Current Events

The Olympic flame reached the top of the world Thursday morning, carried to the summit of Mount Everest by climbers wearing oxygen masks to breathe in the thin air of the earth's highest point. A 23-year-old Tibetan woman, Tsering Wangmo, carried the flame atop the peak. She was the last of five climbers -- three Tibetans and two Han Chinese -- to pass the torch to each other near the summit.
Once there, the mountaineers removed their masks so television cameras could record their faces and so they could shout and cheer their feat.
The climbers, braving gusty winds and freezing windchill, relayed the flame -- ignited from the main Olympic flame, now making a course across China en route to host city Beijing -- to the summit by 9:18 a.m., about two hours ahead of schedule.
"They were very motivated; they were very excited," journalist Tomas Etzler said from the Everest base camp at 5,200 meters (17,060 ft). The climbers started their ascent at 3 a.m. Thursday (3 p.m. Wednesday) along the Tibetan side of Everest, known there as Chomolungma. Twenty-two of the 31 climbers were Tibetan.