 4 Simon & Schuster (by total sales) compete fiercely to acquire the rights to publish the anticipated hottest-selling books. If they are allowed to merge, the combined company would control nearly 50% of the market for those books, it says, hurting competition by reducing advances paid to authors and diminishing output, creativity and diversity.

The Big Five — the other three are Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan — dominate U.S. publishing. They make up 90% of the market for anticipated top-selling books, the government’s court filing says. “The proposed merger would further increase consolidation in this concentrated industry, make the biggest player even bigger, and likely increase coordination in an industry with a history of coordination among the major publishers,” it says.

The Justice Department case reaches beyond the traditional antitrust concern of concentration raising prices for consumers, pointing to the impact on consumers’ choices and viewing authors as workers as well as sellers of products in the global marketplace of ideas. The notion is that fewer buyers (publishers) competing over the same talent pool reduces sellers’ (authors) bargaining power.

The case “potentially creates a precedent that could be used in the labor area," says Rebecca Allensworth, an antitrust expert who is a law professor at Vanderbilt University.

___

BIDEN’S COMPETITION CRUSADE

The Biden administration is staking out new ground on business concentration and competition, and the government's case against the publishers’ mergers can be viewed as an important step.

President Joe Biden has made competition a pillar of his economic policy, denouncing what he calls the outsized market power of an array of industries and stressing the importance of robust competition to the economy, workers, consumers and small businesses. He has called on federal regulators, notably the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission, to give greater scrutiny to big business combinations.

Biden issued an executive order a year ago targeting what he labeled anticompetitive practices in tech, health care, agriculture and numerous other parts of the economy, laying down 72 actions and recommendations for federal agencies. Targets range from hearing aid prices to airline baggage fees.

Another trial on competition starting Monday in federal court: The Justice Department is suing to block UnitedHealth Group, which runs the biggest U.S. health insurer, from acquiring health-tech company Change Healthcare. The government contends the $13 billion deal would hurt competition and put too much health care claim information in the hands of one company.

___

PUBLISHERS MAKE THEIR CASE

Hold on, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster say as they prepare to enter trial: The merger would actually strengthen competition among publishers to find and sell the hottest books, by enabling the combined company to offer greater compensation to authors.

It would benefit readers, booksellers and authors, the publishers say, by creating a more efficient company that would bring lower prices for books. The government has failed to show harm to consumers as readers because the merger wouldn’t push up prices, the companies contend.

“The U.S. publishing industry is robust and highly competitive,” they say in their filing. “More readers are reading books than ever before, and the number grows every year. Publishers compete vigorously to reach those readers, and the only way they can compete effectively is to find, acquire and publish the books readers most want to read. ... The merger at issue in this case will encourage even more competition and growth in the U.S. publishing industry.”

The companies reject the government’s central focus on the market for anticipated best-selling books — defined as those acquired for advances to authors of at least $250,000. They represent only a tiny sliver, about 2%, of all books published by commercial companies, according to the companies’ filing.

___

Follow Marcy Gordon at https://www.twitter.com/mgordonap

Inside the super-secure Swiss lab trying to stop the next pandemic





Biosafety Laboratory in Spiez


Sun, July 31, 2022 
By Jennifer Rigby

SPIEZ, Switzerland (Reuters) - The setting is straight from a spy thriller: Crystal waters below, snow-capped Swiss Alps above and in between, a super-secure facility researching the world's deadliest pathogens.

Spiez Laboratory, known for its detective work on chemical, biological and nuclear threats since World War Two, was tasked last year by the World Health Organization to be the first in a global network of high-security laboratories that will grow, store and share newly discovered microbes that could unleash the next pandemic.

The WHO's BioHub program was, in part, born of frustration over the hurdles researchers faced in getting samples of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, first detected in China, to understand its dangers and develop tools to fight it.

But just over a year later, scientists involved in the effort have encountered hurdles.

These include securing guarantees needed to accept coronavirus variant samples from several countries, the first phase of the project. Some of the world's biggest countries might not cooperate. And there is no mechanism yet to share samples for developing vaccines, treatments or tests without running afoul of intellectual property protections.

"If we have another pandemic like coronavirus, the goal would be it stays wherever it starts," Isabel Hunger-Glaser, head of the BioHub project at Spiez, told Reuters in a rare media interview at the lab. Hence the need to get samples to the hub so it can help scientists worldwide assess the risk.

"We have realised it's much more difficult" than we had thought, she said.

SAFETY IN THE MOUNTAINS

Spiez Lab's exterior provides no hint of the high-stakes work inside. Its angular architecture resembles European university buildings erected in the 1970s. At times, cows graze on the grassy central courtyard.

But the biosafety officer in charge keeps his blinds shut. Alarms go off if his door is open for more than a few seconds. He monitors several screens showing security camera views of the labs with the greatest Biosafety Level (BSL) precautions.

SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID, is studied in BSL-3 labs, the second-highest security level. Samples of the virus used in the BioHub are stored in locked freezers, said Hunger-Glaser. A system of decreasing air pressure means clean air would flow into the most secure areas, rather than contaminated air flowing out, in a breach.

Scientists working with coronavirus and other pathogens wear protective suits, sometimes with their own air supply. They work with samples in a hermetically sealed containment unit. Waste leaving the lab is super-heated at up to 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,830 F) to kill pathogens clinging to it.

To date, Spiez has never had an accidental leak, the team say. That reputation is a key part of why they were chosen as the WHO's first BioHub, said Hunger-Glaser.

The proximity to WHO headquarters, two hours away in Geneva, helped too. The WHO and Swiss government are funding the annual 600,000 Swiss franc ($626,000) budget for its first phase.

Researchers have always shared pathogens, and there are some existing networks and regional repositories. But the process is ad hoc and often slow.

The sharing process has also been controversial, for instance when researchers in wealthy countries get credit for the work of less well-connected scientists in developing nations.

"Often you just exchanged material with your buddies," said Hunger-Glaser.

Marion Koopmans, head of the Erasmus MC Department of Viroscience in the Netherlands, said it took a month for her lab to get hold of SARS-CoV-2 after it emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019.

Chinese researchers were quick to post a copy of the genetic sequence online, which helped researchers begin early work. But efforts to understand how a new virus transmits and how it responds to existing tools requires live samples, scientists said.

EARLY CHALLENGES

Luxembourg was the first country to share samples of new coronavirus variants with the BioHub, followed by South Africa and Britain.

Luxembourg sent in Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta variants, while the latter two countries shared Omicron, WHO said.

Luxembourg got Omicron samples from South Africa, via the hub, less than three weeks after it was identified, enabling its researchers to start assessing the risks of the now-dominant strain. Portugal and Germany also received Omicron samples.

But Peru, El Salvador, Thailand and Egypt, all of which signalled in early 2022 that they wanted to send in variants found domestically, are still waiting, chiefly because it is unclear which official in each country should provide the necessary legal guarantees, Hunger-Glaser said.

There is no international protocol for who should sign the forms providing safety details and usage agreements, she added. None of the four countries responded to requests for comment.

Both WHO and Hunger-Glaser stressed the project is a pilot, and they have already sped up certain processes.

Another challenge is how to share samples used in research that could lead to commercial gain, such as vaccine development. BioHub samples are shared for free to provide broad access. However this throws up potential problems if, for example, drugmakers reap profits from the discoveries of uncompensated researchers.

WHO plans to tackle this longer-term, and bring labs in each global region online, but it is not yet clear when or how this will be funded. The project's voluntary nature may also hold it back.

"Some countries will never ship viruses, or it can be extremely difficult – China, Indonesia, Brazil," said Koopmans, referring to their stance in recent outbreaks. None of the three responded to requests for comment.

The project also comes amid heightened attention on labs worldwide after unproven claims in some Western countries that a leak from a high-security Wuhan lab may have sparked the COVID-19 pandemic, an accusation China and most international scientists have dismissed.

Hunger-Glaser said the thinking around emerging threats must change post-COVID-19.

"If it is a real emergency, WHO should even get a plane" to transport the virus to scientists, she said.

"If you can prevent the spreading, it's worthwhile."

(Reporting by Jennifer Rigby; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Nick Macfie)

Ford adds battery capacity, LFP chemistry to scale global EV business


Jaclyn Trop
July 21, 2022·


Ford said Thursday it has shored up its battery supply chain as part of its global strategy to sell more than 2 million EVs annually by 2026.

The automaker, which is investing $50 billion to scale its battery-electric portfolio through 2026, said it plans to boost battery capacity, shorten its supply chain and use lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries for some of its EVs. LFP batteries are a less expensive cell chemistry growing in popularity among automakers competing for share in the burgeoning EV segment.

Ford said the moves will help it remain on track to meet its short-term goal of ramping up EV production to 600,000 units by 2023 and 2 million units by 2026. The company said it has sourced 70% of battery capacity to meet its 2026 sales target so far.

Meeting its EV production goals could require about 8,000 job cuts, according to unnamed sources cited by Bloomberg.

Executives did not address layoffs directly during a briefing with analysts and media Thursday but said that speed and agility is crucial for Ford’s battery-electric Model e division. Cutting out bureaucracy means they can close deals in days, rather than months, said Lisa Drake, vice president of EV industrialization at Ford Model e.

“Believe it or not to move fast in this space, smaller is better,” she said. “A smaller team can move faster than a larger team.”

Lithium iron phosphate batteries

Ford said it will begin incorporating LFP batteries into its portfolio while continuing to use the nickel cobalt manganese (NCM) chemistry currently powering its EVs. As the cheaper alternative, LFP presents a potential path for the mass EV market, according to analysts.

CATL, the world’s largest battery supplier, will provide LFP battery packs for Ford Mustang Mach-E SUVs in North America starting next year, followed by F-150 Lightning pickup trucks in early 2024.

LFP batteries provide cost advantages over NCM but are less powerful due to their lower energy density. The chemistry may seem a puzzling choice to underpin two of Ford’s most muscular models, but “these standard-range batteries offer customers many years of operation with minimal loss of range after many charge cycles,” Drake said. “That benefits owners who need to charge often, like our commercial customers.”

Using LFP will help reduce Ford’s reliance on scarce critical minerals such as nickel and cobalt, while trimming 10 to 15% from its battery materials costs, according to Drake.

The company declined to say how many of its EVs will use LFP chemistry but said it has signed non-binding MOUs with lithium suppliers Liontown Resources and Rio Tinto.

Batteries have become VC and PE’s most electric investment opportunity

Battery suppliers

Ford also said it has upped its contracts with NCM battery suppliers in order to meet its late-2023 production target. LG Energy will double its NCM battery capacity to supply Ford’s Mach-E and E-Transit van.

SK On has increased production at its Georgia facility to supply Ford with more NCM cells. It will also supply additional battery packs from its factory in Hungary to power the F-150 Lightning and E-Transit through 2023.

That’s in addition to the deal Ford and SK On closed last week to create an $11.4 billion joint venture to build and operate the Blue Oval City complex in Stanton, Tennessee, and two EV battery plants in Glendale, Kentucky.

Ford also announced Thursday a non-binding agreement with CATL to explore partnering on LFP batteries in Chinese and European markets.

Raw Materials

As Ford scales its EV production, it must reinvent its supply chain by sourcing raw battery materials directly, according to executives.

“Battery cell manufacturing capacity is the foundation of our EV business,” Drake said. “We have direct-sourced our lithium and nickel to scale battery production more quickly and keep the volumes and the cost more stable over time.”

The automaker said Thursday it has sourced most of the nickel it needs through 2026 and it has signed non-binding MOUs with mining partners including Vale Canada, PT Vale Indonesia, Huayou Cobalt and BHP.

LIKE EVEREST BEFORE IT

There Are Conga Lines and Huge Crowds on K2 Now

The “Savage Mountain” saw its busiest day ever earlier this week, as more than 100 climbers reached the summit

Ben Ayers

Jul 28, 2022

On July 21 at 10:45 P.M. Pakistan time, five climbers stood on the summit of 28,251-foot K2. They were the first mountaineers to reach the peak’s top during the 2022 summer climbing season, after spending more than 24 hours battling their way to the summit. For Pasdawa Sherpa, Chhiring Namgyal Sherpa, Siddhi Ghising, Dorjee Gyelzen Sherpa, and Rinji Sherpa, turning around wasn’t an option, as hundreds of climbers further down on the mountain were relying on their work. This team of elite high-altitude workers from Nepal had fixed a series of ropes that would be later used by climbers waiting in cramped tents at Camp 4.

By the time the rope fixers began their descent, a horde of climbers was already working its way towards the summit, leading to what was to become the most crowded day on the peak.

One of the climbers ascending the mountain was Nepali guide Mingma Gyalge Sherpa, better known as Mingma G, who captured a video on Instagram that was quickly circulated around the globe. The video showed dozens of climbers waiting in a so-called “conga line” on the mountain’s infamous bottleneck couloir at 26,900 feet.

“Many of the climbers were expected to go to the summit on 20 and 21 July but there was no route fixed to the summit until 21 July at night so everyone made the summit push for July 22, that made the traffic jam,” Mingma G said in a WhatsApp message.

The scene marked a historic moment for K2, long called the “savage mountain” in climbing circles. In previous decades, K2 was off-limits to all but the most seasoned mountaineers due to its extreme danger and steepness. Now, K2 has exploded in popularity, driven by a generation of paying clients that seek a greater challenge than Mount Everest, and a coterie of expedition operators who specialize in getting climbers to the top—regardless of the dangers found along the way.

By the end of the day on July 22, well over 100 climbers had reached K2’s summit, which is notorious for brutal weather and a high fatality rate. In the ensuing days, this number continued to rise. As of Thursday morning, 145 climbers have notched the summit since July 21, a figure that has added 30 percent more total summits to the mountain’s tally since it was first climbed nearly 70 years ago. Prior to the historic day, just 302 people had stood on the summit.

But this bonanza on the mountains produced the cringe-worthy moment on the bottleneck, and other scenes of crowding.

“I never thought this would happen on K2,” said Himalayan Database director and mountaineer, Bili Bierling, when she saw Mingma G’s video.

The bottleneck is notorious for danger. In February, 2021 it claimed the lives of three elite mountaineers: Muhammad Ali Sadpara, John Snorri, and Juan Pablo Mohr. The deaths sent shockwaves through the mountaineering community. In the video, the line of climbers stood below a soaring wall of seracs that are known to send tons of ice crashing down the mountain at irregular intervals. The video also echoes a viral photo shared by Nirmal ‘Nims’ Purja in 2019 of an overcrowded Everest summit ridge. While in Purja’s photo the climbers are stacked on an open ridge and surrounded by blue skies, on K2 the traffic jam was positioned directly beneath the dangerous seracs.

The video generated more than 200 comments, and a simmering debate about the mountain’s popularity this year. “K2 is not Everest—it cannot be commercialized like this. What a pity,” read one comment on the video.

Pemba Sherpa, the founder of 8K Expeditions, a leading Nepali outfitter, told Outside that the increase in climbers this year was due to multiple dynamics, among them pent-up demand that occurred during the pandemic.

“So many people are on the way to climb 14 peaks,” Pemba said. “And so many people were stopped because of COVID and the financial downturn. Now, in 2022…. people are coming to K2.”

Pemba estimated there to be more than 200 total permits for the mountain this year. But he downplayed the danger caused by the crowding on the mountain. The conga line at the bottleneck was a large group that had been traveling together, and not a queue of disparate teams trying to reach the top.

“Two hundred people on a mountain of that size will get spread out,” he said. “The issue is when everyone wants to climb on the same day.”

When asked about his video, Mingma G echoed Pemba’s sentiment, saying that his company has seen a steady increase in interest for guiding on K2 in recent years. “Since 2017, we have seen summits every year on K2. It wasn’t like this previously,” he said. “And COVID-19 also increased the number of climbers on K2.”

Thanks to a patch of unusually stable weather in the Karakoram, summits on K2 have continued throughout the week. Notable ascents include Pasdawa Sherpa who, as part of the rope fixing team, became the fastest person to summit the five tallest peaks on the planet.

Norwegian climber Kristin Harila notched the eighth peak on her quest to climb all 14 peaks over 8,000 meters in six months and to draw attention to the role of women in high-altitude mountaineering. To prove her point, three women summited without the use of supplemental oxygen—Grace Teng from Taiwan, Andorran climber Stefi Troguet, and He Jing from China.

Huge crowds may be the norm on some of the world’s highest peaks this year. Thanks to a recent report by German archivist Eberhard Jurgalski on his blog 8000ers.com, that offered convincing evidence that the vast majority of recent ascents of Manaslu (26,781 feet) were, in fact, a few meters below the actual summit, operators in Nepal are expecting a wave of climbers to return to the mountain this fall. Sources told Outside that they expect to see several hundred climbers on that peak later this fall.

“For my company alone, we have 50 clients already signed up.” said Pemba Sherpa. “Everyone is coming to repeat Manaslu.”

How Aleister Crowley, the Infamous Occultist, Led the First ...

https://www.openculture.com › 2018/08 › aleister-crow...

Aug 16, 2018 — After the failed K2 attempt, he would only make one more daring expedition with Eckenstein, in 1905, a climb up the Himalayan mountain of ...

K2 | First Attempt | 1902 Expedition - Altitude Pakistan

http://altitudepakistan.blogspot.com › K2

Nov 30, 2012 — Aleister Crowley was a crazy soul; an occultist with queer views on subjects of magic and faith. Eckenstein was a member of Martin Conway's 1892 ...

1905 Kanchenjunga expedition - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › 1905_Kanchenjunga_...

In April 1905 he proposed his plans to the British occultist Aleister Crowley, with whom he had participated in Oscar Eckenstein's K2 expedition in 1902.

Legends Series: Aleister Crowley - Explorersweb »

https://explorersweb.com › legends-series-aleister-crowley

Jun 11, 2020 — Legends Series: Aleister Crowley. June 11, 2020 Ash Routen Climbing | Expeditions | Himalaya | K2 | Mountain | Mountaineering.

TIL Aleister Crowley climbed up K2, reaching an altitude of ...

https://www.reddit.com › alpinism › comments › til_ale...

Sept 20, 2015 — TIL Aleister Crowley climbed up K2, reaching an altitude of 6,100m before he and his climbing companions decided to turn back. In 1903. A link to his writings ...

English occultist, poet, and novelist Aleister Crowley bathing ...

Jul 4, 2017

Pictures of Crowley's 1902 expedition on K2 : r/thelema - Reddit

Aug 30, 2015

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KILLER TOO

Canadian, Australian climbers die on Pakistan's K2, world's 2nd-highest mountain

FILE - A photo of K2, the world's second-highest mountain, is displayed on a cell phone in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2021. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

Munir Ahmed
The Associated Press
 July 28, 2022 

ISLAMABAD -

An Australian and a Canadian mountain climber died last week in northern Pakistan while attempting to scale K2, the world's second-highest mountain, officials from the two countries said Thursday.

The death of Matthew Eakin was announced by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which expressed its "condolences to his family and friends." His body was found through drone video on Thursday.

Canada's foreign affairs department said in a statement that it was aware of the death of a Canadian in Pakistan. It provided no further details, citing privacy reasons and only saying that officials were "providing consular assistance to the family".

Earlier, a Pakistani mountaineering official and the Canadian Press said the body of Richard Cartier, who went missing in a separate incident on the same mountain on July 19, had finally also been spotted by a search team on K2. Cartier was 60 and an experienced climber.

K2, on the Chinese-Pakistani border in the Karakorum Range, has one of the deadliest records, with most climbers dying on the descent, where the slightest mistake can trigger an avalanche and become fatal. Only a few hundred have successfully reached its summit. In contrast, Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain, has been summited more than 9,000 times.

Eakin's devastated friends posted tributes on social media to honor him, saying his death was a huge loss to the mountaineering community. One friend, Felicity Symons, said about their 23 years of friendship: "I will always see your smile in the clouds. Rest easy my dear friend on the mountains you loved."

Karrar Haidri, the deputy chief of the Pakistan Alpine Club, which coordinates search and rescue missions with Pakistan's government and military, confirmed the deaths of Eakin and Cartier.

"We extend our condolences to the friends and family members of the Australian and Canadian climbers who died on K2," Haidri told The Associated Press.

Also last week, a third climber, Ali Akbar Sakki from Afghanistan, died on K2. Sakki suffered a heart attack while trying to scale the summit, Haidri said.

The Canadian Embassy in Islamabad did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Dawn, one of Pakistan's English-language newspapers, reported earlier this week that the two climbers had been spotted between Camp 1 and Camp 2 on K2 after they both went missing on July 19 in separate incidents.

K2 is also among the coldest and windiest of climbs. At places along the route, climbers must navigate nearly sheer rock faces rising 80 degrees, while avoiding frequent and unpredictable avalanches.

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Women mountain climbers from Pakistan, Iran reach K2 summit

Pakistani mountaineer Samina Baig flashes a victory sign while she poses for a photograph outside a hotel, in Skardu, Pakistan, on June 17, 2021. Baig from Pakistan and another from Iran appear to be the first females from their countries to reach the top of K2, one of the world's highest and most dangerous summits, a mountaineering official said Friday, July 22, 2022. (AP Photo/M.Z. Balti) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Munir Ahmed

July 22, 2022·

ISLAMABAD (AP) — A woman from Pakistan and another from Iran appeared to be the first from their countries to scale K2 on Friday, the world's second-highest mountain and one of the most dangerous summits, a mountaineering official said. A second Pakistani woman scaled the summit minutes later.

Samina Baig, a 32-year-old from a remote northern village in Pakistan, was the first to hoist her country's green and white flag atop the peak of the 28,250 foot-high (8,610 meter) K2.

Iran's Afsaneh Hesamifard followed shortly after and was hailed for her achievement in Farsi-language posts on social media. According to Iranian media, she became only the third woman to scale Mount Everest in May.

The two were among several women to successfully reach K2's peak on Friday, according to Karrar Haidri, chief officer of the Pakistan Alpine Club, which helps coordinate the climbs from the government side and responds in the event of an emergency.

Haidri said a second Pakistani female climber, Naila Kiyani, was among the team of women to reach the top of K2 but it appears that Baig had scaled the summit a few minutes earlier.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif congratulated both Pakistani women, saying they proved that women were not behind men in the sports of mountain climbing. The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan congratulated the Pakistani women on Twitter while the Iranian diplomatic mission in Pakistan tweeted congratulations to Hesamifard.

K2, on the Chinese-Pakistani border in the Karakorum Range, has one of the deadliest records, with most climbers dying on the descent, where the slightest mistake can trigger an avalanche and become fatal. Only a few hundred have successfully reached its summit. In contrast, Mount Everest has been summited more than 9,000 times.

Separately, Haidri said Afghan climber, Ali Akbar Sakki, died on Thursday due to a heart attack while attempting to scale K2. He was part of the team of climbers who reached its summit Friday.

Considered extremely difficult to climb, K2 is not only the second-highest mountain after Mount Everest, its ascent and descent are considered much more challenging that the world's highest.

K2 is also the coldest and windiest of climbs. At places along the route, climbers must navigate nearly sheer rock faces rising 80 degrees, while avoiding frequent and unpredictable avalanches.

The latest record comes a day after Nepalese climber Sanu Sherpa set a new mountaineering record for twice reaching the peak of each of the world's 14 highest mountains.

Earlier this month, Pakistan's military airlifted two Pakistani climbers, including the man who became the youngest to scale K2 to safety after the pair went missing during an expedition scaling Nanga Parbat, known as “Killer Mountain” because of its dangerous conditions.

One of the greatest (SIC) financial historians alive says central bankers have been incompetent for decades and inflation is our ‘big hangover’

Will Daniel
Fri, July 29, 2022 

Who or what is responsible for the rampant inflation plaguing the global economy?

President Biden has argued the key culprit is Russian President Vladimir Putin and his war in Ukraine, going so far as to call the current rise in U.S. consumer prices “Putin’s price hike.”

On the other hand, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell says that high inflation is a result of the toxic combination of supply-chain issues brought about by the pandemic, COVID-19 lockdowns in China, the war in Ukraine, and the strong labor market.

But Edward Chancellor, a financial historian, journalist, and investment strategist who has been described as “one of the great financial writers of our era,” argues central bankers are to blame. In his view, central banks’ unsustainable policies have created an “everything bubble,” leaving the global economy with an inflation “hangover.”

Chancellor explained his theory, which is presented in his new book, The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest, in a recent interview with The Market’s Mark Dittli.

“There’s always the idea that speculative bubbles are formed around the invention of a new technology,” he said. “What I’m doing in my book is leaving aside the tech aspects and the psychological aspects of bubbles, and concentrating solely on the monetary underpinnings. What I argue is that when interest rates are pushed down too low, people are driven into speculative endeavors and chase returns.”

To understand Chancellor’s argument, we have to take a step back to the years following the Great Financial Crisis. After 2008, inflation in most developed nations was low, and central banks around the world were more concerned with ensuring a global economic recovery and the negative impact of deflation.

As a result, interest rates were held at historically low levels, and some central banks, like the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan, instituted a controversial policy called quantitative easing (QE), which involves buying government bonds and mortgage-backed securities in hopes of increasing the money supply and spurring lending and investment.

Chancellor explained how during these first rounds of QE, the money the Fed created “never fed through to the real economy,” leading central bankers to ignore inflation and become “complacent.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, however, and QE was ramped up again, it was a different story. Central banks around the world cut interest rates and “printed collectively around $8 trillion.” The issue this time was that the money was used to “finance roughly the same amount of government spending,” which contributed to “the largest peacetime deficits in history.”

On top of that, near-zero interest rates and excess liquidity in the financial system encouraged investors to buy risky assets, creating an “everything bubble,” as evidenced by the extreme rise in tech stocks, cryptocurrencies, meme stocks, and even collectibles like baseball cards in 2020 and 2021.

“And, surprise, surprise, we now have rising and unstable inflation,” Chancellor said. “We are now waking up to a big hangover from this monetary extremism.”

Chancellor argues that central bankers believed they could maintain near-zero interest rates and QE without causing a rise in consumer prices because inflation had remained so low, for so long.

“And why was it low? Because of their sound monetary policies. They referred it back to themselves! And now, the moment inflation goes out of control, they say: ‘Oh, it’s not our responsibility, it has to do with Ukraine, or supply chains, or China’s lockdowns,’” he said.

Chancellor went on to argue that central banks’ actions have facilitated speculative trading, instead of a focus on real economic growth. It’s an unsustainable monetary policy that just won’t work moving forward, he said.

“Who knows, perhaps we will all be a bit more grown-up in the future. What we need is a better understanding of economics and finance. So that we can live in a world where finance is mainly used for allocating capital for productive purposes rather than generating speculative paper profits,” he said.

Although central banks worldwide have begun raising rates this year to combat inflation, Chancellor fears they may revert to their old ways—and he argues if they do, capitalism itself could be at risk.

“The alternative is a world in which what we have seen over the past 12 years is a prelude to ever greater central planning of economic and political life. If we were to go down that route, I would say that capitalism as we know it would not survive.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com