Standing on a snowy mountainside about 2,500 metres above sea level, Eric Marechal holds up a crimson test-tube. Inside is an algae sample known as "snow blood," a phenomenon that accelerates Alpine thaw and that scientists worry is spreading. "These algae are green. But when it's in the snow, it accumulates a little pigment like sunscreen to protect itself," said Marechal, research director at Grenoble's Scientific Research National Center, who was collecting laboratory samples on Le Brevent mountain with teammates. Alberto Amato, Ludovic Gielly and Jade Ezzedine of the Cell and Plant Physiology Laboratory of Grenoble take samples of the Sanguina nivaloides algae, also known as "snow blood" and which presence accelerates snowmelt at the Brevent in Chamonix, France, June 14, 2022. R...
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At least 13 people died and three were seriously injured on Sunday when a cable car linking Italy’s Lake Maggiore with a nearby mountain in the Alps plunged to the ground. The Stresa-Mottarone cable car takes tourists and locals from the town on Lake Maggiore, almost 1,400 metres above sea level to the top of the Mottarone mountain in 20 minutes. A crashed cable car is seen after it collapsed in Stresa, near Lake Maggiore, Italy May 23, 2021. VIGILI DEL FUOCO/Handout via REUTERS “We are devastated, in pain,” Marcella Severino, Stresa’s mayor told national broadcaster RAI, while Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi voiced his condolences to the families of the victims, “with a special thought” for the injured children. The accident happened as the cable car was travelling up the...
Read MoreVive la difference: COVID rules divide adjacent French and Swiss ski resorts Like other French ski resorts, the Alpine town of Chatel has been forced to close its lifts over the Christmas period as part of tougher government curbs to contain the coronavirus. But just 5 km (3 miles) away, holidaymakers are schussing down the same slopes on the other side of the border in Switzerland, where less strict restrictions mean it’s business as usual in the Dents du Midi ski region. People line up next to a chairlift at Les Portes du Soleil ski resort during the global outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Les Crosets, Switzerland, December 19, 2020. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse Chatel mayor Nicolas Rubin was so annoyed by the sharp divergence in the handling of the coronavirus ...
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