September 10, 2009 COPENHAGEN: Greenland's glaciers are melting into the sea faster than ever before, the environmental pressure group Greenpeace claimed on Wednesday.Glaciers move when melting occurs from the effects of global warming, causing masses of ice to slide into fjords and the sea.Greenland's Helheim glacier, which measures six kilometres wide (four miles) and is one kilometre thick, moves about 25 metres (yards) a day, Greenpeace said in a statement.The group said that is twice as fast as when its Arctic Sunrise vessel last visited Greenland in 2005.The speed of the other major glacier in Greenland, Kangerdlugssuaq, is even more dramatic. It moves some 38 metres a day or 14 kilometres a year, Greenpeace said."Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier is probably the world's fastest moving glacier," said Dr. Gordon Hamilton, from the University of Maine's Climate Change Institute.Hamilton is a member of this year's Greenpeace expedition currently inspecting the glaciers in the north and east of the Danish territory.The group's Arctic Sunrise vessel left for the region at the end of June and is due to complete its mission at the end of September.The two glaciers produce 10 percent of Greenland's ice output into the North Atlantic.Glaciers that shed their ice cause sea levels to rise.Sea levels are currently on the increase by three millimetres a year, according to Greenpeace, and pose a serious threat to people living on islands or in coastal regions.
BEIRUT: Thousands of people converged Saturday on central Beirut to mark the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Lebanese former premier Rafiq Hariri.Waving Lebanese flags and carrying pictures of the slain leader, men, women and children gathered under sunny skies in Martyr's Square where members of the parliamentary majority were to address the crowd. The rally comes as final preparations are underway in The Hague for the launch of the international tribunal set up to bring Hariri's killers to justice. It also comes as the country prepares for legislative elections in June that will pit Western-backed political parties against a Hezbollah-led alliance backed by Syria and Iran.Hariri died in a massive car bombing on February 14, 2005 that also killed 22 others. The assassination was widely blamed on then Lebanese power-broker Syria, which has denied any involvement. The attack on the Beirut seafront was one of the worst acts of political violence to rock Lebanon since t...
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