Kathmandu, April 18
A massive avalanche today struck Mount Everest killing at least 12 Nepalese Sherpa guides and injuring 10 others in the deadliest mountaineering accident on the world’s highest peak.

The avalanche occurred at around 6.45 am at an altitude of about 5,800 metres in an area known as the "popcorn field" which lies on the route to the treacherous Khumbu icefall.

An official from the mountaineering division at the Nepalese tourism ministry said 13 bodies had so far been recovered and ferried to base camp. As many as seven climbers were said to be missing.

"The avalanche hit the Nepalese Sherpa guides and climbers as they were heading towards Camp I from the Base Camp of the Everest," said Tilak Pandey, an official at Mountaineering Division of Tourism Ministry.

"There were around 15 climbers from six different expeditions including Alpine Ascent and Summit Nepal, when the avalanche swept them away," he said.

A spokesman for Nepal's tourism ministry said some missing climbers had been rescued, but more are still missing. The local guides had climbed up the slope early in the morning to fix ropes for climbers and prepare the route for mountaineers when the avalanche hit, officials said.

The Himalayan Rescue Association along with the Nepal Army, Armed Police Force personnel and mountain guides carried out the rescue operation at the site, the Nepal Trekking Association said.

Several injured climbers were brought to the base camp and three were said to be in a serious condition.

Around 4,000 persons have scaled Mt Everest since 1953 when Tenzing Sherpa and Edmund Hillary made it to the summit of the peak.

More than 250 people have died while attempting to climb the Everest. This year over 300 climbers have taken permission to climb the Everest.

The accident comes during the peak climbing months of April and May as hundreds of climbers converged at base camp in the hope of scaling the 8,848-metre-high summit.

Nearly 100 Sherpa guides and climbers have been trapped above the avalanche site. Ethnic Sherpas act as guides for the mostly-foreign clients.

The worst recorded accident on Everest has been a snowstorm on May 11, 1996, that killed eight climbers. Six Nepalese guides were killed in an avalanche in 1970. — PTI

• Around 4,000 persons have scaled Mt Everest since 1953 when Tenzing Sherpa and Edmund Hillary made it to the summit of the peak
• The worst recorded accident on Everest has been a snowstorm on May 11, 1996, that killed eight climbers. Six Nepalese guides were killed in an avalanche in 1970
• More than 250 persons have died while attempting to climb the Everest. This year, over 300 climbers have taken permission to scale the Everest

Jindo, April 18
Divers battled strong currents and near zero visibility today to finally enter a South Korean ferry two days after it sank, as investigators sought arrest warrants against the captain and two crewmen.

The breakthrough by dive teams came more than 48 hours after the 6,825-tonne Sewol capsized, a delay that has incensed the relatives of the 268 persons still missing from the disaster.

The unfolding tragedy was compounded by the apparent suicide of a high school vice-principal who had been rescued from the 6,825-tonne Sewol that sank on Wednesday morning with hundreds of his students trapped inside.

After several attempts, two divers managed to pry open a door and enter the cargo section on Friday afternoon, a senior coastguard official said. Hours later another two-man team accessed one of the cabins, but found nothing. "The search operation will continue through the night," the official said.

The confirmed death toll stood at 28, but the focus of concern remained on the 268 still unaccounted for and slim hopes that some may have survived in air pockets in the submerged vessel.

"Visibility is almost non-existent. You can hardly see your hand in front of you face," said one diver when he returned to the harbour at nearby Jindo island.

The coastguard said a joint investigation team of police and prosecutors had applied for arrest warrants for captain Lee Joon-Seok, 52, and two crew. The charges were not specified.

More than 350 of those on board were from the Danwon High School in Ansan city just south of Seoul.

The police said they found the body Friday of Danwon High School vice-principal, Kang Min-Kyu, who had managed to escape the Sewol as it sank.

The cause of death was under investigation, but sources cited by local media said he was found hanging by his belt from a tree next to the gymnasium. — AFP

Slaviansk/Donetsk, April 18
Armed pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine said on Friday they were not bound by an international deal ordering them to disarm and were looking for more assurances about their security before leaving the public buildings they are holding.

The agreement, brokered by the United States, Russia, Ukraine and the European Union in Geneva on Thursday offered the best hope to date of defusing a stand-off in Ukraine that has dragged East-West relations to their lowest level since the Cold War.

Ukraine said it was preparing a law to give the separatists amnesty although the drive to root them out would continue. The agreement requires all illegal armed groups to disarm and end occupations of public buildings, streets and squares but with the separatists staying put in the east and Ukrainian nationalist protesters showing no sign of leaving their unarmed camps in the capital's Maidan Square, it was not clear which side would be willing to move first.

Enacting the agreement on the ground though will be difficult, because of the deep mistrust between the pro-Russian groups and the Western-backed government in Kiev, which this week flared into violent clashes that killed several people.

Russian President Vladimir Putin overturned decades of post-Cold War diplomacy last month by declaring Russia had a right to intervene in neighbouring countries and by annexing the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea. The move followed the overthrow of Ukraine's pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovich, after months of street protests prompted by his rejection of a trade deal with the EU.

The fact any deal was reached at all in Geneva came as a surprise, and it was not clear what had happened behind the scenes to persuade the Kremlin, which had shown little sign of compromise, to join calls on the militias to disarm. — Reuters

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, whose novel 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' (1967) changed the way the world read and wrote fiction, died at his home in Mexico City. The 87-year-old novelist won the Nobel for literature in 1982. He put Latin America and the style known as magical realism on the world literary map.

"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. Dr Juvenal Urbino noticed it as soon as he entered the still darkened house…" The opening lines of 'Love in the Time of Cholera' lead the reader into a magical realm with the familiarity of experience. "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice," the opening lines of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" evoke 100 years, the memory of smell of ammunition, of death and the curiosity of a child discovering ice. This sums up the popularity of his writings.

His novels have been translated into almost all languages. In India, no reader is left unfamiliar with his major titles. He raised the benchmark of creative writing. The social and political struggles of Latin Americans formed the basis of Marquez's stories. Readers across world experience nostalgia in his books, resonating their dreams and phantoms, fears and reality. The third world countries see the love for power and the power of love in his fictional creations.

Garcia's long years in journalism honed his cleverness for expressing left-wing views through long periods of censorship and repression by Colombian governments. The injection of the supernatural into depictions of everyday life that coloured his writings came from his youth in Aracataca village of Columbia, where he was born. Many years later his mother asked him to help her sell the family house in Aracataca, he returned to the past to write "One Hundred Years of Solitude".

When he went to mail the first finished manuscript to a publisher, he discovered he had only enough money to send half the manuscript. He and his wife returned home and pawned possessions so they could mail the rest.
Rest is history.