One of Australia’s foremost tourist attractions to close for weeks. Uluru, formerly known

as Ayers Rock, will be closed for

a twenty-day mourning period as a show of

respect for an Aboriginal leader, unnamed for cultural reasons, who

died. Tour operators plead with the national government to overrule park managers’ decision, fearing the longterm consequences of even a brief closure to their business. Aboriginal authorities, to whom the Australian government returned the former Ayer’s Rock in 1985 and who have leased it back to the government in perpetuity for park use, consider it sacred and have always discouraged tourists from climbing Uluru. Ironically, the elder whose death is the occasion for the ban, was a leading proponent of the pragmatic value of opening the site to tourist access. CNN