- India restrict Pakistan to 105-8 in Women's T20 World Cup
- England target repeat of Pakistan Test whitewash
- Penrith Panthers win fourth straight NRL title after downing Storm
- Weary Sinner happy for day off after battling into Shanghai last 16
- Pakistan's Masood warns England still a force without Stokes
- Madrid's Carvajal to miss several months after serious knee injury
- Israel pounds Lebanon ahead of Hamas attack anniversary
- Two elephants die in flash flooding in northern Thailand
- Sabalenka targets world number one and Wuhan hat-trick
- Toddler among 4 dead in migrant Channel crossings
- Tunisia votes with Saied set for re-election
- Bagnaia sets 'example' with Japan MotoGP win to cut gap on Martin
- Intense Israeli bombing rocks Beirut ahead of war anniversary
- Mozambique vote: no suspense but some disillusion
- Austrian rapper channels anti-racist rage in Romani hip-hop songs
- Ohtani magic powers Dodgers over Padres in MLB playoff thriller
- Five of the best: Pakistan-England Test thrillers
- Man sets arm on fire as marches across US mark Gaza war anniversary
- Vietnam's young coffee entrepreneurs brew up a revolution
- Trump rallies at site of failed assassination: 'Never quit'
- Too hot by day, Dubai's floodlit beaches are packed at night
- Is music finally reckoning with #MeToo?
- Fans hail Trump's 'guts' as he returns to site of rally shooting
- Lebanon state media says 'very violent' Israeli strikes hit south Beirut
- Guardians maul Tigers, miracle Mets rally in MLB series openers
- Lebanon state media says Israeli strikes hit south Beirut
- Miami on track for MLS record points after win in Toronto
- Madrid beat Villarreal but Carvajal suffers knee injury
- Madrid beat Villarreal to move level with Liga leaders Barcelona
- Monaco take top spot in Ligue 1 with win at Rennes
- French rugby player on rape charge whistled but 'serene' on return
- Madrid beat Villarreal to level Liga leaders Barca
- Thuram treble fires Inter past Torino and up to second
- 'Fight': defiant Trump jets in to site of rally shooting
- Toddler among 3 dead in migrant Channel crossings
- Mexico City's new mayor sworn in with pledges on water, housing
- Israel on alert ahead of Hamas attack anniversary
- Guardians maul Tigers in MLB playoff series opener
- Macron criticises Israel on Gaza, Lebanon operations
- French rugby player whistled but 'serene' on return amid ongoing rape case
- Kovacic stars as Man City sink Fulham to get title bid back on track
- Retegui hat-trick fires five-star Atalanta to hammering of Genoa
- Heavyweights Australia, England off to World Cup winning starts
- Visiting UN refugee agency chief decries 'terrible crisis' in Lebanon
- Spinners come to party as England defeat Bangladesh at T20 World Cup
- Search continues for missing in deadly Bosnia floods
- Man City sink Fulham to get title bid back on track
- France's Auradou whistled on Pau return in Perpignan loss amid ongoing rape case
- A 'forgotten' valley in storm-hit North Carolina, desperate for help
- Arsenal hit back in style after Southampton scare
Icy reception for plan to 'save' Venezuela's last glacier
A small patch of ice among bare rock is all that remains of Venezuela’s last glacier, which the government hopes to restore to its former glory using a geothermal blanket.
Experts say that would be too little too late.
While glacier melt is a global phenomenon blamed on climate change, Venezuela is the first country in the Andes mountain range -- which stretches all the way to Chile in the south -- to lose all its glaciers.
Venezuela has lost five in total, adding up to some 1,000 hectares of ice, in the last century or so.
"In Venezuela there are no more glaciers," Julio Cesar Centeno, a university professor and advisor to the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), told AFP.
"What we have is a piece of ice that is 0.4 percent of its original size."
Centeno and other experts are convinced the loss of La Corona glacier on Humboldt peak, some 4,900 meters (more than 16,000 feet) above sea level, is irreversible.
But the government announced a plan in December to slow and even reverse the thaw by covering the area with a thermal mesh made of polypropylene plastic warding off the Sun's rays.
The cover was delivered to Humboldt peak by helicopter in 35 separate pieces, each measuring 2.75 meters by 80 meters, in December, but the government has not said whether it has already been unrolled.
Similar covers are used in European countries, mainly to protect ski slopes in warmer weather.
"It allows us to maintain the temperature of the area and prevent the entire glacier from melting," said Jehyson Guzman, governor of the western state of Merida that used to be home to Venezuela's glaciers.
- Nothing left to save -
But scientists of the University of Los Andes (ULA) are skeptical.
They say La Corona ceased to be a glacier since shrinking to just two hectares of the 450 hectares it used to cover. Scientists use a guideline of 10 hectares as the minimum size of a glacier.
Before La Corona, Venezuela also lost its glaciers on the peaks of El Leon, La Concha, El Toro and Bolivar.
"It is an illusory thing, a hallucination, it is completely absurd," said Centeno of the government's plan.
He and a team of other scientists will ask Venezuela's supreme court to scrap the project, which they say could have other, negative, impacts as the plastic blanket degrades over time.
"These micro plastics are practically invisible, they end up in the soil and from there they go to crops, lagoons, into the air, so people will end up eating and breathing that," he said.
Enrique La Marca, zoologist and ecologist, fears the cover could harm rare species of mosses and lichens, even hummingbirds that call the rocky environment home.
"That life will die because it will not have the necessary oxygen," he said.
- An ice remnant -
The most optimistic estimates give the remaining ice-cover "four to five years" before disappearing completely, said La Marca, who researches the impacts of glacier melt due to climate change.
Some calculations point to a mere two years.
"It’s an ice remnant," not a glacier, added physicist Alejandra Melfo, a ULA expert on the topic.
Forestry engineer and mountaineer Susana Rodriguez said the disappearance of La Corona will also affect Venezuelan tourism, as many people who used to climb the Humboldt peak did so on the ice.
"Now everything is rock, and what remains is so deteriorated that it is risky to step on it. There are cracks," said Rodriguez, who has accompanied several outings on the glacier.
L.Durand--AMWN