Intermediate
The bestselling book on Amazon in the US is by Scottish illustrator Johanna Basford, who is topping the charts with her colouring books for adults.
Basfords intricately drawn pictures of flora and fauna in Secret Garden have sold 1.4 million copies worldwide, with the next book, Enchanted Forest, selling just under 226,000 copies already. They have fans like Zooey Deschanel, who shared a link about the book with her Facebook followers, and the South Korean pop star Kim Ki- Bum, who posted an image on Instagram for his 1.6 million followers.
Its been crazy. The last few weeks have been utter madness, but fantastic madness, said Eleanor Blatherwick, head of sales and marketing at the books publisher, small British press Laurence King. We knew the books would be beautiful but we didnt realize they would be such a phenomenal success.
And it is not just Basford who is benefitting from the adults who just want something to colour in. In the UK, Richard Merritts Art Therapy Colouring Book is in fourth place on Amazons bestseller lists, Millie Marottas Animal Kingdom  detailed pictures of animals to colour  is in seventh and a mindfulness colouring book is in ninth. Basfords books are in second and eighth place  thats half of Amazon.co.uks top ten filled up by colouring books for adults.
At independent UK publisher Michael OMara, which has sold almost 340,000 adult colouring books, Head of Publicity, Marketing and Online, Ana McLaughlin, says the craze is due to the way the category is now sold as a way to relax. The first one we did was in 2012, Creative Colouring for Grown-Ups. It sold well but it was in 2014 that it all really mushroomed with Art Therapy. It became really popular  selling it as an anti-stress book gave people permission to enjoy something they might have felt was quite childish, she said.
The Mindfulness Colouring Book really emphasizes that it is anti-stress  its publisher tells readers that it is filled with templates for exquisite scenes and intricate, sophisticated patterns, prompting you to meditate on your artwork as you mindfully and creatively fill these pages with colour. It suggests that colourers take a few minutes out of your day, wherever you are, and colour your way to peace and calm.
I think it is really relaxing to unplug, said Basford. And its creative. For many people, a blank sheet is very daunting; with a colouring book, you just need to bring the colour. Also, theres a bit of nostalgia there. So many people have said to me that they used to do secret colouring in when their kids were in bed. Now, it is socially acceptable; its a category of its own. These are books for adults. The art in my books is super intricate.
The illustrator, who lives in Aberdeenshire, has been astonished at the reaction since she released Secret Garden in 2013. I drew a kids book and I told them I would like to do one for grown-ups. It really wasnt a trend then. I drew the first story and they said, Lets go for it. I was thinking simply that people like me would like to do it. My intention was just to make a book I would like to have. So its been a real surprise to see the category bloom.
She is currently working on a third book. Its a major trend and it doesnt look like its going to slow down, said McLaughlin. The pictures are all over Twitter and Instagram. People are really proud of them  they are so intricate, she said. You dont have to have any artistic talent but what you create is unique. People send us pictures of them. I reckon people are taking their kids pictures off the fridge and replacing them with their own.


There comes a time in some men’s lives when the days seem darker, mortality more certain, and the only sensible response is to blow the life savings on a sportscar.
Radical and often ill-advised changes in lifestyle have become the calling cards of the midlife crisis but, if it is more than a myth, then humans may not be the only animals to experience it.
Now an international team of scientists claims to have found evidence for a slump in well- being among middle-aged chimpanzees and orangutans. The lull in happiness in the middle years, they say, is the ape equivalent of the midlife crisis.
The study, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has raised eyebrows among some scientists but, according to the authors, the findings suggest that the midlife crisis may have its roots in the biology humans share with our closest evolutionary cousins.
“There’s a common understanding that there’s a dip in well-being in middle age,” Alex Weiss, a psychologist at Edinburgh University, told the Guardian.
“We took a step back and asked whether it’s possible that instead of the midlife crisis being human-specific, and driven only by social factors, it reflects some evolved tendency for middle-aged individuals to have lower well-being,” he said.
The team from the US, Japan, Germany and the UK asked zookeepers, carers and others who worked with male and female apes of various ages to complete questionnaires on the animals.
The forms included questions about each ape’s mood, the enjoyment they gained from socializing, and their success at achieving certain goals. The final question asked how carers would feel about being the ape for a week. They scored their answers from one to seven.
More than 500 apes were included in the study in three separate groups. The first two groups were chimpanzees, with the third made up of orangutans from Sumatra or Borneo. The animals came from zoos, sanctuaries and research centres in the US, Australia, Japan, Canada and Singapore.
When the researchers analyzed the questionnaires, they found that well-being in the apes fell in middle age and climbed again as the animals moved into old age. In captivity, great apes often live to 50 or more. The nadir in the animals’ well-being occurred, on average, at 28.3 and 27.2 years old for the chimpanzees, and 35.4 years old for the orangutans.
“In all three groups we find evidence that well-being is lowest in chimpanzees and orangutans at an age that roughly corresponds to midlife in humans,” Weiss said. “On average, well-being scores are lowest when animals are around 30 years old.”
The team explains that the temporary fall in ape well-being may result from watching depressed apes dying younger, or through age-related changes in the brain that are mirrored in humans. Weiss conceded that, unlike men, apes are not known to pursue radical and often disastrous lifestyle changes in middle age.
Robin Dunbar, Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at Oxford University, was dubious about the findings. “What can produce a sense of well-being or contentedness that varies across the lifespan like this? It’s hard to see anything in an ape’s life that would have that sort of pattern, that they would think about. They’re not particularly good at seeing far ahead into the future; that’s one of the big differences between them and us.” Alexandra Freund, Professor of Psychology at the University of Zurich, was also sceptical. She said the concept of a midlife crisis was shaky even in humans. “In my reading of the literature, there is no evidence for the midlife crisis. If there’s any indication of decline in emotional or subjective well-being it is very small and, in many studies, it’s not there at all.”
But Weiss believes the findings could point to a deeper understanding of the emotional crisis some men may experience. “If we want to find the answer as to what’s going on with the midlife crisis, we should look at what is similar in middle-aged humans, chimps and orangutans,” he said.


Intermediate
The huge fortunes made by the worlds richest 100 billionaires are increasing inequality and hindering the worlds ability to tackle poverty, according to Oxfam.
The charity said the accumulation of wealth and income often led to a reduction in secure jobs and decent wages for the poorest people. This made it more difficult for people who survive on aid or low wages to improve their situation and escape poverty.
Oxfam said the worlds poorest could be taken out of poverty several times over if the richest 100 billionaires would give away the money they made in 2012.
Without naming anyone, the charity argued that the $240bn made in 2012 by the richest 100 billionaires would be enough to end extreme poverty four times over.
It is unusual for charities to attack the wealthy, because they are usually seen as a source of money. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are among a group of 40 US billionaires who have said they will give much of their wealth to aid projects, but there is little detail about the level of their annual donations. Russian, Middle Eastern or Chinese billionaires have not promised to do the same.
In the report, The Cost of Inequality: How Wealth and Income Extremes Hurt Us All, published just before the World Economic Forum in Davos, the charity asks world leaders to commit to reducing inequality to at least 1990 levels.
The report found that the richest 1% had increased their incomes by 60% in the past 20 years. And the financial crisis has sped up, not slowed, the process.
Barbara Stocking, Oxfams Chief Executive, said studies show that countries suffer low levels of investment and growth as workers are forced to survive on a smaller share of total incomes.
She said: We can no longer pretend that the creation of wealth for a few will benefit the many  too often the reverse is true.
The report said the issue affected all parts of the world. In the UK, inequality is rapidly returning to levels not seen since the nineteenth century. In China, the top 10% now earn nearly 60% of the income. Chinese inequality levels are now similar to those in South Africa, which is now the most unequal country on Earth.
In the US, the share of national income going to the top 1% has doubled since 1980 from 10 to 20%, the report says.
Members of the richest 1% are estimated to cause as much as 10,000 times more pollution than the average US citizen.
Oxfam said world leaders should learn from countries such as Brazil, which has grown rapidly while reducing inequality.
Stocking said: We need to reverse decades of increasing inequality. As a first step, world leaders should formally agree to reduce inequality to the levels seen in 1990.
She said closing tax havens, which hold as much as $31 trillion, or as much as a third of all global wealth, could collect $189bn in additional taxes.


Intermediate
Two mothers in South Africa have found out that they are raising each others daughters after they were mistakenly switched at birth in a hospital in 2010.
But, while one of the women wants to correct the error and get her biological child back, the other is refusing to give back the girl she has raised as her own.
Henk Strydom, a lawyer for one of the mothers, described the swap as a travesty and tragedy that is unlikely to have a happy ending.
Both mothers gave birth at the Tambo Memorial Hospital in Boksburg, east of Johannesburg, on the same day in 2010. Nobody suspected anything, Strydom said.
But, in 2013, one of the mothers, who is 33 and unemployed, sued her ex-partner for maintenance for her daughter. Strydom said: The man denied he was the father. A DNA test was done and it was found it was not his baby and not her baby. She was devastated. She didnt know what to do.
Eventually, she met the other mother and, since December 2013, they have been attending joint counselling sessions, arranged by the hospital. Here they have met their biological daughters
Strydom said of his client: She said there are resemblances to herself. She told me that it was traumatic. You can see its not easy for her. She has to care for a child that is not hers on her own while her child is with someone else.
The woman became unhappy with the process and asked the childrens court to give her custody of her biological child, but the other mother refused.
Its a tragedy. She wants the baby back, but its four years later: you can understand that the other mother doesnt want to give up her baby, Strydom said.
The High Court in Pretoria has asked the University of Pretorias Centre for Child Law to investigate what will now be in the best interests of the children.
Strydom added: I dont know what the court will decide. Your guess is as good as mine. But, whatever happens, someone wont be happy.
He said, at this point, he and his client do not want to sue the hospital or government health department, which is helping with the case and providing counselling.
The Centre for Child Law will interview the mothers and fathers, as well as any other person with a significant relationship with either of the girls. The children and mothers will have clinical assessments and may be seen by a psychologist.
Karabo Ngidi, a lawyer with the centre, said: Whats going to happen must be in the best interests of the children. Biology is an important aspect but not the only one.
The families are of Zulu ethnicity and so Zulu tradition, culture and customary law will be a factor, she added. It is also still possible the ex- partner of the mother who is taking legal action could be the biological father of the girl who was switched.
It is not the first child-swap case in South Africa. In 1995, two mothers were awarded damages after their sons, born in 1989, were accidentally switched at the Johannesburg hospital where they were born.
In 2009, in Oregon in the United States, Dee Ann Angell and Kay Rene Reed discovered that they had been mistakenly mixed up at birth in 1953 when a nurse brought them back from bathing.
In 2013, in Japan, a 60-year-old man swapped at birth from his rich parents to a poor family was given compensation. He grew up on welfare and became a truck driver, whereas his biological brothers and sisters  and the boy brought up in his place  attended private secondary schools and universities.
Bruce Laing, a clinical psychologist in Johannesburg, said the long-term effects of a baby swap could be profound, terrifying and incredibly traumatizing. He told The Times of South Africa: The parents might always be thinking What if?


Joseph Roche is on the shortlist of astronauts for Mars One, a private mission that plans to send humans to live on Mars from 2025. He is on the shortlist but he is sceptical about Mars One.
The selection process, Roche says, did not “reach the standard of more traditional astronaut selection processes”. He also says the Dutch
Mars One team are naive because they believe they can succeed alone in the $6 billion mission. He says they should now accept it will probably not happen.
The group plans to send a lander and satellite to Mars in 2018, followed by a rover in 2020 and cargo missions starting in 2022. Humans will start arriving in 2025 and they will send more crews of four people every two years. The astronauts will not return to Earth.
Gerard ’t Hooft is a Dutch Nobel laureate in physics. He is a supporter of the project but he says he does not believe the Mars One plans are realistic. He said: “It will take longer and be more expensive. When they asked me to be involved, I told them: ‘You have to put a zero after everything’.”
Roche also said that there were not 200,000  people who applied to be astronauts, as Mars One said; there were only 2,761.
He talked about the selection process in more detail: “I have not met anyone from Mars One. At first, they said there would be regional interviews; we would travel there, and they would interview and test us over several days. To me, that sounded like a proper astronaut selection process.
“But it changed from a proper regional interview over several days to a ten-minute Skype call.”
Roche says he does not want to give more interviews because he doesn’t want to sound negative about space travel.
He said that being involved in the public debate about future missions is one of the most interesting and enjoyable things about his connection with Mars One. He then said that, “If a one-way mission to Mars ever became possible, I would always volunteer. For an astrophysicist, that is not a difficult decision to make.” But he does not think there will be a one-way mission in his lifetime.


A British court has decided that three old Kenyans, who were put in prison and tortured during the fighting in Kenya in the 1950s, can sue the British government. There are thousands of other people who were put in prison and say they were treated badly during the final days of the British Empire, and now they may also try to sue.
British government lawyers said that too much time had passed since the seven- year fight in the 1950s, and it was no longer possible to have a fair trial. The court did not accept this. In 2011 the government said that the three claimants should sue the Kenyan government because it became legally responsible after independence in 1963. But the judge did not accept this either.
70,000 people were put in prison by the British in Kenya, and more than 5,000 of them are still alive. Many of them may sue the British government. The court decision may also make it possible for victims in other parts of the world to sue.
The Foreign Office said it will appeal against the decision. “The normal time limit for a civil action is three to six years,” they said. “In this case, that period has been extended to over 50 years, but the people who made the decisions are dead and they can’t give their view of what happened.”
The victory for Paulo Muoka Nzili, 85, Wambugu Wa Nyingi, 84, and Jane Muthoni Mara, 73, was the result of a three-year battle in the courts. Their lawyers said they had suffered terrible brutality. In the Kenyan capital Nairobi, Nyingi and Mara heard the news by mobile phone. They reacted with joy when they heard, hugging, dancing and praying.
Nyingi, who was put in prison and beaten, said: “For me … I just wanted everyone to know the truth. Even the children of my children should know what happened. What should happen is that people should be compensated so they can begin to forgive the British government.” Mara said: “I’m very happy and my heart is clean.”
The judge said in 2011 that there was a lot of evidence to show that prisoners were perhaps tortured. He decided that a fair trial was possible, especially because thousands of secret documents from the colonial era were found in 2011.
The British government’s lawyers accepted that all three of the old Kenyans were tortured. The claimants’ lawyer said: “The British government has admitted that these three Kenyans were brutally tortured but they have tried not to take any legal responsibility. There will be victims of colonial torture from Malaya to the Yemen, from Cyprus to Palestine, who will be very interested in this case.”
People who fought in Cyprus in the 1950s are interested in the Mau Mau case. One has already met the Kenyan claimants’ lawyers. Cypriot claimants could use British documents, and also the documents of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva. Those documents are kept secret for 40 years, and then opened to the public. The Red Cross recorded hundreds of torture cases in Cyprus.
There may also be claims from Malaysia, where large numbers of people were put in prison during the 12-year war with communist fighters and their supporters that began in 1948. 24 farm workers, who were without weapons, were killed by British troops – their families are now fighting for a public inquiry. Many ex-prisoners of the British in Aden may also have claims against the British government. But Aden is now part of Yemen, and British lawyers may have problems making contact with possible claimants there.


McDonald’s is the world’s biggest burger chain and a symbol of American consumer capitalism. But, these days, the golden arches of McDonald’s are not looking so golden. The company has got much bigger since 2003 but, now, the numbers of customers are falling. McDonald’s says that its worldwide sales have fallen by 3.3%.
The company has problems almost everywhere. In China, sales fell by 23%. In Europe, sales fell by 4%, mostly because of problems in Ukraine and the anti-western mood in Russia. Health inspectors have investigated around 200 of McDonald’s 450 restaurants in Russia and they have closed ten restaurants.
But the worst crisis is in the US, where McDonald’s has around 40% of its restaurants. Almost 60 years since Ray Kroc opened his first restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, consumers are losing their appetite for a Big Mac and fries.
Sales have fallen every month for 12 months in the US. Many younger diners are eating at rival companies such as Chipotle Mexican Grill. The number of 19-to-21-year-olds who visit McDonald’s once a month has fallen by 13% since 2011.
Another problem is that McDonald’s hamburgers were recently named the worst in America in a poll of more than 32,000 American diners – they said they would rather eat a burger at Five Guys, Smashburger or Fuddruckers. Many people also believe that McDonald’s is less healthy than most of its rivals, especially Chipotle. Chipotle uses antibiotic-free meat and “locally sourced, seasonal” ingredients.
McDonald’s asked customers for their opinions in the US in October. Someone asked “Have you ever used pink slime in your burgers?” – ‘pink slime’ is the beef filler that is used for dog food. McDonald’s stopped using this meat product in 2012 but McDonald’s Chief Executive Don Thompson said the company still had to improve people’s opinions about the freshness and quality of its ingredients.
McDonald’s has always had a reputation for fast service at low prices. But, since it introduced $2 items on its dollar menu, people think it is more expensive than its rivals and many consumers complain that service is slower.
But Mary Chapman at food analysts Technomic said that it wasn’t fair to say that McDonald’s was more expensive than its rivals. “Prices have gone up but they haven’t gone up as quickly as the rest of the fast-food chains in the US.” Prices at McDonald’s have increased by 4.8% since 2009, much less than the fast-food average (up 19.4%).
But people are right when they complain that the queues are longer. McDonald’s has a bigger menu than some other restaurants, with more complicated items – its chicken McWrap takes 60 seconds to make. “I think it is worth waiting but the guy behind me who wants his double cheeseburger for a dollar might not,” said Chapman.
McDonald managers are promising to improve people’s opinions about its food in the US. Thompson has promised more organic food and “build your own burgers”. But, to reduce queues, he also wants to introduce simpler menus. How can the company have simpler menus and, at the same time, a larger selection of fillings? “They want to simplify the menu but also offer ‘build your own burgers’ – that sounds tricky,” said consumer expert Mark Kalinowski. Only four out of McDonald’s 14,000 US restaurants have tested “build your own burger”, he said. “Right now, we are sceptical; we would like to see more detail.”
Sales are falling but McDonald’s continues to expand around the world: by the end of 2014, it expects to open 1,400 new restaurants. Kalinowski thinks that McDonald’s sales will continue to fall but he thinks it will be number one for many years.


Intermediate
Facebook has lost millions of users per month in its biggest markets. In the last six months, Facebook has lost nearly 9m monthly visitors in the US and 2m in the UK.
Studies suggest that its expansion in the US, UK and other major European countries has peaked. In the last month, the worlds largest social network has lost 6m US visitors, a 4% fall, according to analysis firm Socialbakers. In the UK, 1.4m fewer users visited in March, a fall of 4.5%.
Users are also turning off in Canada, Spain, France, Germany and Japan, where Facebook is extremely popular.
The problem is that, in the US and UK, most people who want to sign up for Facebook have already done it, said new media specialist Ian Maude at Enders Analysis. People get bored, he says, and they like to try something new.
Alternative social networks have seen surges in popularity with younger people. Instagram, the photo-sharing site, got 30m new users in the 18 months before Facebook bought the business.
Path, the mobile phone-based social network founded by former Facebook employee Dave Morin, which only allows its users to have 150 friends, is gaining 1m users a week. It has recently topped 9m users, with 500,000 Venezuelans downloading the app in a single weekend.
Facebook is still growing fast in South America. Monthly visitors in Brazil were up 6% in the last month to 70m, according to Socialbakers, whose information is used by Facebook advertisers. India has seen a 4% rise to 64m  still only a fraction of the countrys population, so there is room for more growth.
But in developed markets, other people watching Facebook are reporting declines.
Analysts at Jefferies bank saw global numbers of visitors to Facebook peak at 1.05bn a month in January, before falling by 20m in February. Numbers rose again in April. The network has now lost nearly 2m visitors in the UK since December, according to research firm Nielsen, with its 27m total the same as a year ago.
The number of minutes Americans spend on Facebook appears to be falling, too. The total was 121 billion minutes in December 2012, but that fell to 115 billion minutes in February, according to comScore.
As Facebook itself has warned, the time spent on its pages from those sitting in front of personal computers is decreasing fast because people now prefer to use their smartphones and tablets.
Although smartphone minutes have doubled in a year, to 69 a month, that growth may not compensate for dwindling desktop usage.
Facebook will tell investors about its performance for the quarter. Wall Street expects revenues of about $1.44bn, an increase from $1.06bn a year ago.
Shareholders will want to know how fast the number of mobile Facebook users is growing, and whether advertising revenues are increasing at the same rate.
Mobile usage represented nearly a quarter of Facebooks advertising income at the end of 2012, and the network had 680m mobile users a month in December.
The company said that it might be losing younger users to other products and services similar to, or as a substitute for, Facebook.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has created a series of new initiatives designed to appeal to smartphone users. One initiative, Facebook Home, is software that can be downloaded onto Android phones to feed news and photos from friends  and advertising  directly to the owners locked home screen.


36-year-old Junior Smart knows a lot about gangs. When he was a teenager, after his mother died, he joined a south London gang. At the time, it helped fill a big gap in his life. “They became my new support group,” he says. “At first it was just a bit of fun but then it became more serious and we got involved in crime.” After he left college, he got a full-time job but he was also making money illegally as part of the gang.
Eventually he was arrested for serious drug crimes and was sent to prison for 12 years. “The first night after I was arrested was the biggest shock of my life,” he says. “I had been living a double life. I had been living as one person to my peers and another person to my peers’ enemies.”
Today, Junior Smart runs a team of 12 full-time workers and six volunteers, working to help young criminals and gang members to stop committing crimes. Most of the team are ex-criminals like Smart. A few are still in prison but are allowed out during the day to help. They work with the police, the probation service and other, voluntary organizations to help members of the violent criminal gangs of London.
Smart’s extraordinary journey from gang member to mentor began when he was in prison. “I couldn’t believe that people kept coming back in and nobody did anything about it. I was talking to the prisoners and they knew what was wrong in their lives, but the problem is that the prison system only deals with the crime.”
“One guy spent £300 a week on cocaine and burgled houses to get the money. He told me how he walked into houses, even when he knew people were there. So he had a drug addiction, but that problem was never solved.”
Smart started working as a prison “listener” – a prisoner who helps new arrivals during their first days inside. Then he had an idea to run his own scheme when he left prison – using the experience of ex-offenders to help others reject crime. He left prison after five years and started his scheme.
So what does he think now? Does he believe that things are getting better? He says the police have done some good work in arresting gang members. But he criticizes the government because they believe that, when the leader of a gang is arrested, the problem is solved. He believes the arrest of gang leaders can even make things worse.
“When you arrest the leader, people in the gang start fighting. Who was the most loyal? Who had the most respect? It is a bit like a violent family. It means that the arrest of the gang leaders has no long-term effect.”
Can it make the streets more dangerous? “Yes, it can. If one gang knows that an elder [leader] has been arrested, then they suddenly think that gang’s weak ... And so we have fights between different gangs. And what happens when that elder is in prison? He makes friends with other gang members, or when he comes out of prison he tries to take control back. That is when violence happens.”
Smart says gangs are now recruiting members in primary schools. The youngest members are called “tinies”. “Over the last years we have seen more and more of this. The tinies can be just eight to eleven years old.” The youngest members protect their seniors from risk. They often sell drugs or even stab people, he says.
Smart says that the challenges are very big, particularly because the economy is so bad. “I try to help a young person who has been earning £300 a week illegally. It was difficult before but, with lots of unemployment, it’s even more difficult now.” But his project, which has more than 1,000 clients, is bringing results. Fewer than 20% of the people he helps reoffend. Smart believes that everyone should get a second chance.


Some cities have pigeons. Lima has black vultures. They fly in groups over the city and sit on the city’s buildings. With their wrinkly heads and small, round eyes, they remind Lima residents of the poverty and filth in their city.
But the vultures’ taste for dead and decaying things has become a good thing. Environmental authorities are putting GoPro video cameras and GPS trackers on the birds – the birds now work in the fight against fly-tipping and illegal dumping.
Samuel is one of the project’s ten black vultures that are looking for rubbish. He wears his tracker and flies above the city, where he finds secret or hidden dumps. The exact positions of the rubbish dumps are recorded on a live map.
His trainer at Lima’s Huachipa Zoo, Alfredo Correa, says, “They can eat dead animals because their bodies protect them from viruses and bacteria,” he says.
USAID and the Peruvian Environment Ministry are working together on this project to try to solve Lima’s rubbish problem. The vultures are fighting disease, while most humans ignore the danger.
Lima has nearly ten million inhabitants but just four landfills so there are many illegal dumps. A fifth of the city’s rubbish goes into the illegal dumps, according to the Environment Ministry. The rubbish makes the water of Lima’s main water source, the Rimac river, dirty. It also makes the water of the Chillon and Lurin rivers, which flow into the Bay of Lima, dirty.
Three poorer districts have only 12% of Lima’s population but they have much more illegal rubbish than other neighbourhoods: Villa Maria del Triunfo (39.4%), Villa El Salvador (25.3%) and El Agustino (18.3%).
Part of the problem is unpaid taxes. Many residents don’t pay their taxes. That means some of the 43 districts of the city do not have enough money for rubbish collection.
It also means that it is possible that nobody is going to clean up where the vultures find illegal rubbish. “We tell the local governments where the vultures found illegal dumps,” says Javier Hernandez, the project director. “It’s their job to collect the rubbish and to try and change the habits of their residents.”


US shutdown: Christine Lagarde calls for stability after debt crisis is averted James Meikle, Paul Lewis and Dan Roberts 17 October, 2013
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has asked the USA to manage its money better. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees returned to work after the government shut down for 16 days. US President Barack Obama said that the US has to be more careful with how it manages its money. The IMF’s managing director, Christine Lagarde, asked for more stability.
The Senate wrote a peace deal, which included almost nothing that the conservatives asked for. The conservative Republicans nearly caused a new financial crisis because they did not agree to Obama’s healthcare reforms. The House of Representatives agreed the deal at the last minute.
The World Bank was also pleased that the world’s economy had “avoided a catastrophe ”. Its president, Jim Yong Kim, asked politicians in all countries to continue to make policies that improve the economy and give jobs and opportunity to all. The shutdown cost the US $24 billion. Obama signed the legislation shortly after midnight on Thursday. The bill passed easily, with support from all parties in the Senate, where Democratic and Republican leaders wrote the agreement. It is a temporary solution. It gives the government money until 15 January and allows the government to borrow more money if they want to until 7 February.
But the president made clear that he did not expect another serious budget fight and shutdown in 2014.
At the White House, Obama said he hoped the deal would “lift the cloud of uncertainty” that had hung over the country in recent weeks.
“When this agreement arrives on my desk, I will sign it immediately,” he said. “Hopefully, next time, it won’t be in the eleventh hour. We must manage our money better.”
A journalist asked the president if the crisis would happen again in a few months. Obama replied: “No.”
Earlier, the Republican senator Mike Lee said there would be more trouble: “The media keeps asking: 'Was it worth it?' My answer is, it is always worth it to do the right thing.” He added: “This is not over.”
But the political deal on Wednesday was one of the worst of all possible results for Republicans. They did not achieve any of their goals and most people blamed them for the crisis.


When you see the word Amazon, what’s the first thing that springs to mind – the world’s biggest forest, the longest river or the largest internet retailer – and which do you consider most important?
These questions have risen to the fore in an arcane, but hugely important, debate about how to redraw the boundaries of the internet. Brazil and Peru have lodged objections to a bid made by the US e-commerce giant for a prime new piece of cyberspace: “.amazon”.
The Seattle-based company has applied for its brand to be a top-level domain name (currently “.com”), but the South American governments argue this would prevent the use of this internet address for environmental protection, the promotion of indigenous rights and other public interest uses.
Along with dozens of other disputed claims to names, including “.patagonia” and “.shangrila ”, the issue cuts to the heart of debates about the purpose and governance of the internet.
Until now, the differences between commercial, governmental and other types of identity were easily distinguished in every internet address by “.com”, “.gov” and 20 other categories.
But these categories – or generic top-level domains (gTLDs) as they are technically known – are about to undergo the biggest expansion since the start of the worldwide web.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) – a US-based non-profit organization that plays a key role in cyberspace governance – has received bids (each reportedly worth almost $200,000) for hundreds of new gTLDs to add to the existing 22.
Amazon has applied for dozens of new domains, including “.shop ”, “.song”, “.book” and “.kindle . But its most contentious application is for its own brand.
Brazil and Peru have called for the “.amazon” application to be withdrawn, saying a private company should not be assigned a name that denotes an important geographical area that spans their territories and is also used for certain regions and cross-border organizations. “Allowing private companies to register geographical names as gTLDs to reinforce their brand strategy or to profit from the meaning of these names does not serve, in our view, the public interest,” the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology said.
Brazil said its views were endorsed last month by other members of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela).
Dozens of other protests have also been registered over proposed top-level domains that take geographical, cultural or contested brand names.
Argentina has lodged an expression of its unhappiness that the US outdoor clothing retailer, Patagonia, is claiming a domain name that has been known far longer as a region of spectacular beauty that also has its own parliament. “Argentina rejects the “.patagonia” request for a new generic top-level domain,” the government notes in an appeal. “Patagonia is a relevant region for the country’s economy because it has oil, fishing, mining and agriculture resources. It is also a region with a vibrant local community and it is a major tourist destination.”
Less convincingly, China has disputed the domain “.shangrila”, which is proposed by a hotel group of the same name. The authorities in Beijing say the “shangri-la” label belongs to a region in Yunnan province, although it was only renamed as such in 2001 (long after the hotel group was formed) so that the local community could cash in on the fame of the fictional paradise depicted in the novel, Lost Horizon, by British author James Hilton.
At a conference in April in Beijing, ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee – the primary voice of national governments within the institution – recommended a freeze on disputed proposals. They are expected to be discussed again at a meeting in Durban in July. The first approved domain names should be in use before the end of 2013.


Scientists have designed a mirror that sends heat into cold space. If you use the mirror, you don’t need to use air-conditioning units that keep buildings cool on Earth.
The scientists believe that the mirror could reduce by a lot the amount of energy we use to control air temperatures in offices and shopping centres.
Around 15% of the energy used by buildings in the US goes on air conditioning. The researchers say that the mirror could mean that we no longer need air conditioning.
Scientists in Stanford, California, found that a roof painted black was 60C hotter than the air temperature in sunlight. They found that aluminium was 40C hotter. But the mirror was 5C cooler than the air temperature.
“If you cover large parts of the roof with this mirror, you can save a lot of power,” said Shanhui Fan, an expert in the study of light at Stanford University. He led the development of the mirror.
Buildings warm up in different ways. Hot-water boilers and cooking areas release heat. In hot countries, warm air comes in through doors and windows. Then, there is visible light and infrared radiation from the sun, which also heat up buildings.
The Stanford mirror reflects 97% of the visible light that falls on it. But, more importantly, it releases heat. When the mirror is warmed up, it releases heat at a specific wavelength of infrared light that goes easily through the atmosphere and out into space.
The mirror is made from several layers of very thin materials. These layers help the mirror to release heat. The mirror sends the heat as infrared light out to space.
“The mirror can use the cold darkness of the universe, even during the hottest hours of the day,” the scientists say.
Shanhui Fan says the mirrors costs between $20 and $70 per square metre. He says that a mirror on a three-storey building could save 100MWh of electricity per year.
Fan also said that the mirror could cool buildings but it would not slow down global warming. But it would reduce the amount of electricity that businesses use.
“I’m really excited by this,” said Marin Soljačić, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “You could use the mirrors on buildings and spend much less money on air conditioning or maybe you wouldn’t need it at all. You could put the mirrors on top of shopping malls.”


Intermediate
An octopus has escaped from the National Aquarium in New Zealand by leaving its tank, sliding down a 50-metre drainpipe and disappearing into the sea. Inky  a common New Zealand octopus  escaped after the lid of his tank was accidentally left a bit ajar. Staff believe that in the middle of the night, while the aquarium was deserted, Inky climbed to the top of his glass enclosure, down the side of the tank and travelled across the floor of the aquarium.
Rob Yarrell, national manager of the National Aquarium of New Zealand in Napier, said: Octopuses are famous for their ability to escape. I dont think he was unhappy with us, or lonely, because octopuses are solitary creatures. But, he is such a curious boy. He wanted to know what was happening on the outside. Thats just his personality.
One theory is that Inky slid across the aquarium floor  a journey of three or four metres  and, then, into a drainpipe that led directly to the sea. The drainpipe was 50 metres long and led to the waters of Hawkes Bay, on the east coast of New Zealands North Island.
It is also possible that Inky escaped by squeezing into an open pipe at the top of his tank, which led under the floor to the drain. When we came in the next morning and his tank was empty, I was really surprised, said Yarrell, who has not launched a search for Inky. The staff and I have been pretty sad. But then, this is Inky and hes always been a bit of a surprise octopus.
Reiss Jenkinson, exhibits keeper at the National Aquarium, said he was absolutely certain Inky was not stolen. I understand octopus behaviour very well, he said. I have seen octopuses on boats escape through bilge pumps. And, the security here is too tight for anyone to take Inky and why would they?
Because octopuses have no bones, they are able to fit into extremely small spaces and can squeeze through gaps the size of coins. They are also extremely intelligent and can use tools. At the Island Bay Marine Education Centre in Wellington, an octopus used to visit another tank during the night to steal crabs, then return to its own tank. Another at the centre, Ozymandias, broke a world record for opening a jar.
Inky was brought to the National Aquarium several years ago by a local fisherman who found him caught in a fishing pot. He was rough looking, with very short arms, said Yarrell. He had been living on the reef and fighting with fish so he wasnt in the best shape. According to Yarrell, Inky  who is about the size of a rugby ball  was an unusually intelligent octopus. He was very friendly and a popular attraction here. We have another octopus, Blotchy, but he is smaller than Inky and Inky had the personality.
The aquarium has no plans to step up security as a result of the escape because they dont think it will happen again. But, the staff are more and more aware of what octopuses can do. Although the aquarium is not looking for a replacement for Inky, if a fisherman brought in another octopus, it might accept it. You never know, said Yarrell. Theres always a chance Inky could come home to us.


He is not the first person to express scepticism about Mars One, a vastly ambitious private mission aiming to settle humans on Mars from 2025. But Joseph Roche is different from most critics: he’s on the shortlist of astronauts.
Roche, an astrophysicist at Trinity College Dublin who was announced in February as among the 100 people in line for the mission, has written for the Guardian expressing his grave doubts about the viability of Mars One.
The selection process, Roche writes, “was not rigorous enough to reach the requisite standard of more traditional astronaut selection programmes”. He also says the Dutch Mars One team have displayed “a certain naivety” in believing they can succeed alone in the supposed $6bn mission and should now accept it is very unlikely to happen.
He writes: “More openness and transparency would benefit Mars One greatly but I think that the shortcomings of the selection process, coupled with their unwillingness to engage and collaborate with the scientific community mean that the time might have come for Mars One to acknowledge the implausibility of this particular venture and turn their efforts towards supporting other exciting and more viable upcoming space missions.”
Roche also expressed worries about the way the mission organizers publicized a so-called top-ten candidates. The ranking, he said, didn’t mean these were the most likely potential astronauts but was, instead, based on how many “supporter points” each had earned through acts such as buying official merchandise.
He writes: “These points are Mars One’s supporter points which 'represent the degree of your support to Mars One’s mission'.” These points play no role in the selection process and serve only to show how much each supporter has donated to Mars One.”
The official timeline for the mission says the group plans to dispatch a stationary lander and satellite to Mars in 2018, followed by a rover in 2020 and cargo missions starting in 2022. Humans would start arriving in 2025 and crews of four would be sent every two years to add to the settlement. They would not return to Earth.
In February, a prominent supporter of the project, Gerard’t Hooft, a Dutch Nobel laureate in physics, said he did not believe this timetable was realistic. He said: “It will take quite a bit longer and be quite a bit more expensive. When they first asked me to be involved, I told them: 'You have to put a zero after everything'.”
Roche also spoke to Medium, a US blogging platform that has previously expressed grave sceptism about Mars One, reporting among other things that the supposed 200,000 applications to be astronauts in fact totalled 2,761.
He told Medium about the selection process in more detail: “I have not met anyone from Mars One in person. Initially, they’d said there were going to be regional interviews; we would travel there, we’d be interviewed, we’d be tested over several days and, in my mind, that sounded at least like something that approached a legitimate astronaut selection process.
“But then they made us sign a non-disclosure agreement if we wanted to be interviewed and then, all of a sudden, it changed from being a proper regional interview over several days to being a ten-minute Skype call.”
Roche told the Guardian he did not want to give more interviews as he was wary about being negative about the idea of space travel.
In his comment piece he writes: “I am passionate about pushing the boundaries of scientific endeavour and that is why the ambitiousness of the Mars One plan appealed to me. Although Mars One were never likely to overcome the financial and technical barriers during their proposed timeline, it was refreshing to hear a new idea that challenges us to think about our own role in the future of space exploration.
“Being part of the subsequent public debate over the ethics and morality of future missions has been one of the most interesting and enjoyable aspects of my candidacy with Mars One. If a one-way mission to Mars ever became possible, then I would always volunteer. For an astrophysicist, that is not a difficult decision to make but it is also a moot point because I do not think we will see a one-way mission in my lifetime.”


The small space is set up to look like a classroom. Its corrugated iron walls are hung with educational charts – illustrated letters of the alphabet and a map of Bangladesh.
But, the constant sound of hammering and the chemicals in the air that catch in the back of the throat and irritate the eyes make it hard to concentrate. The children who learn in this three-square-metre room are the lucky ones, however. They have escaped working in the factories opposite.
For 14 years, SOHAY, a grassroots non- governmental organization (NGO) funded by the Global Fund for Children and Comic Relief, has been working in slum areas of Dhaka to get child labourers into school. It focuses on children working in hazardous conditions – in aluminium and plastic factories, and tanneries.
The classroom is one of 23 urban development centres that SOHAY has set up across the capital. The centres prepare children for primary school with classes that help them catch up on their education. Once they are in primary school, the children can do homework at the centres, with help from their peers.
Alamin, ten, who used to work in a plastic factory, attends one of the centres. His father is a street seller and his mother a part-time domestic worker. They are all happy that he’s now in school and away from hazardous work. His friend Rabi says he wants to forget his past in the factory. “I like school,” he says.
“The urban development centres aim to create an education-friendly environment in the communities and change their cultural mindset towards the children,” says SOHAY’s programme manager, Mohammed Abdullah al-Mamun. SOHAY also runs sessions for parents and employers to discourage child labour and offers skills training to increase family income.
“Getting working children into formal education is really very challenging,” says Mamun. “Their psychological and physical condition is not like other children in society. After they leave work, they sometimes find it difficult to make friends and adapt to school. It is also very challenging to ensure they stay in school – the dropout rate is very high for these children. In this context, it’s important to work with schools so they have more sensitivity and care about them.”
Seven-year-old Zhorna Akter Sumayya has two older brothers, both of whom are in work (one at a restaurant, one at a local club). But, after being introduced to education at one of SOHAY’s centres, she now goes to a state primary school. Her family live in the slum and her parents can’t survive without the income their sons bring home. Her father works in a rickshaw garage and her mother is a domestic worker, but they were keen for their daughter to go to school.
In 2015, SOHAY helped 1,540 children to leave hazardous work and 2,125 vulnerable children – those in danger of entering work – into school. About 780 more children are preparing to enter school in 2017. The organization is also helping 635 children who are working in hazardous conditions to know their rights under Bangladesh’s 2010 child labour elimination code of conduct. The policy aimed to eradicate all forms of child labour by 2015 but that target was missed.
The Labour Law of Bangladesh 2006 bans children under the age of 14 from working but, according to the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, 4.7 million children under that age are employed in the informal sector and 1.3 million aged five to 17 work in hazardous industries.
“It was difficult to get them into school without any compensation for their time,” says Sadia Nasrin, who runs Sonjag, another Dhaka grassroots NGO. “To overcome this challenge, Sonjag started working closely with the community in the slums where the children live.”
The organization talked to community members about why it was important to get children into school. They selected community volunteers who were motivated to change children’s lives and formed groups with social workers, community leaders, mothers, young volunteers and the local government.
“The groups play a vital role in motivating employers to let children leave for two to three hours a day to attend school and to ensure a safe workplace for the children. The ultimate change-makers are the community people,” says Nasrin.
She adds that people living in slums face threats of eviction, police raids and displacement. “The national plan of action for children does not recognize the needs of street children,” says Nasrin. “Legislative measures are limited.”
When the children have missed starting school at five years old, it is a race against time to prevent them from growing up without an education. “After they cross their school age, it is really very difficult to admit them into school,” says Mamun. “Children are just passing their time without education and waiting to become involved in hazardous work. We are working to block the child labour flow.”


The tranquil chorus of the natural world is in danger of being lost to today’s generation as people screen out the noises that surround them, a senior US researcher warns.
Rising levels of background noise in some areas threaten to make people oblivious to the uplifting sounds of birdsong, trickling water and trees rustling in the wind, which can often be heard even in urban centres, said Kurt Fristrup, a senior scientist at the US National Park Service.
The problem was exacerbated by people listening to music through their earphones instead of tuning in to the birds and other sounds of nature that can easily be drowned out by traffic, music and other noises, he said.
“This learned deafness is a real issue,” Fristrup told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Jose. “We are conditioning ourselves to ignore the information coming into our ears.”
“This gift that we are born with – to reach out and hear things hundreds of metres away, all these incredible sounds – is in danger of being lost through a generational amnesia,” he said.
“There is a real danger, both of loss of auditory acuity, where we are exposed to noise for so long that we stop listening, but also a loss of listening habits, where we lose the ability to engage with the environment the way we were built to,” he added.
For the past ten years, the US National Park Service has recorded sound levels at more than 600 sites across the US, including Yosemite in California, Yellowstone and Denali in Alaska. Not one was unaffected by some form of noise from human activity, be it over-flying aircraft, motorbikes, motorboats or tour buses.
Fristrup’s team combined the sound levels recorded from national parks with similar data from urban settings to create a model of noise levels across the US. They predict that noise pollution is growing faster than the US population and more than doubles every 30 years.
“It’s not surprising people are putting on earphones or even noise cancelling headphones to try and create a quieter or more congenial environment,” he said.
“As you raise background sound levels, it has the same effect on your hearing that fog would have on your vision. Instead of having this expansive experience of all the sounds around you, you are aware of only a small area around you,” he said. “Even in most of our cities, there are birds and things to appreciate in the environment, and there can be very rich natural choruses to pay attention to. And that is being lost.”
People quickly become accustomed to changes in their environments, including rising noise levels, and, over time, Fristrup fears that we will accept far worse environmental conditions than we should and forget how much quieter the world could be. “If finding peace and quiet becomes difficult enough, many, many children will grow up without the experience and I think it’s a very real problem,” he said.
The warning came as other scientists reported beneficial health effects from listening to natural sounds. Speaking at the same meeting, Derrick Taff, a social scientist at Pennsylvania State University, described preliminary experiments which suggest that listening to recordings from national parks, of waterfalls, birdsong and wind, helped people recover from stressful events.
In one experiment, Taff told participants who visited his lab to give an impromptu talk that would be judged by researchers standing behind a one-way mirror. Measurements of their heart rate and the stress hormone, cortisol, before and after the speech found that people calmed down faster when they listened to nature recordings than when the same audio tracks were interspersed with sounds from road traffic, aeroplanes and even normal conversation.
“We know that natural sounds are very important to people. They are some of the main reasons people visit protected areas. They want to hear the natural quiet, the birdsong, and the wind and water,” Taff said. “We may be losing this as people are listening to iPods all the time but I do believe that the public is appreciative of these sounds. My advice is to go to your protected areas and experience what you are missing.”
Why natural sounds might be calming to people is unclear but Fristrup speculates that, over millions of years of evolution, we may have come to associate the more tranquil sounds of the natural world with safety. “I suspect there’s something about these intact soundscapes that reminds our ancestral brains of a place that’s safe, where there’s no sense of a predator nearby, and that these more cluttered soundscapes are problematic for us because we know we’ve lost that surveillance capability,” he said.


1 Race engineer
A race engineer liaises between the driver and the mechanics.
Typical salary: New graduates start at £25,000 to £30,000 and quickly progress to junior engineer roles, earning more than £40,000 with just a few years’ experience. Senior race engineers earn £50,000 to £90,000 and promotion often leads to six-figure salaries.
What the job involves: “A race engineer acts as the interpreter between the race-car mechanics and the driver,” says race engineer Jamie Muir. “The engineer takes feedback from the driver, analyses the data available and makes decisions about the set-up needed for maximum performance, then relays this to the mechanics to instigate.”
Qualifications: A university degree, typically in automotive/mechanical engineering or motorsport technology. Hands-on experience is essential.
To succeed as a race engineer, you need … to be able to deal with pressure.
Worst thing about the job: The long hours. “Race engineers work 24/7,” says Chris Aylett, CEO of the Motorsport Industry Association.
2 Ethical hacker
Typical salary: £60,000 to £90,000 at team- leader level, while a newly qualified hacker can expect a minimum salary of £35,000 to £50,000.
What the job involves: A company will pay an ethical hacker to hack into its computer system to see how well it might stand up to a real attack.
Qualifications: You don’t necessarily need a degree in computer science. The industry accepts individuals with a very wide range of academic qualifications and skills.
To succeed as an ethical hacker, you need … a passion for technology and detail. You should also have a very good analytical mind and enjoy solving difficult problems.
Worst thing about the job: When you are called in to test the security of a new customer’s network only to discover that they have already been the victim of a data breach.
3 Bomb-disposal diver
Typical salary: In the private sector, you can earn up to £100,000 working just two months out of every three.
What the job involves: Descending to the sea bed and searching for unexploded ordnance (bombs, shells, grenades and landmines), then either safely recovering and collecting the weapons or securely disposing of them.
Qualifications: To dive offshore, you must have diving-inspection and medical-technician qualifications. To be able to dispose of the bombs safely, you’ll also need an explosive ordnance disposal qualification and years of experience.
To succeed as a bomb-disposal diver, you need … to stay calm in stressful situations. You work on your own at depth, with nil visibility and, if you don’t like living in small confined spaces with lots of other people, forget it.
Worst thing about the job: Expect to be away from home at least six months of the year.
4 Social engineer
Typical salary: Between £50,000 and £80,000, on average. Graduates start on £25,000 but salaries increase rapidly with qualifications and experience.
The job: A social engineer is paid by a company to try to trick its employees into divulging confidential information that allows the engineer to access sensitive company data or the company’s computer network.
Qualifications: Typically, social engineers have a degree in IT, although an understanding of psychology is useful, as is a background in marketing, teaching and customer service.
To succeed as a social engineer, you need … the confidence to lie convincingly and the ability to fit in almost anywhere without looking too out of place. You also need a strong sense of personal ethics and an understanding of the law.
Worst thing about the job: Other people may misunderstand your job: social engineers are not spies but most people think they are.
5 Power-line helicopter pilot
Typical salary: £65,000
The job: To fly close to high-voltage power lines in a helicopter so that the lines can be inspected with a camera and any potential faults and issues can be identified by the power company.
Qualifications: A private-helicopter-pilot licence, a commercial pilot’s licence and around 2,000 hours of experience flying at low levels in the type of helicopter the company usually uses.
To succeed as a power-line helicopter pilot, you need … a steady hand and a cool head. Typically, pilots must fly beside the power line, sometimes as little as 20 feet away and just 30 feet off the ground.
Worst thing about the job: “There are no negatives,” says Robin Tutcher, chief helicopter pilot for Western Power Distribution overhead- power network.
6 Private butler
Typical salary: £60,000 to £90,000
The job: A private butler can be called on by his or her employer to do anything from wardrobe management to chauffeuring and pet care. Typical duties include managing other staff, serving at every meal, running errands, looking after guests, booking restaurants, house security, housekeeping, cooking and anything else the household needs.
Qualifications: You don’t need any specific qualifications but can do a course at the British Butler Academy or the British Butler Institute.
To succeed as a butler, you need … the mindset of someone who genuinely thrives on looking after others.
Worst thing about the job: Long hours and an unpredictable work schedule mean it’s difficult to have a family life. Butlers also suffer from isolation, cultural differences with their employer and “having to work for people who aren’t always nice”, says Sara Vestin, director of the British Butler Academy.


Intermediate
Scarlett Johansson is suing a French novelist for 50,000. She says that his work of  ction makes fraudulent claims about her personal life.
La premiere chose quon regarde (The First Thing We Look At) by Gregoire Delacourt tells the story of a French model who looks so similar to the American actor that the books lead male character thinks it is Johansson herself. In the novel, the models looks mean that men see her only as a sex object, while women are jealous of her. She has a series of adventures as Johansson and, in the end, dies in a car crash.
Johansson does not feel  attered by the best- selling book. Her lawyer, Vincent Toledano, told Le Figaro that Delacourts novel illegally used Ms Johanssons name, her reputation and her image. He said the novel contains defamatory claims about her private life. He has now gone to court to try to stop the book being translated or adapted for cinema.
Delacourt tried to explain that he chose to mention Johansson because she is the archetype of beauty today. He said: I wrote a work of  ction. My character is not Scarlett Johansson.
On French radio, the author recently said the legal action was rather sad. He said: It freaks me out to think that when you talk of a character in a novel, judges can get involved.
Delacourt is one of Frances best-loved authors; his previous novel, My List of Desires, was translated into 47 languages and is now being adapted into a  lm. But he said he was speechless when he found out Johansson was suing him.
I thought shed get in contact to ask me to go for a coffee with her. I didnt write a novel about a celebrity, he said. I wrote a real love story about feminine beauty, especially interior beauty.
If an author can no longer mention the things that surround us  a brand of beer, a monument, an actor  its going to be complicated to produce  ction.
Im not sure shes even read the novel because it hasnt been translated yet.
Emmanuelle Allibert, spokeswoman for publisher JC Latte_s, said taking legal action was crazy. We have never known anything like it. It is all the more surprising because the novel is not even about Scarlett Johansson. It is about a woman who is Scarlett Johanssons double.
Ironically, the authors legal situation would be far easier if he had published the book in Johanssons home country, rather than France. Lloyd Jassin, a New York lawyer, said that the case would most likely not go to court in the United States because the book would be protected by the First Amendment.
He said that, if theres signi cance and literary merit to using her name in the book, the First Amendment would protect the authors right to do so. However, in France, the legal position is more complicated and personality rights are taken much more seriously, Jassin says.
I thought she might send me  owers as the book was a declaration of love for her, but she didnt understand, Delacourt said.


According to a new survey, there are more tigers in Nepal than at any time since the 1970s. The number of big cats has been decreasing in south Asia for 100 years, but conservationists now hope that we can save them.
The number of wild royal bengal tigers in Nepal has increased to 198 – a 63.6% increase in five years – the survey showed. “This is very good news,” said Maheshwar Dhakal, an ecologist with Nepal’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation.
The survey looked at pictures from more than 500 cameras in five protected areas and three wildlife corridors. More than 250 conservationists and wildlife experts worked on the survey, which cost about £250,000. Dhakal said that there was a similar survey in India and the results from both countries will be published later in 2013. “It will take a few more months for India, which now has 1,300 big cats in several huge protected areas, to finish the survey,” he added. Nepal says it will double the population of tigers by the year 2022 from 121 in 2009 to 242.
Some rich people want tiger skins. Tiger body parts are used in traditional Chinese medicine. International gangs pay poor local Nepali people large amounts of money to kill the cats. The skin and bones are taken through the border to India, where the big dealers are.
One big problem is that some senior officials help the mafia who are involved in the illegal buying and selling. Conservation experts believe that tiger numbers have increased because the police are controlling national parks better, and because there is now better management of tiger habitats in Nepal, where forests cover 29% of the land. But they say Nepal must do more to protect the habitat and animals that tigers eat so the big cats have enough space to move around and food to eat.
The number of tigers has increased but attacks on villagers have increased, too. Seven people were killed in attacks by tigers around national parks in 2012 compared to four in 2011, park officials said. Villagers also want better protection. “The government is making conservation plans for tigers. But it should also make plans to protect people from tigers,” Krishna Bhurtel, a village leader, told a Nepali newspaper. Recently, a tiger was captured after it killed two people, including a villager who was pulled from his bed in May.
Thousands of tigers used to lived in the forests in Bangladesh, India and Nepal. But their numbers have decreased to about 3,000, a 95% decrease in one hundred years. Chitwan National Park in central Nepal has the most adult tigers, with 120, followed by Bardiya National Park (50) and Shukla Phanta Wildlife Reserve (17).
Tiger skins are popular in Tibet, where rich people use them as festival costumes. In Nepal, kings used to stand on tiger skins for special occasions. Some rich Nepali have tiger heads on the walls of their living rooms. Tiger bones are in high demand for use in traditional Chinese medicine. People can make a lot of money selling tiger skins and bones illegally.


They call it the Richie Rich Club and it is about to get even richer. India’s wealthiest will quadruple their net worth between now and 2018, a report says, with hundreds of thousands of new entrepreneurs and inheritors becoming multimillionaires. The survey, based on interviews with 150 ultra-high-net-worth individuals, comes amid signs of returning business confidence in the world’s biggest democracy.
Recent years have seen lacklustre growth, rising prices of basic foodstuffs and a weakening currency. But the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a landslide victory in May 2014 on a pledge to reinvigorate the ailing economy. Despite the slowdown, there are nearly a sixth more Indians worth in excess of $3.75m than in 2013, the report for the Kotak Mahindra Bank notes. “Cities are mushrooming, the middle class population growing, opportunities have increased manyfold and the political environment has improved greatly in recent months,” according to Murali Balaraman, a co-author.
Between them, India’s rich hold assets worth a trillion dollars, which is around a fifth of the total wealth in the country. By 2018, that total is likely to reach $4tn, the report says, making three times as many people multimillionaires.
Serving the new rich – and the old money – is a booming luxury market. “They really want to show or talk about their wealth in a really subtle way and consumption of luxury goods is a nice way to do it,” Balaraman said. Abhay Gupta, the CEO of brand consultancy Luxury Connect, said the market for top-end goods and experiences would “only get bigger”. “There is a huge aspirational class who look up to what the very wealthy are doing and then copy it,” he said.
Cars are among the most popular items bought, the report says. Whereas, in 2009, locally made SUVs were shown off by the wealthy, now only foreign cars will turn heads. Mercedes saw a 47% surge in sales in India in 2013. BMW has launched a new $200,000 model in Delhi. India’s appalling infrastructure restricts demand, however. Lamborghini’s Chief Executive, Stephan Winkelmann, admitted, in 2013, that the traffic and roads in India “are not so suitable” for the $450,000 sports cars. In India, Lamborghini sells two models: the Gallardo and the Aventador, which has a top speed of 217mph. Winkelmann said Lamborghini’s Indian customers were much younger than those in Europe, with a typical buyer being in his 30s. However, the most popular investments remain real estate – mainly within India – and jewellery.
India’s super-rich have long raised eyebrows around the world with their spectacular spending. Mukesh Ambani, the country’s wealthiest man, has built the world’s most valuable home in Mumbai, the commercial capital. The 27-storey tower, complete with helicopter pads, indoor cinemas and a staff of more than 600, is worth an estimated $1bn.
The three-day wedding of the niece of Lakshmi Mittal, the UK-based steel tycoon who is worth an estimated $16bn, was reported to have cost $80m. Hundreds of guests were flown to Barcelona for the ceremony and party, which took place in a museum in the city.
But buyers of luxury goods searching for the psychological satisfaction of exclusivity are becoming increasingly demanding, the Kotak Mahindra report says. One ordered nine cases of Japanese whisky costing over $750 a bottle for a wedding reception. The attraction of the imported whisky was that no one who attended the wedding would find out how to source the same drink in India, the report adds. Another big spender systematically bought identical pairs of Louis Vuitton bags, then cut up half of them to make clothes that would match her accessories. Even the traditional wedding is evolving fast. Presents such as silver plates, dried fruit or sweets once sent with wedding invitations are being replaced by gifts by top western designer brands. “These days, it’s Rolex watches and Louis Vuitton bags,” says Gupta.
Almost half new ultra-high-net-worth individuals live in smaller provincial cities. A high proportion give substantial amounts to charity, though the report notes that the “growth of philanthropic spends in India has not been proportional to overall growth in ultra-high-net-worth individual wealth”.
Co-author Balaraman says that growth in the number of rich people would not result in social tensions as a wide gap in incomes and wealth is an “accepted norm” in India. “People know that someone is rich and someone is poor and they carry on with their lives,” he explains.


Margaret Thatcher, the most dominant British prime minister since Winston Churchill in 1940 and a global champion of the late 20th-century free market economic revival, has died. The British government announced that she would receive a ceremonial funeral with military honours at St Paul’s Cathedral.
The British prime minister, David Cameron, who is cutting short his trip to Europe to return to London following the news, said: “It was with great sadness that l learned of Lady Thatcher’s death. We’ve lost a great leader, a great prime minister and a great Briton.” He added: “As our first woman prime minister, Margaret Thatcher succeeded against all the odds, and the real thing about Margaret Thatcher is that she didn’t just lead our country, she saved our country, and I believe she will go down as the greatest British peacetime prime minister.”
In a statement, President Barack Obama said, “Here in America, many of us will never forget her standing shoulder to shoulder with President Reagan, reminding the world that we are not simply carried along by the currents of history – we can shape them with moral conviction, unyielding courage and iron will.”
The first woman elected to lead a major western state, Lady Thatcher, as she became after the longest premiership since 1827, served 11 unbroken years at No 10 Downing Street.
Thatcher, who was 87, had been in declining health for some years, suffering from dementia. After a series of mini-strokes in 2002, Thatcher withdrew from public life, no longer able to make the kind of waspish pronouncements that had been her forte in office – and beyond.
Her death was greeted with tributes from across the political spectrum.
As Labour sources announced the party would suspend campaigning in local elections as a mark of respect, its leader, Ed Miliband, said: “She will be remembered as a unique figure. She reshaped the politics of a whole generation. She was Britain’s first woman prime minister. She moved the centre ground of British politics and was a huge figure on the world stage. The Labour Party disagreed with much of what she did and she will always remain a controversial figure. But we can disagree and also greatly respect her political achievements and her personal strength.”
The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, said: “Margaret Thatcher was one of the defining figures in modern British politics. Whatever side of the political debate you stand on, no one can deny that as prime minister she left a unique and lasting imprint on the country she served.”
Describing her as a political phenomenon, the former Tory prime minister Sir John Major said: “Her outstanding characteristics will always be remembered by those who worked closely with her: courage and determination in politics, and humanity and generosity of spirit in private.”
The “Iron Lady” proved a significant cold war ally of the US president Ronald Reagan in the final showdown with the Soviet Union, which broke up under reformist pressures led by Mikhail Gorbachev, a Kremlin leader with whom Thatcher famously declared she could “do business ”. As a result, many ordinary voters in ex-Soviet bloc states saw her as a bold champion of their liberty, a view widely shared across the spectrum of mainstream US opinion – though not at home or among key EU partners.
Thatcher was an unremarkable mid-ranking Conservative until she unexpectedly became party leader in 1975. Within a decade, she had become known around the world – both admired and detested – for her pro-market domestic reforms and her implacable attitudes in foreign policy, including her long-running battle with the IRA, which almost managed to murder her when it placed a bomb in the Grand Hotel, Brighton, in 1984.
At home, the emerging doctrine of Thatcherism meant denationalization of state-owned industry – the new word “privatization” came into widespread use in many countries – and defeat of militant trade unionists, notably the National Union of Miners, whose year-long strike (1984 – 85) was bitter and traumatic.
Boosted by the newly arrived revenues from Britain’s North Sea oil fields, Thatcher had room to manoeuvre and change the ageing industrial economy and she used the opportunity to defeat her enemies – including moderate members of her own party.
But she also deployed her notorious “handbaggings”, or verbal attacks, in the European Union to obtain a British rebate – “my money” as she called it. She was less successful in fending off the centralizing ambitions of the “Belgian Empire”, her description of the European Commission, especially in the years when it was headed by the French socialist Jacques Delors.
Her allies in the tabloid press egged her on. And, as the British economy recovered from the severe recession that her monetarist medicine had inflicted on it – to tame the unions and cure inflation – she briefly seemed invincible.
But untrammelled power, with the defeat or retirement of allies who had kept her in check, led to mistakes and growing unpopularity. When Sir Geoffrey Howe, nominally her deputy, finally fell out with Thatcher – chiefly over Europe – his devastating resignation speech triggered a leadership challenge. Thatcher made way for John Major rather than risk losing to him in a ballot.
In retirement, she wrote highly successful memoirs in two volumes and campaigned energetically on behalf of the Thatcher Foundation, which sought to promote her values around the world.


For 85 years, it was just a grey blob on classroom maps of the solar system. But, on 15 July, we saw Pluto in high resolution for the first time. The images show dramatic mountains made from solid water ice as big as the Alps or the Rockies.
The extraordinary images of the former ninth planet and its large moon, Charon, were sent four billion miles back to Earth from the New Horizons spacecraft.
Alan Stern, the mission’s principal investigator, said “New Horizons is returning amazing results. The data look absolutely gorgeous, and Pluto and Charon are just mind-blowing.”
John Spencer, a mission scientist, said that one of the biggest surprises was the discovery that “there are mountains in the Kuiper belt”. The Kuiper belt is the solar system’s mysterious “third zone” where Pluto is, with about 100,000 smaller icy objects. He said the mountains are around 3,000 metres high and several hundred miles across.
Pluto used to be the ninth planet but, since 2006, it has been a dwarf planet. The NASA press conference began with spectacular images of the sun and the eight official planets.
Stern said the images from New Horizons were just the beginning and that we would learn more about the planet soon. Scientists believe the mountains on Pluto are made from water ice with just a thin cover of methane and nitrogen.
“Water ice is strong enough to hold up big mountains.” The images are the first to show ice mountains, except those found on the moons of giant planets.
The images are so detailed that, if the spacecraft flew over London, we would be able to see the runways at Heathrow airport.
It is five billion kilometres to Pluto. This means it takes New Horizons hours to send back a picture and it will take 16 months to send back all the data. The team also said that the heart-shaped area on Pluto will be called the Tombaugh Regio, after Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered the dwarf planet in 1930.
The image of Charon shows an area of cliffs about 1,000km long. The image also shows a dramatic canyon 7 to 9km deep.
Cathy Olkin, a mission scientist, said: “Charon just blew our socks off when we saw the new image. The team is so excited.”
Pluto is two thirds rock surrounded by a lot of ice. The temperature is about minus 230C.
The £460m spacecraft is continuing its journey into the Kuiper belt. Scientists hope that it will help us to see and understand more of the ancient solar system and the origins of planets. It may even help to explain how the Earth was made.
Andrew Coates, the head of planetary science at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, said: “It’s a really thrilling time for solar system exploration.”
NASA says that the spacecraft will be able to keep recording and sending images until the mid- 2030s. Then its plutonium power source will run out and it will drift outwards towards the edge of the solar system and deep space beyond.”


As soon as the children at one primary school in Stirling hear the words “daily mile”, they down their pencils and head out of the classroom to start running laps around the school field. For three-and-a-half years, all pupils at St Ninian’s Primary have walked or run a mile each day. They do so at random times during the day, apparently happily, and, despite the rise in childhood obesity across the UK, none of the children at the school are overweight.
The daily mile has done so much to improve these children’s fitness, behaviour and concentration in lessons that scores of nursery and primary schools across Britain are following suit and getting pupils to get up from their desks and take 15 minutes to walk or run round the school or local park.
Elaine Wyllie, headteacher of St Ninian’s, said: “I get at least two emails a day from other schools and local authorities asking how we do it. The thought of children across the country running every day because of something we’ve done is phenomenal.”
One in ten children are obese when they start school at the age of four or five, according to figures from the Health & Social Care Information Centre, and, in the summer of 2015, a study found that schoolchildren in England are the least fit they have ever been. Primary schools have therefore been quick to note the benefits of the daily mile. It has been introduced in schools in London, Gateshead, Wales and other parts of Scotland, while others are planning to launch the initiative during the 2015-6 academic year. In Stirling alone, 30 schools have already started or are to start the daily mile.
“It’s a common-sense approach to children’s fitness, which is free and easy. The most important thing is that the children really enjoy it; otherwise, you couldn’t sustain it. They come back in bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked, how children used to look. It’s joyous to see,” said Wyllie. At St Ninian’s, teachers take their pupils out of lessons on to a specially built circuit around the school’s playing field for their daily mile whenever it best suits that day’s timetable. Only ice or very heavy rain stop them.
The extent of the benefits have yet to be determined but researchers from Stirling University have launched a comparative study to look for quantitative evidence of the physical, cognitive and emotional benefits of the daily mile. Dr Colin Moran, who is leading the study, said: “The children at St Ninian’s don’t seem to have problems with obesity; they seem happier and staff say they settle into lessons faster so we designed a study that would test all of these things. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence about the benefits but there aren’t any scientific facts yet.” St Ninian’s pupils will be compared with children from another school in Stirling that has yet to start the scheme.
Kevin Clelland, a primary school teacher from Leeds, visited St Ninian’s before convincing his colleagues it was a great idea. He said: “It’s such a simple thing to do but seems to have such an amazing impact. We’re really committed to improving the fitness of our pupils beyond the two-hour statutory PE that we are expected to deliver.” His school is now constructing a track.
Active Cheshire, a strategic body for sports and fitness in Cheshire and Warrington, is taking a group of senior figures from the local authority up to Scotland to assess the results of the daily mile. The hope is to introduce it across the 450 schools in the region if a pilot is successful.
Paralympian, Tanni Grey-Thompson, chair of ukactive, the UK’s leading not-for-profit health body for physical activity, said: “All children need to achieve 60 active minutes every day, whether in a lesson, on the walk to school or in the playground. It’s fantastic to see initiatives like the daily mile be established, showing real leadership from the education sector to improve children’s fitness levels and their cognitive behaviour, and make a real difference to schools, teachers, parents and young people’s lives. We know sitting still kills; not sitting still helps children build skills that will stay with them for life.”
The Scottish government is also supportive. A spokesperson said: “Learning in PE is enhanced by initiatives like the daily mile, which can encourage and support parents in fostering healthy habits with their children from a young age. We are pleased to see so many Scottish schools are taking part or planning to do so.”


A report by the World Health Organization (WHO) says that 35.6% of all women around the world will experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, usually from a male partner. The report says that 30% of women are attacked by their partners. It also says that a large percentage of murders of women – 38% – are done by their partners.
The highest levels of violence against women are in Africa, where nearly half of all women – 45.6% – will experience physical or sexual violence. In poor and middle-income Europe, the percentage is 27.2%. But, richer countries are not always safer for women – a third of women in rich countries (32.7%) will experience violence. 42% of the women who experience violence have injuries, which doctors and nurses may notice. The report says that injuries are often the first opportunity to discover violence in the home and to offer the woman help. Violence has a big effect on women’s health. Some come to hospital with broken bones and others have problems related to pregnancy and mental illness.
The WHO has two reports – one report is on violence; the other report tells doctors and nurses how to help women. Dr Claudia Garcia-Moreno, of the WHO, and Professor Charlotte Watts, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, wrote the reports.
“For the first time we have compared data from all over the world on partner violence and sexual violence by non-partners and the effect of these sorts of violence on health,” said Garcia-Moreno. These included HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, depression, alcoholism, unwanted pregnancies and babies that are born too small.
There were differences in the levels of violence against women in different regions of the world but, said Garcia-Moreno, “it is too high” everywhere. Data from 81 countries shows that, even in rich countries, 23.2% of women will experience physical and/or sexual violence from a partner in their lives. The global figure for women attacked by partners was 30%.
Women report more sexual assaults and rapes by acquaintances or strangers in rich countries than elsewhere. The report says that 12.6% of women in wealthy countries will be sexually attacked by a non-partner in their lives. The percentage in Africa is 11.9%.
The report says that their previous research shows that better-educated women and working women are less likely to experience violence, but not in all regions. There is a need to change some attitudes, said Watts. “In some societies, are certain forms of violence against women acceptable?” she asked. “In some societies, violence against women is not OK – but, in some societies, it is OK.”
Garcia-Moreno said that the percentages show that we must pay more attention to this question. Over the past ten years, more people see that there is a problem, she said, but “it is a complex problem. We don’t have a vaccine or a pill”.
The WHO now recommends teaching doctors and nurses to recognize the signs of domestic violence and sexual assault. But they do not recommend asking every woman who arrives in a clinic if she has been the victim of violence.
“If a woman comes back several times with injuries she doesn’t mention, you should ask her about domestic violence,” said Garcia-Moreno.


Intermediate
According to a recent report, the wealthiest people in India will become four times richer by 2018, with hundreds of thousands of new entrepreneurs and inheritors becoming multimillionaires. The survey, based on interviews with 150 wealthy individuals, comes at a time when there are signs of returning business confidence in the worlds biggest democracy.
Recent years have seen weak economic growth, rising prices of basic foods and a fall in the value of the Indian currency. But the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a landslide victory in May 2014 with its promise to improve the economy. Despite the economic slowdown, there are now nearly a sixth more Indians worth more than $3.75m than in 2013, the report says. Cities are mushrooming, the middle class population growing, opportunities have increased many times over and the political environment has improved greatly in recent months, says Murali Balaraman, a co-author.
Between them, Indias rich hold assets worth a trillion dollars, which is around a fifth of the total wealth in the country. By 2018, that total is likely to reach $4tn, the report says, making three times as many people multimillionaires.
A booming luxury market is serving the new rich. They really want to show or talk about their wealth in a really subtle way and buying luxury goods is a nice way to do it, Balaraman said. Abhay Gupta, the CEO of brand consultancy Luxury Connect, said the market for luxury goods and experiences would only get bigger. There is a huge aspirational class who look up to what the very wealthy are doing and then copy it, he said.
Cars are among the most popular items bought, the report says. Whereas, in 2009, locally made SUVs were shown off by the wealthy, now only foreign cars will impress people. Mercedes saw a 47% growth in sales in India in 2013. BMW has launched a new $200,000 model in Delhi.
Indias appalling infrastructure limits demand for luxury cars, however. Lamborghinis Chief Executive, Stephan Winkelmann, admitted, in 2013, that the traffic and roads in India are not so suitable for the $450,000 sports cars. In India, Lamborghini sells two models: the Gallardo and the Aventador, which has a top speed of 217mph. Winkelmann said Lamborghinis Indian customers were much younger than those in Europe, with a typical buyer being in his 30s. However, the most popular investments are still real estate  mainly within India  and jewellery.
Indias super-rich have often surprised people around the world with their spectacular spending. Mukesh Ambani, the countrys wealthiest man, has built the worlds most valuable home in Mumbai, the commercial capital. The 27-storey tower, complete with helicopter pads, indoor cinemas and a staff of more than 600, is worth $1bn.
The three-day wedding of the niece of Lakshmi Mittal, the UK-based steel tycoon who is worth $16bn, was reported to have cost $80m. Hundreds of guests were flown to Barcelona for the ceremony and party, which took place in a museum in the city.
But buyers of exclusive luxury goods are becoming more and more demanding, the report says. One buyer ordered nine cases of Japanese whisky costing over $750 a bottle for a wedding reception. The attraction of the imported whisky was that no one who attended the wedding would know how to find the same drink in India. Another big spender bought identical pairs of Louis Vuitton bags, then cut up half of them to make clothes that would match her accessories.
Even the traditional wedding is changing. Traditionally, presents such as silver plates, dried fruit or sweets are sent with wedding invitations. But, now, these presents are being replaced by gifts by top western designer brands. These days, its Rolex watches and Louis Vuitton bags, says Gupta.
Almost half the new multimillionaires live in smaller cities and a high proportion give large amounts to charity. Co-author Balaraman says that growth in the number of rich people would not result in social tensions because a wide gap in incomes and wealth is an accepted norm in India. People know that someone is rich and someone is poor and they carry on with their lives, he explains.


The brand and logo of Apple are the most valuable in the world. They are worth nearly $119 billion – that is more than the economies of Morocco, Ecuador or Oman.
The brand value of Apple, the world’s biggest company, has increased by 21% in 12 months, the Interbrand Best Global Brands report said.
People all around the world recognize Apple by its simple “Apple with a bite missing” logo. Other technology companies have also done very well in the 2014 report. The technology companies pushed more traditional brands – such as Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Gillette – down the table.
Google’s brand value rose by 15% to $107 billion to take second place. Coca-Cola, in third place, is up 3% to $81.5 billion. IBM’s value is $72.2 billion and Microsoft’s $45.5 billion. They are in fourth and fifth places.
Facebook’s value has increased the most in the table. Its brand value increased by 86% to $14.3 billion. It is at 29th place in the table, ahead of older global companies such as Volkswagen, Kellogg’s and Ford.
Apple was started by Steve Jobs in his Los Altos garage in 1976. It only appeared in the top ten of the Interbrand annual study in 2011.
Its logo was created by advertising executive Rob Janoff in 1977. It was designed with a bite taken out of it so that it would not look like a cherry.
Graham Hayles, Interbrand’s chief marketing officer, said, “Apple makes a lot of money because it has a very strong brand. If you have a strong brand, you make more money.”
Many technology companies rose up the chart but some fell, too. Finnish mobile-phone company Nokia dropped 41 places to 98th at $4.1 billion, just ahead of Nintendo in 100th place (down 33).
A Chinese company has appeared in the top 100 for the first time, with mobile-phone and broadband company Huawei at 94th place. It has a brand value of $4.3 billion.
Most of the brands in the top 100 are American. The most valuable non-American brands are South Korea’s Samsung (6th), Japan’s Toyota (8th) and Germany’s Mercedes-Benz (10th). The most valuable British brands are HSBC (33rd), Shell (65th) and Burberry (73rd).
Other fashion brands in the top 100 include Boss, Prada and Ralph Lauren. Designer label Louis Vuitton is the top fashion name, in 19th position with a value of $23 billion, just ahead of clothing chain H&M, with a brand value of $21 billion in place 21.
Sports brand Nike is at place 22 with a brand value of nearly $20 billion, ahead of its rival Adidas at place 59 with a value of $7 billion.
Jez Frampton, chief executive of Interbrand, said that customers now have more control than ever over a brand’s reputation. This is because they can make comments about a brand on social media, such as Twitter.
“Customers expect interaction, 24/7 accessibility, customization options and high levels of personalization,” he said.