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New Sites on
UNESCO Heritage List
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The New Caledonia lagoon
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New sites were added to UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee, including a former slave hideout in Mauritius, the Nabataean archeological site in Saudi Arabia, and China’s Fujian Tulou earthen houses.
The archeological site of Al-Hijr, the largest conserved site of the civilization of the Nabataeans south of Petra in Jordan, is the first World Heritage site in Saudi Arabia, AFP reported.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization also chose the Morne Cultural Landscape, a rugged mountain jutting into the Indian Ocean in southwestern Mauritius that was used as a shelter by runaway slaves, maroons, through the 18th and early years of the 19th centuries.
Also making the heritage list were the Fujian Tulou property of 46 houses built between the 12th and 20th centuries as homes to entire clans in south-west of Fujian province, inland from the Taiwan Strait and a sweeping part of the coral reef and lagoon in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia .
The New Caledonia lagoon comprises the second largest continuous coral reef in the world after Australia’s.
The entire reef stretches over 23,000 square kilometers (8,108 square miles), 15,000 square kilometers (5,800 square miles) of which was recognized by UNESCO.
UNESCO’s World Heritage List has some 855 sites in more than 140 countries around the world.
The 21-member World Heritage Committee concluded Thursday, considering another 40 candidate sites to its World List.
Canada was presiding at this year’s meeting as Quebec City celebrates its 400th anniversary.
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Coffins Out, Diamonds... Forever
At the end of their days, most people end up six feet under or up in flames, others get frozen or mummified.
But some lucky ones are spending eternity as sparkling diamonds, thanks to a peculiar chemical transformation.
For a fee, a company called Algordanza in the eastern Swiss canton of Graubuenden offers a service to turn ashes into precious stones.
Every month, it gets 40 to 50 commissions--some as far away as Japan, AFP reported.
Rinaldo Willy, 28, one of two co-founders of Algordanza, said the commissions come from “all kinds of people--they could be bus drivers or professors in philosophy.“
At the firm’s laboratory, about 15 machines run non-stop alongside employees wearing plastic protective glasses who work behind a yellow and black line that visitors are not allowed to cross--out of respect for the dead.
“Five hundred grams (one pound) of ashes is enough to make a diamond while a human body leaves behind on average 2.5 to three kilograms of ashes,“ said Willy.
Potassium and calcium, which makes up some 85 percent of the ashes, are first separated from the carbon.
The carbon is then subject to extremely high pressure and heat--,700 degrees C, a process which compresses it into graphite, a carbon allotrope or a structurally different form of carbon.
More pressure and heat are applied to the graphite to turn it into diamonds--the hardest allotrope of carbon.
The entire process takes six to eight weeks, hardly a fraction of the time it takes for the formation of natural diamonds which take thousands of years.
When the process is complete, the crude diamond still requires polishing and cutting. Many are cut into heart-shaped stones which can be worn as a pendant or mounted on a ring.
Reflecting Personality!
Each diamond is unique--the color varies from dark blue to almost white,“ said Willy. “It’s a reflection of the personality.“
Willy acknowledges that it is impossible to prove that each diamond is indeed made from a particular person’s ashes. “DNA burns,“ he explained.
But the “chemical imprint“ of the ashes, determined at its arrival to the laboratory, allows for documentation to be made and for the finished product to be traced, he said.
The whole process costs between 4,500 and 17,000 Swiss francs (2,800 to 10,600 euros or 4,400 to 16,700 dollars), depending on the weight of the resulting stone (from 0.25 to one carat), and does not include the setting of the stone.
Algordanza, which means ’remembrance’ in Romansch, one of the four official languages in Switzerland, defends this as a reasonable price.
“A burial could be very expensive: it costs 12,000 euros in Germany,“ said Willy, who would not divulge his company’s revenues.
Not all agree with the process. Undertaker Yannick Abel-Coindoz, who works for the Murith funeral home in Geneva, said he has never received a request to transform ashes into a “life gem“, as some call the stones, and has no plans to offer the service.
“It’s not in line with our ethics of burial and remembrance,“ he said. “To wear your loved one as a ring and carry it with you everywhere prevents you from distancing yourself and thereby recovering from the loss.“
Yet the industry of ’human diamonds’ is booming, with similar companies in Russia, Spain, Ukraine and the United States.
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Flash Floods
Flash floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains in India’s northeastern state of Assam has displaced more than 50,000 people overnight, besides uprooting scores of mud-and -thatch homes, officials said.
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40 European Firms Sold Rotten Cheese
Eleven thousand tons of rotting or out-of-date cheese from European dairies were mixed with fresh products and resold, according to an Italian police investigation reported by La Repubblica.
Instead of destroying the cheese, some 40 Italian, British, German and Austrian firms reworked them using four companies headed by a Sicilian businessman. Three of the companies were based in Italy while another was based in Germany.
The rotten cheese, containing mice droppings as well as residue from plastic wrapping and ink labels, was mixed with fresh cheese products and used to make cheeses such as mozzarella and gorgonzola.
A total of 11,000 tons of cheese was recycled in this way over the past two years and the four companies involved achieved a turnover of some 10 million euros ($15.6 million).
The sale of the new products would have brought in hundreds of millions of euros, according to the daily.
The investigation by a special police unit lasted two years and three people have been arrested.
“The alteration and faking of dairy and cheese products has made them dangerous to public health,“ wrote Francesco Messina, the judge in charge of the case.
French Most Obnoxious Travelers
An international survey characterizes the French as the most obnoxious, inattentive and annoying tourists among European travelers.
They also came second to last in the popularity of their own tourists who vacation at home, the Time website reported.
The study describes French tourists as unwilling or unable to communicate in foreign languages, and unwilling to spend money when they do not have to.
Japanese are the most-liked tourists for being polite, quiet and tidy. Germans, British and Canadians rank next while Americans finished 11th place.
While American tourists came first in trying to speak local languages, the French, Chinese, Japanese, Italians and Russians came in last.
The poll was carried out by the French travel website of Expedia.fr among hotel employees in Germany, the UK, Italy, France, Canada and the US.
Participants were asked to rank clients based on general attitude, politeness, tendency to complain, willingness to speak local languages, interest in sampling local cuisine, readiness to spend money, generosity, cleanliness, discretion and elegance.
2m Nigerians at Risk From Radioactive Waste
Radioactive materials in abandoned mining fields in central Nigeria’s Plateau state pose a serious health hazard to two million people, officials said.
“Around two million people now live and farm close to the mines, which means they are all at risk from the harmful effects of the radioactive emissions from the mining fields,“ Plateau environment commissioner Nankim Bagudu told AFP.
Health officials said laboratory analysis of 1,100 abandoned tin and columbite mining fields scattered in five districts around the state showed the presence of radioactive materials that are harmful to human health.
“The people living around these mining fields stand the risk of cancer of the skin, lungs and liver as well as eye impairments from prolonged exposure to radioactive mine tailings we discovered in the mines, an official from the Nigerian nuclear research agency told AFP.
There was a boom in coal, tin and columbite mining in the 1960s in Plateau state, with over 1,000 mining fields established in Jos, Barikin-Ladi, Bukur, Bassa and Riyom districts.
Bruce Lee Home May Become Museum
A luxury mansion belonging to Kung Fu legend Bruce Lee in Hong Kong may be preserved as a museum, giving belated recognition to one of the city’s most famous sons, a newspaper reported.
Billionaire philanthropist tycoon Yu Panglin had put Lee’s two-storey, 5,699-square-foot town house in an upscale leafy Kowloon suburb up for sale but later changed his mind, according to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post.
“I will consider the views of the community and different parties. I may consider donating the property if the majority thinks we should preserve it,“ Yu said in the report, adding he had turned down an offer of HK$105 million ($13 million).
Lee, who died in mysterious circumstances in 1973, aged 32, starred in such Kung Fu classics as “Fist of Fury,“ “Game of Death“ and “Enter the Dragon.“
He is revered both by martial arts adherents and movie buffs the world over for popularizing the Kung Fu cinematic genre, and helping usher in a golden age of Hong Kong film in the late 60s.
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