You can no longer legally smoke a cigarette inside a bar in the world’s drinking capital, New Orleans, Louisiana. City after city has banned indoor smoking but that’s different because other cities don’t attract tourist dollars by aggressively advertising a “let the good times roll” attitude, as New Orleans does. An indoor smoking ban here will have consequences as unique as New Orleans’s cultural ecosystem itself.
As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, New Orleans city government has, since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, begun trying to turn down the volume a bit. With the support of neighbourhood groups, the city has begun policing bars and nightclubs more strictly, while, at the same time, fighting to implement a new “noise ordinance” (read: music ordinance).
“This is just the wrong time for them to have pursued something like this,” complains bar- owner William Walker, who, for reasons of personal choice, hates the anti-smoking law. “Forcing people outside the bar to smoke is going to exacerbate the tension that’s already there.”
Many of New Orleans’s best bars and some of its live music spots are in relatively quiet residential neighbourhoods. This neighbourly coexistence is a big part of what makes New Orleans different and charming. Recently, though, this unique social contract has become unacceptable for some people and the fate of New Orleans’s musical personality feels at stake.
Martha Wood lives beside a loud bar that hosts live music. “The bar was one of the deciding factors in me buying the house so I won’t ever complain about the noise,” says Wood, who also manages a live-music bar which, following a series of noise issues in 2013 (including complaints about the loud smokers outside), became one of New Orleans’s first ever bars legally disallowed from serving drinks to go. “Now, any small infraction could get us shut down,” says Wood. “We recently installed a smoke eater to help with the smoke because we can’t open the doors at night because of the 'noise'.”
The Maple Leaf club went smoke-free voluntarily in 2014 as did another club where artists had been demanding smoke-free nights. “A lot of the performance venues were already starting to show that consideration to performers so I wish the city would have just let that happen instead of forcing the ban into every corner bar that doesn’t host music,” says Zalia BeVille, manager of the All Ways Lounge, which went smoke-free in 2013 because, she says, “The horn players and the singers, they asked us for it.”
Luckily, All Ways has an outdoor patio, unlike Lost Love Lounge, whose owner, Geoff Douville, loves the ban – he’d previously felt forced to live with smoke to keep his bar financially viable. “There’s no way I could have banned smoking in my bar without it being a rule throughout the whole city,” says Douville. “People act like I have that choice, as a business owner. But, if I make that rule, they walk down the block to a bar with smoking. So I need it to be uniformed across the board for everybody.”
Many small business owners also fear smoke- free revenue loss. Smoker Neil Timms owns an English pub and met the smoking ban before, in England. “Back home in Coventry, every pub where I was a regular closed within a year of the smoking ban,” remembers Timms of the UK’s ban, begun in 2007. To avoid the same fate, he’s spending money to build a patio.
Lost Love’s Douville, though, feels the ban to be a great business opportunity. “The number of people who would enjoy coming out to our bar, with our food, but would never come because they didn’t want to smell like smoke for the next seven days – we’re now an option for all those people.” Nor does Douville worry about noise complaints like Walker does: “No court is gonna label a bar a 'nuisance' after the city has ratified a smoking ban that requires you to go outside!” he says. “I want to see a judge reconcile 'no loitering' with 'no smoking inside'.”
Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell, who introduced and pushed the ban, disagrees: “The responsibility is on the bar-owner to keep their clientele respectful outside their establishment as well,” she says. “The owners and bartenders need to tell them to go have a smoke but be respectful to their communities. The idea that we can’t have clean air because it will cause noise problems is ridiculous. It can be a win-win. I think it’s about communication and creating partnerships between the communities and the businesses.”
Cantrell does acknowledge the city’s uniqueness in terms of a smoking ban. “How is New Orleans different from the rest of the country? New Orleans is known as 'the City that Care Forgot',” she says. “New Orleans needs to stand up and say 'We care about our people'. The most vulnerable people who are working in smoky conditions, these citizens are the backbone of our hospitality industry, which drives the economy in the state of Louisiana.” She adds, “New Orleans is also unlike other places because you do have the option of taking your drink outside with you when you go out to smoke.”
Many worried that the already strained New Orleans Police Department didn’t need any part in policing smokers. So the health department will handle bar warnings and fines. Bar customers are encouraged to “come fill out a form or call 311 and to include date-and-time-stamped photographs documenting illegal smoking”. For this reason alone, Neil Timms says he’ll comply with the ban: “I don’t want someone to be sitting in the corner smoking and someone takes a photo of ’em and gets beaten up.”
Unworried, Geoff Douville says that he’s used to noise complaints by now so bring on the ban. “Watch: the nosy neighbours who complain about the noise now are gonna be the same ones who wanted the smoking ban to begin with.” In the end, Douville shares Cantrell’s win-win optimism. “Of course they’re gonna complain,” he accepts. “But it doesn’t mean they’re gonna win.”


A degree in Spanish got me my ﬁrst job as a journalist, with an international press agency in Mexico City, but it didn’t prevent me blundering badly as a rookie reporter.
I had just arrived in the Mexican capital after a Greyhound bus journey all the way from New York and the job interview was a test of my language skills. In my new role, day shifts were spent on the streets in political rallies and nights were spent alone in the ofﬁce, coordinating the coverage from strife- torn El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and the rest of Central America. But, I also had to report on occasional disasters: ﬁres, ﬂoods and explosions at ﬁ rework factories.
It was as a reporter that I soon found out that I was as bad at understanding numbers in Spanish as I was at calculating them in English. Phone calls meant for the police got Mexican grandmothers out of bed at 2am because I had misunderstood a number and dialled a dodgy digit. Even worse, victims were piled too high in my stories – almost 83 dead in a ﬁ re at 6pm turned out to be as few as 38 by 7pm; 12 people injured in a coach crash soon became two and so it went on. Finally, I got a call from the main ofﬁce in Washington. “I don’t know what training you have had,” an editor yelled, “but has no one ever told you a death toll can’t go down?!”
Why are numbers in another language such a conundrum? It may have to do with different numbering systems. If we consider that, in German, for example, which belongs to the same Indo-European language family as English, 2.30pm becomes halb drei (half of three) and 21 becomes einundzwanzig (one and twenty), clearly different numeral systems can cause confusion and that’s without even considering indigenous languages with numeral systems so rare they are in danger of dying out.
Some experts believe there is a link between dyscalculia – the difﬁculty in comprehending arithmetic – and problems learning foreign languages, particularly if languages are learnt by rote, since this involves the sequential processes that students with dyscalculia struggle with. But, some students who struggle to learn languages with a grammar textbook may thrive in a foreign-language setting, where learning is more natural and less reliant on sequences of adjectives, prepositions and so on. In my case, I have always found languages easy enough, apart from the numbers.
But, perhaps it’s also because numbers in a non-native language are often heard out of context or in isolation, when the listener might have switched off from the foreign language and be unable to suddenly tune in. A straw poll of multilingual friends found that many can be ﬂorid in French or Italian when ordering from a restaurant menu, for example, but freeze if they have to relay numbers, especially over the phone. Numbers seem to be taxing, but no one could really say why.
In my case, being numerically challenged in a foreign tongue followed me from Mexico to other countries and from Spanish to German and Portuguese. But, in that ﬁrst journalism job, getting the numbers wrong didn’t always add up to failure.
One night, a Mexican colleague learnt that the American consul in the port city of Veracruz was being held hostage at gunpoint in his ofﬁce. With no senior English-speaking reporter in the ofﬁce, it was left to me to try to reach the consulate by phone. Having got the number wrong, I was put through to an extension elsewhere in the building and the identity of the person who took my call was unmistakable: I chatted for 15 minutes to the gunman. I may not have persuaded him to put away his gun – but my reputation as a rookie reporter still rose overnight.


Intermediate
On the top of a hill, looking down on Northumberlands beautiful Kielder Water reservoir, a group of people wait in a car park next to a strange wooden building. They are looking for darkness and this is Kielder Observatory, the centre of Britains latest industry  astrotourism. The people waiting outside are the lucky ones. Many more apply for a night of stargazing at the observatory but numbers are strictly limited.
Inside, under a dim light, the observatorys founder and lead astronomer, Gary Fildes, delivers a speech to his colleagues and volunteers. The team discusses the prospect of seeing the northern lights but Fildes is doubtful. Instead, they decide to use their powerful telescopes to observe Jupiter and Venus and, later, to pick out stars such as Capella and Betelgeuse. An additional attraction is the appearance of the International Space Station.
Fildes, 49, is at the forefront of the UKs growing astrotourism industry. The key moment for Northumberland came in 2013 when the entire national park, about 1,500 square kilometres in area, was awarded Dark Sky Park status, the only one in England. Dark Sky Parks are rare. The 2013 Star Count revealed that only 5% of the UK population can see more than 31 stars on a clear night.
The Arizona-based International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) awards the status of Dark Sky Park only to places that take major steps to avoid light pollution. And those areas must also prove their night skies are dark enough. In Northumberland Dark Sky Park, as the area was renamed, it is so dark that Venus casts a shadow on the Earth.
Duncan Wise, visitor development officer for the Northumberland National Park Authority, helped to lead the campaign for dark-sky status. We tend to look at landscape as everything up to the horizon, Wise said. But what about whats above it? Wise and others spent years preparing their application to the IDA, collecting thousands of light readings and producing an exterior lighting master plan that influences the construction of new developments in the area.
Their efforts have been rewarded. Many of the 1.5 million who visit Northumberland each year are now aware of its Dark Sky status. We get a lot of people coming here to see the sky now, says the man at the car-hire firm in Newcastle. They come in autumn and winter, when its darkest. Its good for the local hotels because they get business all year round now. Local hotels now give guests night-vision torches and put out deckchairs at night.
Wise agrees that Northumberland needs to do more to take advantage of its scarce resource. He believes the region needs a couple more observatories to ensure that visitors will see what they came for. A new 14m national landscape discovery centre will have an observatory when it is completed in a couple of years.
Fildes has big ambitions. He is planning Britains first astrovillage, one that would contain the largest public observatory in the world and have a 100-seat auditorium, a 100-seat planetarium, a one-metre aperture telescope, and radiomagnetic and solar telescopes. The multimillion-pound project would also have a hotel and draw in 100,000 people a year, four times the number currently able to use the observatory. Fildes believes the astrovillage will be a reality by 2018.
However, Northumberland has competition. Galloway Forest Park in Scotland also has Dark Sky Park status. Since Exmoor was designated Europes first International Dark Sky Reserve  one level below Dark Sky Park  in 2011, a range of local businesses offering stargazing breaks and safaris has sprung up. The UK has a long way to go to rival northern Chile, which has more than a dozen tourist observatories and some of the clearest skies in the world. The Teide National Park in Tenerife is also becoming a major astrotourism destination.
So, why do people want to look up into the night sky? The media have helped. TV presenters like Brian Cox have attracted a new generation of stargazers. Brian Cox has made astronomy accessible, says Wise. Its no longer seen as something just for professors with telescopes. Technology has also made astronomy more popular. Apps such as Stellarium now turn smartphones into pocket-size planetariums. But Fildes believes that, most importantly, people are starting to appreciate what lies above. If you had to build a visitor attraction from scratch, what could be better than the universe?


The Moroccan city of Ouarzazate is on the edge of the Sahara Desert. It is now the centre for four linked solar mega-plants. The plants, together with hydro and wind, will give Morocco, in north Africa, nearly half of its electricity from renewable energy by 2020. The project is a key part of Morocco ’s plans to use its deserts to become a global solar superpower.
When the full complex is complete, it will be the largest concentrated solar power plant in the world. The first phase, called Noor 1, will be ready in November 2015. The mirror technology it uses is more expensive than the solar panels that we can see on roofs all over the world but it will be able to produce power even after the sun goes down.
People have known for many years that the desert is a useful place to produce solar energy. In 1986, the German scientist Gerhard Knies said that the world’s deserts receive enough energy in a few hours to make power for all the people in the world for a whole year. But the challenge is to capture that energy and take it to where it is needed.
At Noor 1, there are 500,000 moon-shaped solar mirrors. The 800 rows of mirrors follow the sun across the sky. They whir quietly every few minutes.
When they are finished, the four plants at Ouarzazate will be as big as Morocco’s capital city, Rabat, and make 580 mega-watts of electricity, enough for a million homes.
Solar energy will make up a third of Morocco’s renewable energy supply by 2020. Wind and hydro will make up the other two-thirds.
“We are very proud of this project,” Morocco’s environment minister, Hakima el-Haite said. “I think it is the most important solar plant in the world.”
The Noor 2 and 3 plants, which are planned to open in 2017, will store energy for up to eight hours. This will mean that there could be solar energy available 24/7 in the Sahara and the rest of the region.
“We are already involved in transportation lines to take energy to the south of Morocco and Mauritania,” says Ahmed Baroudi, manager of the national renewable energy investment company. But he says the project will go further – even as far as the Middle East.
Exporting solar energy could have stabilizing effects within and between countries, according to the Moroccan solar energy agency (Masen). Morocco is making plans with Tunisia and they hope to export energy north across the Mediterranean, too.
“We believe that it ’s possible to export energy to Europe but, first, we have to build the connections, which don’t yet exist, ” said Maha el-Kadiri, a Masen spokeswoman.
Until that time, the solar energy will be used in Morocco. They might one day use solar energy to remove salt from sea water.


Intermediate
Many of us know we dont get enough sleep but imagine if we could  x it with a fairly simple solution: getting up later. In a speech at the British Science Festival, Dr Paul Kelley of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at Oxford University said schools should stagger their starting times to work with the natural biological rhythms of their students. It would improve cognitive performance, exam results and students health (lack of sleep can cause diabetes, depression, obesity and immune system problems).
In 2014, he published a paper in which he noted that, when children are around ten, their biological wake-up time is about 6.30am; at 16, this rises to 8am; and, at 18, someone you may think is just a lazy teenager actually has a natural waking hour of 9am. The normal school starting time works for 10-year-olds but not for 16- to 18-year-olds. For the older teenagers, it might be more sensible to start the school day at 11am or even later. A 7am alarm call for older teenagers, Kelley and his colleagues wrote in the paper, is the equivalent of a 4.30am start for a teacher in their 50s.
He says the solution is not to persuade teenagers to go to bed earlier. The bodys natural rhythm is controlled by a particular kind of light, says Kelley. The eye contains cells that report to a part of the brain that controls our circadian rhythms over a 24-hour cycle. Its the light that controls it. Its like saying: Why cant you control your heartbeat?
But it isnt just students who would bene t from a later start. Kelley says the working day should be more linked to our natural rhythms. Describing the average sleep loss per night for different age groups, he says: Between 14 and 24, its more than two hours. For people aged between 24 and about 30 or 35, its about an hour and a half. That can continue up until youre about 55 when its in balance again. The 10-year-old and 55-year-old wake and sleep naturally at the same time.
This might be why, he adds, the traditional nine to  ve is so ingrained; bosses control working hours and many of them are in their mid-50s and older so it is best for them. So, should workplaces have staggered starting times, too? Should those in their 50s and above come in at 8am, while those in their 30s start at 10am and the teenage apprentice be encouraged to start at 11am? Kelley says that synchronized hours could have many positive consequences. The positive side of this is peoples performance, mood and health will improve. Its very uplifting because its a solution that will make people less ill, and happier and better at what they do.
There would probably be fewer accidents because drivers would be more alert, he says. It could mean the end of rush hour as people staggered their work and school-run times. A later start to the day for many, says Kelley, is something that would bene t all people, particularly families. Parents go and try to wake up teenagers who are waking up three hours too early. It creates tensions for everybody.
So, what time does Kelley start work? I am 67 so that means Im like a 10-year-old and I get up just after six. I wake naturally. And, yes, he says he  nds the start of his working day much easier now than he did when he was younger.


Intermediate
The business idea is to produce a cheap light that gets free power from gravity and could end the use of dangerous kerosene lamps in Africa and India.
But when British designer, Patrick Hunt, tried to get money from banks or venture capitalists to launch his invention, he hit a problem. We tried to get funding to make it happen, but its slow and complex and its unproven and nobody wants to take a risk, he said.
So he tried crowdfunding on a US website, Indiegogo, which has recently opened in the UK. Within five days, he hit his target and raised 36,200. His campaign to get donations from the public was so popular that within 40 days he had raised 400,000.
The LED light is powered by a dynamo driven by a 10kg bag of rocks. The weight is attached to the light, lifted to a height of about 2m, and while it slowly falls to the ground it will generate enough power for half an hour of light.
Hunt is preparing for production in China and will test the market again by sending 1,000 of the lights to Africa before the full mass production of millions of units.
He is one of a new wave of entrepreneurs who are turning to the fast-growing crowdfunding industry for money. Another new site is InvestingZone, which matches wealthy people with start-up entrepreneurs.
Indiegogo does not offer shares but allows users to offer perks for different levels of investment  people who helped to fund Hunts light felt good about helping the less rich, but also got their own light.
For Danae Ringelmann, co-founder of Indiegogo, the gravity light is a perfect example of how meritocratic crowdfunding can be and how it can test an entrepreneurs idea. It is the first time that getting money has been fast, efficient and meritocratic, because it is not about How do I get access to the decision makers in that bank? or Who do I know in that venture capital company? This is all about proving your worth to your customers and fans, getting them to agree your idea will work and fund it.
Even ideas that dont get funding are worth testing, because you will have saved yourself a lot of time finding out it wasnt a good idea and getting smarter faster, she says.
Ringelmann, who is based in the US, started her career as a Wall Street analyst. In 2008, she decided to quit and use her skills to try and help friends who worked in the arts to raise money.
Five years on and the site is raising about $2m a week for new businesses in start-up and growth stages. In December 2012, it launched a euro and a sterling service to get a foothold on this side of the Atlantic and says Britain is its third biggest market. International activity is up 41% since December.
There is no shortage of competitors, be it Kickstarter, Seedrs or Funding Circle, but Indiegogo is the only crowdfunder where anyone can launch a campaign. No project is thought too wacky.
The site charges a 4% fee for successful campaigns. For those that fail to raise their target amount, users can either refund all money to their contributors at no charge or keep all money raised but pay a 9% fee.
A British woman raised 100,000 to open a cat caf in London through the site. Called Lady Dinahs Cat Emporium, it is not open yet but is advertised as somewhere people can come in from the cold to a comfortable chair, a hot cup of tea, a book and a cat.
Weve seen campaigns that go to venture capitalists get rejected because the venture capitalists say great idea but no idea if the market actually wants it; it could be something that no one cares about, said Ringelmann.
The entrepreneurs do an Indiegogo campaign and this can be enough market proof for venture capitalists to say there is a market for this.
It allows you to test your market, test your pricing, test your features, discover new ways of getting money, get vital feedback, says Ringelmann.
With her Wall Street background and the experience of helping 100,000 businesses and services raise money, Ringelmann has useful advice for budding entrepreneurs.
Ideas are a dime a dozen. Its all about the execution and, if you are afraid that your idea will be stolen by someone who could execute it better and faster than you, then you are not the right person to execute that idea. Its all about confidence to move fast and to learn, she says.
While crowdfunding as an alternative to banks has grown, it is not very attractive to big-bucks investors who want a stake in a promising business. That could start to change in the UK with the launch of InvestingZone.


Nobody knows which came first: the economic crisis tearing Greece apart or shisha, the drug now known as the “cocaine of the poor”. What everyone does accept is that shisha is a killer; and at €2 or less a hit, it is one that has come to stalk Greece, the country long on the frontline of Europe’s financial meltdown.
“As drugs go, it is the worst. It burns your insides, it makes you aggressive and ensures that you go totally mad,” said Maria, a former heroin addict. “But it is cheap and it is easy to get, and it is what everyone is doing.”
This drug crisis has put Athens’s health authorities, already overwhelmed by draconian cuts, under further strain.
The drug of preference for thousands of homeless Greeks forced on to the streets by poverty and despair, shisha is described by both addicts and officials as a variant of crystal meth, whose potential to send users into a state of mindless violence is underpinned by the substances with which the synthetic drug is frequently mixed: battery acid, engine oil and even shampoo.
Worse still, it is not only readily available but easy to make – tailor-made for a society that sees little light at the end of the tunnel.
“It is a killer, but it also makes you want to kill,” said Konstantinos, a drug addict. “You can kill without understanding that you have done it. And it is spreading faster than death. A lot of users have died.”
For Charalampos Poulopoulos, the head of Kethea, Greece’s pre-eminent anti-drug centre, shisha symbolizes the depredations of a crisis that has led to record levels of destitution and unemployment. It is, he said, an “austerity drug” – the response of dealers who have become ever more adept at producing synthetic drugs designed for those who can no longer afford more expensive highs from such drugs as heroin and cocaine.
“The crisis has given dealers the possibility to promote a new, cheap drug, a cocaine for the poor,” said Poulopoulos at a centre run for addicts in Exarcheia, the anarchist stronghold in Athens. “Shisha can be sniffed or injected and it can be made in home laboratories – you don’t need any specialized knowledge. It is extremely dangerous.”
Across Greece, the byproducts of six straight years of recession have been brutal and cruel. Depression, along with drug and alcohol abuse, has risen dramatically. Delinquency and crime have soared as Greek society has unravelled under the weight of austerity measures that have cut the income of ordinary Greeks by 40%. Prostitution – the easiest way of financing drug addiction – has similarly skyrocketed.
“Desperation is such that many women agree to engage in unprotected sex because that way they’ll make more money,” said Eleni Marini, a British-trained psychologist with Kethea. “Shisha has been linked to a very intense sexual drive but it attacks your ability to think straight and we’re seeing a lot more pregnancies among drug addicts who engage in prostitution.” In 2012, two sex workers gave birth on the streets of Athens.
At a time when suicides have also shot up and the spread of HIV infections has assumed epidemic proportions, drug addicts (a population believed to be around 25,000 strong) have become increasingly self-destructive. And, experts say, young Greeks marginalized by record rates of unemployment – at 64% Greece has the highest youth unemployment in the EU – are leading the way.
“The crisis has created a widespread sense of pessimism,” said Poulopoulos. “For those who might have quit drugs, there is now no incentive. Instead, there’s an atmosphere of misery, where people knowing they won’t find work are becoming a lot more self-destructive. In Athens, where the economic crisis has hit hardest, shisha is part of that.”
Greece’s conservative-dominated coalition government has tried to deal with the problem by driving drug users and other homeless people out of the city centre – a series of controversial police operations has swept central streets, clearing crowded doorways and malls.
“But with such actions, authorities are only sweeping the problem under the carpet,” said Poulopoulos. “What, in reality, they are really doing is marginalizing these people even more by pushing them into the arms of drug dealers who offer them protection.”
Just when the demand for help has never been greater, state-funded organizations such as Kethea have had their budgets slashed by a third at the request of the “troika” – the EC, ECB and IMF – keeping the debt-stricken Greek economy afloat.
Since the outbreak of the crisis in 2009, Kethea has lost 70 of its 500 staff. The cuts come despite studies showing that, for every euro invested in programmes such as Kethea, the state saves about €6 in costs to the criminal justice and healthcare systems. “The cuts we have witnessed are a false economy, a huge mistake,” said Poulopoulos.
On the streets of Athens, the breeding ground of shisha, there is rising fear that austerity not only doesn’t work – it kills.


A team at Leicester University has told the world that the body they found under a local car park is the body of King Richard III. There were cheers when Richard Buckley, leader of the team of archaeologists, finally said that they were certain they had found the body of the king.
The evidence is very strong. The scientists who did the DNA tests, the people who created the computer-imaging technology to look at the bones in extraordinary detail, the genealogists who found a distant descendant with matching DNA, and the academics who read old texts looking for accounts of the king’s death and burial all gave their findings.
Work has started on designing a new tomb in Leicester Cathedral, only 100 yards from the excavation site. There will be a ceremony to lay him into his new grave there, probably next year. Leicester’s Museums’ Service is working on plans for a new visitor centre in an old school building next to the site.
Richard died at the Battle of Bosworth on 22 August 1485, the last English king to die in battle. The researchers revealed how he died for the first time. One picture showed the bottom of his skull cut off by one terrible hit, probably from a razor-sharp iron axe. The axe probably went several centimetres into his brain and, experts say, he would have been unconscious at once and dead very soon.
The injury confirms the story that he died in the middle of the battle without his horse. In Shakespeare’s play, he cries: “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” Another hit with a sword, which also went through the bone and into the brain, would also have killed him. But many of the other injuries were after death, which suggests that the king’s naked body was mutilated as it was brought back to Leicester.
One terrible injury was certainly after death and could not have happened when his lower body was protected by armour. It suggests the story that his naked corpse was brought back on a horse and mutilated is true. Bob Savage, a medieval weapons expert, said it was probably not a war weapon. It was probably the sort of sharp knife a workman normally carried.
Michael Ibsen, identified as the descendant of Richard’s sister, was shocked when he heard the confirmation on Sunday. “My head is still not clear now,” he said. “Many, many hundreds of people died on that field that day. He was a king, but just one of the dead. He lived in very violent times and these deaths would not have been pretty or quick.”
It was Mathew Morris who first found the body, in the first hour of the first day of the excavation. At first, he did not believe it was the king. He was digging in the car park, a place that local historians and the Richard III Society said was probably the site of the lost church of Grey Friars. The priests of Grey Friars were brave – they took the body of the king and buried him in their church.
Ten days later, on 5 September, when more excavation proved Morris had found the right place, he returned with Lin Foxhall, head of the archaeology department, to excavate the body. “We did it the usual way, lifting the arms, legs and skull first, and then we lifted the torso – so it was only when we finally saw the twisted spine that I thought: 'My word, I think we’ve found him.'”
For Philippa Langley of the Richard III Society, Richard was the true king, the last king of the north, a worthy and brave leader who was a victim of Shakespeare’s negative propaganda. Many people still believe he killed the little princes in the tower: the child Edward V and his brother Richard, were kept as prisoners in the Tower of London when Richard III became king and they were never seen alive again. Some bones were found at the tower centuries later, but it is not certain they are the princes’. There may be a need for more DNA detective work there.


Intermediate
DNA taken from the wisdom tooth of a European hunter-gatherer has given scientists a glimpse of modern humans before the rise of farming. The Mesolithic man, who lived in Spain around 7,000 years ago, had an unusual mix of blue eyes, black or brown hair and dark skin, according to analyses of his genetic make-up.
He was probably lactose intolerant and had more difficulty digesting starchy foods than the farmers whose diets and lifestyles changed in the first agricultural revolution.
The invention of farming brought humans and animals into much closer contact and humans probably evolved stronger immune systems to fight infections from the animals. But scientists may have overestimated the impact farming had on the human immune system, because tests on the hunter-gatherers DNA found that he already carried genes that boost the immune system. Some of these gene mutations still exist in modern Europeans today.
Before we started this work, I had some ideas of what we were going to find, said Carles Lalueza-Fox, who led the study at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona. Most of those ideas turned out to be completely wrong.
The Spanish team started their work after a group of cave explorers found two skeletons in a deep and complex cave system high up in the Cantabrian Mountains of northwest Spain in 2006. The human remains, which belonged to two men in their early 30s, had been extremely well preserved by the cool environment of the cave.
Carbon dating put the remains at around 7,000 years old, before farming arrived in Europe from the Middle East. Other things were found at the site, including reindeer teeth that were strung and hung from the peoples clothing.
The scientists managed to put together one mans entire genome from DNA found in the root of a third molar. It is the first time researchers have got the complete genome of a modern European who lived before the Neolithic revolution.
The DNA brought some surprises. When Lalueza-Fox looked at the genome, he found that the man had gene variants that produce dark skin. This guy had to be darker than any modern European, but we dont know how dark, the scientist said.
Another surprise was that the man had blue eyes. The results suggest that blue eye colour came first in Europe and that the change to lighter skin happened throughout Mesolithic times.
On top of the scientific impact, artists might have to rethink their drawings of the people. You see a lot of reconstructions of these people hunting and gathering and they look like modern Europeans with light skin. You never see a reconstruction of a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer with dark skin and blue eyes, Lalueza-Fox said.
The Spanish team compared the genome of the hunter-gatherer to those of modern Europeans from different regions to see how they might be related. They found that the ancient DNA most closely matched the genetic make-up of people living in northern Europe, in particular Sweden and Finland.
Martin Jones, professor of archaeological science at Cambridge University, said the immunity genes were the most interesting result. There has been the idea that the move from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to farming was bad for our health. There were a number of reasons for that, particularly living closely together with other humans and animals, which meant they competed for the same water supplies, he said.


When we talk about climate change, we usually just talk about the problem. We usually forget the many solutions. These solutions make recycling faster, reduce emissions and create alternatives to plastic, air conditioning, smartphones and fast fashion that are better for the environment.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change met in Copenhagen to present its latest report. There is now climate change on all continents. We must increase our efforts to reduce emissions to make sure that climate change does not get out of control. Copenhagen looked at the risks and challenges but it also looked at the solutions.
The Sustainia Award looked at ten best solutions  to climate change. The solutions are used in 84 countries. From the areas of food, fashion, energy, transport, education and health, the awards showed that the future may not be so bad.
From California, we saw how we can now produce plastics from greenhouse gases. These plastics are good quality and not too expensive. From Switzerland, we learned a better way to recycle and reuse old clothes and shoes. And from Canada, we learned how smartphones can make bike-sharing easier.
The ten projects each offered unique solutions  to the problem of climate change. The Nigerian project, Wecyclers, won the Sustainia Award 2014.
Wecyclers makes it possible for poor communities to make money from the waste from their streets. Families in Lagos collect the rubbish on the streets. Then, bicycles come and collect the waste. Families get points for the garbage they collect. They can use these points to get things they need.
Recycling companies buy Wecyclers’ waste. They make the waste into products such as mattresses, pillows and trash bags. Wecyclers helps to solve local waste problems in Lagos, where only 40% of the city’s rubbish is collected.
Only 46% of town and city waste in Africa is collected. More than 5,000 families are involved in the Wecyclers scheme and there are plans to start the project in other cities in Nigeria.
Solutions to climate change are often hi-tech. But, to solve all the different problems, we need different solutions. We can’t just reduce emissions – we must also use our natural resources more intelligently and create healthier lives for ourselves.


Rare mountain gorillas live in the Virunga National Park in DR Congo. The country could earn $400 million a year from tourism, hydropower and carbon credits, said a WWF report. But a British company want to look for oil there.
If they look for oil at the UNESCO World Heritage Site that crosses the equator, as the Congolese government and exploration firm SOCO International hope, it could lead to terrible pollution and conflict, says the WWF.
SOCO say that they would look for oil in a part of the park called Block V, and that their work would not affect the gorillas.
SOCO Chairman Rui de Sousa said that SOCO knows about the environmental importance of the Virunga National Park. He also said that oil companies have a central role in today’s global energy supply and that a successful oil project could help a whole country.
But Raymond Lumbuenamo, country director for WWF Democratic Republic of the Congo, based in Kinshassa, said that security in and around the park would get worse if SOCO started looking for oil.
“Security is already bad. The UN is involved with fighting units and the M23 rebel force is inside the park. Oil would be a curse. It always makes conflict worse. The park might become like the Niger Delta. Developing Virunga for oil will not make anything better.”
Many people live in the park – over 350 people per square kilometre. Oil would not create many jobs, and many more people would come looking for work, Lumbuenamo said.
One danger is that another eruption of one of the volcanoes in the park could damage oil company buildings and machines and lead to oil spills in the lakes. “Virunga’s rich natural resources are for the Congolese people, not for foreign oil companies,” Lumbuenamo said.
But Raymond accepted that, although the gorillas were safe now, the park would probably not be able to make $400 million. “It would be difficult to make the kind of money that the report talks of.”
The WWF report says that ecosystems in the park could support fishing and ecotourism, and play an important role in providing water and stopping soil erosion.
The park is Africa’s oldest and most diverse. It is home to over 3,000 different kinds of animals. “Virunga is a valuable asset to DR Congo,” the report says. “Plans to look for oil put Virunga’s future in danger,” it says.


Intermediate
Why do it? The elite football referees of the future smile when you ask them this question. This season, criticism of referees has increased so much that some former referees have started to complain about standards. That is quite significant because, when you talk to referees, it is obvious that supporting each other through thick and thin is fundamental.
So why do they do it? Why spend hundreds of hours driving up and down the country? Why enforce rules, some of which inevitably upset people? Why try to climb the ladder until you get the chance to make decisions on television in front of millions of people who scrutinize you and your ability helped by many different camera angles and slow-motion replays?
You might get an answer from the face of Lee Swabey moments after he blows the final whistle of a 21 win for Grimsby over Woking, a match at level 5 of the English league system. He gets what all referees hope for every time they referee a match. Twenty-two handshakes, he explains afterwards, proudly. Symbolically, a full set of handshakes, plus a well done from both managers, represents maximum satisfaction. The buzz, as he calls it, of a game that passes smoothly, is something he loves. I wouldnt spend so much time away from my family if this didnt mean the world to me.
Swabey is one of a group of referees that is highly regarded by the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL). So he knew he was being watched at that match. PGMOLs chief, Mike Riley, was in attendance, along with his colleague Steve Dunn, watching every significant move the officials make.
A few weeks earlier, Riley, Dunn and another former referee, Peter Jones, made their way to another level-5 match to watch another young referee  John Brooks. I hope to have the opportunity to get promoted to the Premier League and officiate some of the top games in this country, Brooks says.
Unfortunately, all the PGMOL delegation saw was the way Brooks handled the difficult situation of cancelling the match because of a frozen pitch. It is all part of the experience Brooks needs to acquire before he is trusted with more important games, the different problems that need dealing with  often, clubs are very reluctant to have a late postponement, particularly when they have to pay all the staff who have come but will not receive any gate money.
Brooks phoned his coach for advice and made the difficult but correct decision. A little later, the football club secretary arrived with envelopes to pay the officials for their time  the match fee at level 5 is 95 so it is clear that these men do not do it for the money.
Brooks, like Swabey, has clear ambitions to progress. He knows that dealing with disappointments is a big part of that. How does he feel watching football on TV when a referee gets vilified? Erm  not great, he admits. I do sometimes wish people understood the time and effort we put in. It is very easy to criticize a decision but we do everything to try to get these decisions right. In certain situations, you are going to be unpopular but, if you are uncomfortable with that, you are probably in the wrong job.
The former referees agree that the backup, education and tools that todays referees have is very different from what they experienced in their own days. Riley, as a young referee, bought himself books on psychology and nutrition as there was no information on offer to him at all.
Contrast this with Brooks, who has a coach he can call. They consult weekly, discuss how his games have gone, study footage of key decisions and work out how to improve. He also has the support of a sports psychologist, Liam Slack, for regular guidance and an exercise regime to help him handle the 11km he runs during a game.
Brooks says psychology is vital in his development. One of the things we have talked about is forgetting decisions and moving on, he explains. There may be a big decision to make in the first 30 seconds of the game. Once you have made that, you need to stay focused for the next 89 minutes and not be wondering whether that was correct or worrying about that decision. Liam has taught us some techniques for forgetting that decision. Working with the sports psychologist is really important for mental toughness.
On the subject of technology, the three former referees are unanimous in their support of it. We are all in favour of anything that makes the referees job better and makes them more effective on the pitch, says Riley. Minimizing mistakes is the aim. After all, a bad decision can stick with you for a while. The rest of your life, adds Jones with a chuckle.


Intermediate
The Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to a son on Monday, 22 July. The baby is third in line to the British throne.
Kensington Palace announced at 8.30pm that the baby was born at 4.24pm in the exclusive Lindo Wing at St Marys Hospital, Paddington, West London. We could not be happier, the Duke of Cambridge said.
In a statement, Kensington Palace said: Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge was safely delivered of a son at 4.24pm. The baby weighs 8lbs 6oz. The Duke of Cambridge was present for the birth.
The Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Harry and members of both families were informed and were delighted with the news that Her Royal Highness and her child were both doing well.
It is understood that the couple delayed making the announcement immediately so that they could enjoy some private time with their newborn. William telephoned his family to tell them the good news, speaking to the Queen, his father Charles and younger brother Prince Harry.
The birth of the baby prince means the monarchy has three generations of heirs to the throne for the first time since 1894
The baby is the first Prince of Cambridge to be born for more than 190 years since Prince George of Cambridge, a grandson of George III and the only son of Prince Adolphus Frederick, the 1st Duke of Cambridge.
In a statement, Prince Charles said: Both my wife and I are overjoyed at the arrival of my first grandchild. It is an incredibly special moment for William and Catherine and we are so thrilled for them on the birth of their baby boy.
Grandparenthood is a unique moment in anyones life, as countless kind people have told me in recent months, so I am enormously proud and happy to be a grandfather for the first time and we are eagerly looking forward to seeing the baby in the near future.
The newest royal will be called HRH Prince George* of Cambridge.
Following tradition, a formal notice was posted on an easel  the same used to announce Prince Williams birth in 1982  in the forecourt of Buckingham Palace shortly before 9pm. Within an hour, the numbers had swelled from hundreds to thousands outside the palace, with locals and tourists wanting to share in the historic moment.
New Yorker, Sharon Surloff, was delighted with her phone picture of the royal bulletin. She, her niece and her mother had squeezed through crowds to take a photograph of the easel.
The police were just saying to everyone: OK, 20 seconds and then the next person. Its just great to be here, though. We arrived this morning, at nine in the morning, so it has all worked out beautifully.
The palace announced the birth in a press release. Minutes later, as crowds of wellwishers outside cheered, Its a boy, the formal medical bulletin was taken from the hospital to Buckingham Palace under police escort.
The prime minister was one of the first to offer his congratulations. Speaking outside 10 Downing Street, David Cameron said: It is wonderful news from St Marys, Paddington, and I am sure that, right across the country, and, indeed, right across the Commonwealth, people will be celebrating and wishing the royal couple well.
It is an important moment in the life of our nation but, above all, it is a wonderful moment for a warm and loving couple who have got a brand new baby boy. It has been a remarkable few years for our royal family: a royal wedding that captured peoples hearts, that extraordinary and magnificent jubilee and now this royal birth  all from a family that has given this nation so much incredible service.
Congratulations came from the White House, too, from Barack Obama and his wife. The president said: Michelle and I are so pleased to congratulate the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on the joyous occasion of the birth of their first child. We wish them all the happiness and blessings parenthood brings.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, tweeted: Delighted for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. May God bless them all with love, health and happiness, he said.
The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, said: Many congratulations to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. I wish them and their son all happiness and good health.


Felix Baumgartner stood at the edge of space above New Mexico and paused for a moment. It was a small step away from the capsule, but a 24-mile drop back down to Earth. “Our guardian angel will take care of you,” said mission control, and Baumgartner jumped.
Ten frightening minutes later, the Austrian landed back on Earth. He fell at speeds of up to 725 miles per hour, and he broke three world records. He became the world’s first supersonic skydiver when he broke the sound barrier. “We love you Felix,” shouted his team in the control room.
He was wearing a special suit to protect him against the very big pressure changes during the jump. Without the suit, a man’s blood would boil and his lungs would explode. Baumgartner later said that all he could think about was getting back alive, but he also said: “Sometimes you have to go up really high to see how small you are.”
His other two records were for the highest altitude manned balloon flight and the highest altitude skydive. The jump was on a sunny morning in good weather. Baumgartner went up into clear skies in an enormous balloon – it was 30 million square cubic feet and its skin was one-tenth the thickness of a sandwich bag. At the bottom of the balloon was a capsule, where Baumgartner sat in his suit.
At the correct height, Baumgartner went through a checklist of 40 things with his helper Joe Kittinger. Kittinger held the record for the highest altitude manned balloon flight before Baumgartner. Baumgartner had a problem with his visor. “This is very serious, Joe,” he told Kitttinger. “I can’t see when I breathe out.” But they decided to continue, and a record 8 million people watched live on YouTube.
The ascent, during which the skies slowly turned black, took two and a half hours. But the descent was much quicker.
Three cameras, which were attached to Baumgartner’s suit, recorded his free-fall of just over four minutes and then the parachute opening.
Baumgartner has done lots of dangerous things before. He has parachuted off buildings and mountains and once into a 600 foot deep cave. He did two practice free-falls to prepare for this jump – one from 71,000 feet and a second from 97,000 feet. But nothing can compare with his jump above the town of Roswell, a place famous for its UFO sightings.
He was trying to break five different records: the first human to ever break the sound barrier in free-fall; the highest free-fall altitude jump; the highest manned balloon flight; the longest free-fall; and his jump platform is probably the largest manned balloon in history. The jump beat two of Kittinger’s records: before, the retired US air force colonel held the high altitude and speed records for parachuting. Kittinger jumped from a balloon 19 miles above the Earth in 1960 and gave advice to Baumgartner during the ascent.
Someone asked him, “What do you want to do next?” Baumgartner said: “I want to inspire young people. I’d like to sit in the same place in the next four years as Joe Kittinger. If there is a young guy who wants to break my record, I want to give him advice.” He said the most exciting moment for him was when he was standing outside the capsule “on top of the world”. He added: “The most beautiful moment was when I was standing on the landing area and Mike Todd [the man who dressed Baumgartner in his suit] came and he had a smile on his face like a little kid.”
Baumgartner said that he felt like Todd’s son. He said: “Todd was so happy that I was alive.” Earlier, Todd said: “The world needs a hero right now, and they have got one in Felix Baumgartner.” This will be the last jump, Baumgartner said. He has promised to settle down with his girlfriend, and fly helicopters on rescue missions in the US and Austria.


Intermediate
James Bond films are one of the worlds longest running and most successful film series, with 23 movies and more than $6bn earned at box offices around the world. But James Bond shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, Bond is more popular than ever, after the record-breaking performance of Skyfall, which became the biggest ever film at the UK box office in 2012, earning a total of $1.1bn.
For this reason, there was a lot of interest surrounding the announcement of a few more details about the 24th Bond film  especially its official title, Spectre. The number one question is: can Spectre repeat Skyfalls success?
Charles Gant, film editor for Heat magazine, says it is heading in the right direction. Skyfall was a brilliant strategic move, he says. It was simultaneously modern and retro. It appealed to fans of Daniel Craig and it also engaged the older, more nostalgic Bond fans, who may have lost interest over the previous few films. With the new title, he adds, it is certain to be a success.
It seems that Eon Productions, the company originally founded in 1961 to make Dr No and that is behind all the official Bonds, is doing all it can to ensure another success  they are installing the key creative talent behind Skyfall on Spectre. Daniel Craig will play Bond at least until film 25 and the same writers have produced the script.
But its getting Sam Mendes as director again that gives Bond fans the most hope. A director mainly known for character studies such as American Beauty and Revolutionary Road, Mendes has taken the Bond series to new heights. Gant says: Mendes managed to engage with both the modern and the traditional Bond audience, and he also attracted top actors like Ralph Fiennes. Actors like Fiennes will only agree to be in a film if they like the director.
Though the Bond series was not in trouble before Mendess arrival  and Craigs  there was a certain amount of staleness towards the end of Pierce Brosnans time as Bond. The series had survived the drying up of original Bond stories to adapt, and the movies were no longer anything like the Ian Fleming originals, but they were lacking dynamism.
This cycle, however, was nothing new: the history of the Bond series has been one of ebb and flow, revolving most obviously around the lead actor: first, Sean Connery; then, successively, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Brosnan and, now, Craig. Each new Bond has been a response to the state of the series, and some have been more successful than others.
Lazenby only lasted a single film and Daltons two efforts, The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill, were during a period in the late 80s when the 007 movie was eclipsed by more aggressive, slick Hollywood action movies. According to Gant, the period of Roger Moores last films, and the Dalton period, didnt really excite audiences. Brosnan was more successful commercially, but Craig has taken Bond to new levels. On the other hand, the early Bonds were incredibly commercial films, sexy and exciting, and there was very little like them.
Skyfall made more money than all the other Bond films. However, the performance of some of the 1960s films was almost as brilliant by comparison. If you adjust the figures for inflation, the 1965 release, Thunderball, is only just below Skyfall, while Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice both did better than the other Craig films (and the 70s Bonds, The Spy Who Loved Me and Live and Let Die, did better, too). By this calculation, Licence to Kill is the worst-performing of all Bonds, with Moores final film, A View to a Kill, the second least successful.
Nevertheless, the Bond brand has remained very powerful over the years and Eon has had to fight off attempts by rival companies to capitalize on the popularity of the series. Through a quirk of rights ownership, adaptations of Casino Royale (in 1967) and Thunderball (as Never Say Never Again, in 1983) were released in competition with Eon productions. After legal disputes that continued for many years, Eon now has full control of both books.
Martin Campbell was another experienced British director and he was able to plan one of the most elaborate stunts in Bond history. In the famous opening scene of Goldeneye (released in 1995), Bond freefalls into a pilotless light aeroplane. This scene really helped modernize the series and increase its popularity. Moreover, a whole new generation was reached through a hugely successful Goldeneye video-game spin-off, which made a significant contribution to perceptions that the Bond film was no longer stale and old-fashioned.


On the market square in Rjukan stands a statue of the person who created the town, a Norwegian engineer and businessman called Sam Eyde. The great man looks north across the square at the side of a mountain in front of him.
Behind him, to the south, is the 1,800-metre mountain known as Gaustatoppen. Between the mountains, along the narrow Vestfjord valley, is the small town that Eyde built at the beginning of the last century for his factory workers.
Eyde used the power of the 100-metre Rjukanfossen waterfall to make hydroelectricity in what was, at that time, the world’s biggest power plant.
But one thing he couldn’t do was change the sun. Deep in its east –west valley, with high mountains all around, Rjukan and the 3,400 people who live there are in shadow for half the year. In the daytime, from late September to mid-March, the town, three hours north-west of Oslo, is not completely dark, but it’s certainly not bright.
Now, high on the mountain opposite Eyde’s statue, 450 metres above the town, three large, solar-powered, computer-controlled mirrors follow the movement of the sun across the sky. They reflect the sunshine down on to the square and fill it in bright sunlight.
“It’s the sun!” says Ingrid Sparbo – she lifts her face to the light and closes her eyes. Sparbo has lived all her life in Rjukan and says, “This is so warming. Not just physically, but mentally. It’s mentally warming.”
Two young mothers bring their children into the square and stand in the sun. On a freezing day, an elderly couple sit on one of the new benches and they smile at the warmth on their faces. Children smile. Lots of people take photographs. A shop assistant, Silje Johansen, says it’s “awesome. Just awesome.”
Electrical engineer Eivind Toreid says “It’s a funny thing. Not real sunlight, but very similar. Like a spotlight.”
Heidi Fieldheim says she heard all about it on the radio. “This will bring much happiness,” she says.
Across the road, in the Nye Tider café, sits the man who created this happiness. Martin Andersen is a 40-year-old artist who moved to Rjukan in the summer of 2001.
Andersen had the idea for an artwork he calls the Solspeil, or Sun mirror , at the end of September one year: “Every day, we took our young child for a walk,” he says, “and, every day, I realized we had to go a little further down the valley to find the sun.” By 28 September, the sun completely disappears from Rjukan’s market square. It doesn’t reappear until 12 March.
In the months between September and March, Andersen says: “We would look up and see blue sky above, and the sun high on the mountain, but the only way we could get to it was to go out of town.”
Twelve years after he first dreamed of his Solspeil, a German company that specializes in CSP – concentrated solar power – brought in, by helicopter, the three 17-square-metre glass mirrors that are now high above the market square in Rjukan.
And it really works. Some people were against the mirrors at first, but now even they agree that it works.
“I was strongly against it,” says Nils Eggerud. Like many others, he felt they needed the money for other things – for extra carers to look after Rjukan’s old people, perhaps, or better schools, cycle paths and roads.
“And I still don’t know about the maintenance costs,” he says. “What will they be, who will pay them? But ... well, it feels nice, standing here. And, really, you just have to look at the people’s faces.”
In his office with a view of the square, Rjukan’s young mayor, Steinar Bergsland, is less interested in the cost and more interested in the benefits the mirrors might bring to the town. Already, Bergsland says, there are more visitors than usual and Rjukan’s shopkeepers are making more money than usual.
The town had to pay just 1 million krone – £100,000 – of the mirror’s total 5-million krone cost. The rest came from the government and a local business. “And”, says Bergsland, “just look out of the window. Look at those happy faces. Now it’s here, people love it.”


Scarlett Johansson is suing a French novelist for €50,000. She says that he wrote things about her personal life that are not true.
La premiere chose qu’on regarde (The First Thing We Look At) by Grégoire Delacourt is the story of a French model who looks so similar to the American actor that the book’s main male character thinks she is Johansson. In the novel, the model’s beauty means that men see her only as a sex object and women are jealous of her. She has many adventures as Johansson and, in the end, dies in a car crash.
Johansson does not feel flattered by the best- seller. Her lawyer, Vincent Toledano, told Le Figaro that Delacourt ’s novel illegally used Ms Johansson’s name. He has now gone to court because Johansson does not want the book to be translated or to become a film.
Delacourt said that he chose to mention  Johansson because she is famous for her beauty. He said: “I wrote a work of fiction. My character is not Scarlett Johansson. ”
On French radio, the author recently said the legal action was “sad.”
Delacourt is one of France’s best-loved authors; his last novel, My List of Desires, was translated into 47 languages and they are making a film of it. But he said he was “speechless” when he found out Johansson was suing him.
“I thought she would ask me to go for a coffee with her. I didn’t write a novel about a celebrity,” he said. “I wrote a real love story about women’s beauty, especially interior beauty.
“If an author can no longer write about the things that surround us – a brand of beer, a monument,  an actor – it’s going to be difficult to write fiction.
“I’m not sure she’s read the novel because it hasn’t been translated yet.”
Emmanuelle Allibert, spokeswoman for publisher JC Lattès, said taking legal action was “crazy”. “We have never known anything like it. It is very surprising because the novel is not even about Scarlett Johansson. It is about a woman who is Scarlett Johansson’s double.”
The author ’s legal situation would be easier if he had published the book in the USA and not in France. Lloyd Jassin, a New York lawyer, said that the case would probably not go to court in the United States.
“I thought she might send me flowers because the book was a declaration of love for her, but she didn’t understand,” Delacourt said.


There are many quirky solutions to help make our cities better places to live, such as glow-in-the-dark trees, underground bike sheds and solar-powered bins.
City living is good in many ways but it is not always possible to lead a sustainable lifestyle in a city. Pollution, traffic and loss of green spaces are just some of the daily problems that people in cities have to live with.
We look at ten quirky solutions that could make our cities better places to live.
1 Pop-up parks
Today’s cities sometimes look like they’re built for cars and not for people. The pop-up park is a simple idea. You need an empty car park, a small amount of money and a plant or two, and you can make your own private park. The PARK(ing) project started as an arts experiment in San Francisco. It has since spread across the world.
2 Underground storage
Not everyone in a city has a car. Bikes are in fashion but there is one problem: where to keep the bike safe? An engineering company in Tokyo has a solution: an underground bicycle park. Just seven metres wide, the bicycle park goes deep enough into the ground to keep 204 bikes.
3 Glow-in-the-dark trees
When most people think of trees that glow in the dark, they usually think of Christmas trees. Not Daan Roosegaarde. The Dutch designer-artist has invented a plant that is like a light. The technology joins DNA from glowing marine bacteria with a plant to create a glow like a jellyfish. Roosegaarde hopes that this technology could one day replace normal street lighting.
4 Pedestrian electricity
Every day, hundreds of people in the east London neighbourhood of West Ham cross a pedestrian walkway close to the underground station. They probably don’t notice the springiness of the walkway. And they probably don’t know that the springy rubber surface powers the streetlights above. The floor has tiles that capture the energy from pedestrians ’ footsteps and turn it into electricity. There is a similar system at London’s Heathrow Airport.
5 Supertrees
Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay has a group of man-made trees. Up to 50 metres high, these steel ‘supertrees’ have flowers growing up them. They collect rainwater and 11 of the 18 trees also have solar panels on their ‘branches’.


A subway system has billions of inhabitants: the bacteria of Swiss cheese and kimchi, plague and human skin. Now, for the first time, scientists have started to study the bacteria in a city’s subway – and they have found many interesting results.
Dr Christopher Mason, a scientist at Weill Cornell Medical College, led a team that tested the New York City subway system for 18 months. His team found meningitis at Times Square, a trace of anthrax on a train carriage and bacteria that cause plague on a rubbish bin and ticket machine at stations in uptown Manhattan.
The team said the findings of plague and anthrax are not serious. They said that there was only a very small trace of anthrax, that rats probably carried the plague and that no one has become ill with plague in New York for years.
“The results do not show that people in New York are at risk,” the study says. In fact, most of the bacteria the team found are harmless to humans.
Some of the results were not a surprise. They showed that people “should wash their hands”, Mason said. He also said that they found many bacteria that are helpful, like the bacteria used for making cheese.
All around the subway, there were bacteria from cheeses – brie, cheddar, parmesan and the mozzarella found on New York pizza. The bacteria of Swiss cheese were found in midtown Manhattan and the financial district, and the bacteria used to make kimchi and sauerkraut  showed up in the financial district and Bay Ridge.
Bacteria that can cause illness and infections were very common. Bacteria that cause diarrhoea and nausea, as well as E.coli, and the bacteria that can cause skin infections and urinary-tract infections were common all over the city. The scientists found bacteria that cause tetanus in Soho and bacteria that cause dysentery at a station in the Bronx and in Harlem.
Mason and his team collected more than 1,000 samples from all of New York’s 466 open subway stations. They found 15,152 different species, nearly half of which were bacteria.
The good news, they said, is that these bacteria are not spreading sickness or disease in New York and that the subway and city are as safe as everyone thought.
“In fact,” Mason added, “I’ve become much more confident riding the subway.”
Many findings made sense: stations like Grand Central and Times Square, where there are more people, had more bacteria. The Bronx, with its diverse neighbourhoods and stations, had the greatest diversity of bacteria; Staten Island, with just three stops, had the lowest diversity of bacteria.
The researchers found sea and fish bacteria at South Ferry, a station that flooded during Hurricane Sandy.
The next steps, Mason said, are studies of other cities, which have begun in Paris, São Paolo and Shanghai. They also want to do more studies of New York. He said he hoped the research would help health officials to prevent and track diseases.


If the amount of food wasted around the world were reduced by just 25%, there would be enough food to feed all the people who are malnourished, according to the UN. Each year, 1.3bn tonnes of food, about a third of all that is produced, is wasted, including about 45% of all fruit and vegetables, 35% of fish and seafood, 30% of cereals, 20% of dairy products and 20% of meat. Meanwhile, 795 million people suffer from severe hunger and malnutrition.
Well-publicized attempts to combat the loss of food – such as recent laws in France that require supermarkets to distribute unsold food to charities – have highlighted the issue of food waste, identified by the UN as one of the great challenges to achieving food security. Estimates suggest that, by 2050, food production will need to have increased by 60% on 2005 levels to feed a growing global population.
Reducing food wastage would ease the burden on resources as the world attempts to meet future demand. The problem is global but manifests itself in very different ways. In developing countries, there are high levels of what is known as “food loss”, which is unintentional wastage, often due to poor equipment, transportation and infrastructure.
In wealthy countries, there are low levels of unintentional losses but high levels of “food waste ”, which involves food being thrown away by consumers because they have purchased too much or by retailers who reject food because of strict aesthetic standards.
In developed countries, consumers and retailers throw away between 30% and 40% of all food purchased, whereas in poorer countries only 5% to 16% of food is thrown away. According to a 2011 report, in Europe and North America, each person wasted 95 to 115kg of otherwise edible food annually, whereas, in sub-Saharan Africa and south and south-east Asia, the equivalent waste was just 6 to 11kg.
“In the developing world, food waste is virtually non-existent,” says Robert van Otterdijk, coordinator of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Save Food programme. “Food waste is happening in countries where people can afford to throw away food. One statistic is that the amount of food wasted by consumers in industrialized countries [222m tonnes a year] is almost the same as the total net food production of sub-Saharan Africa [230m tonnes]. But food losses, on the other hand, are really rampant in developing countries because of the underdeveloped conditions they have, from management of production to transportation and distribution.”
The environmental impact of food loss and waste is high. The carbon footprint of food produced and not eaten is estimated at 3.3 gigatonnes of CO2, meaning that, if food waste were a country, it would rank as the third highest national emitter of greenhouse gases after the US and China. About 1.4bn hectares, or close to 30% of available agricultural land, is used to grow or farm food that is subsequently wasted. And more surface and groundwater, or “blue water”, is used to produce wasted food around the globe than is used for agriculture by any single country, including India and China.
“The whole issue of climate change has to do with our economy of production and consumption being out of balance with what the Earth can provide,” says van Otterdijk. “Production of food is one of the biggest production sectors in the world and, if one-third of all this is just produced in vain, you can imagine what a huge impact this has on the natural resources – on land, water, energy and greenhouse gas emissions.” The worst food waste offenders are the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, where consumers waste 39% of all food purchased, followed by Europe, where about 31% of all food purchased by consumers is thrown away. In the UK, 15m tonnes of food is lost or wasted each year. British consumers throw away 4.2m tonnes of edible food each year. This means that 11.7% of all food purchased is avoidably wasted, at an estimated cost to each family of £700 a year or almost £60 a month.
The foods most commonly found in British bins are bread, vegetables, fruit and milk. According to a nationwide analysis of food waste in UK households, the most wasted food in the UK by weight is bread, with consumers throwing away 414,000 tonnes (22.4%) of all bread purchased. By percentage, the most wasted food is lettuce and leafy salads, of which consumers throw away 38% (64,000 tonnes) of all they buy.
The most wasted meat, by both percentage and weight, is poultry, of which 13% of all edible parts (not including bones) is wasted and the most wasted fruit by percentage is melon, with the equivalent of more than a quarter of each melon thrown in the bin.
The UK has made progress in the past ten years, after a concerted campaign to reduce wastage. It is singled out by van Otterdijk as “one of the great successes” in combating food waste. Between 2007 and 2012, the amount of avoidable food waste produced by UK households decreased by 21%, from 5.3m tonnes to 4.2m tonnes, largely due to greater awareness. Of the food that is not eaten, less is ending up in landfill. In 2000 –01, only 14% of household waste was recycled or composted but, by 2011-12, the amount of composted food had risen to 43%.
Van Otterdijk says there has been a “very encouraging, unexpected, continuing interest” in the subject of food waste, enabling grass-roots campaigns around the world to gain momentum. “We have to do much more and it needs the participation of public and private sectors,” he says. “But if it continues like this, with the same momentum, maybe, after ten years, we’ll have globally significant results.”


Sometimes life just isn’t fair. Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook and is now worth an estimated $48bn. James Goodfellow also invented something used by millions of people around the world every day – the cash machine – but it didn’t make him rich. In fact, he earned just £10 from the patent and has not made a penny more from it since.
“You can imagine how I feel when I see bankers getting £1m bonuses. I wonder what they contributed to the banking industry more than I did to merit a £1m bonus. It doesn’t make much sense to me but that’s the way of the world,” Goodfellow says.
It also annoys him that he’s not seen as a good role model for inventors and engineers. He came up with a groundbreaking invention that generated billions of pounds “and I got nothing, so who’s going to want to follow in James Goodfellow’s footsteps and get £10 if they have a fantastic success?”
There have been arguments for years over who should officially go down in history as “the inventor of the ATM” and, in 2005, a man called John Shepherd-Barron received a UK honour for services to banking as the “inventor of the automatic cash dispenser”. But, the UK government is now saying it was Goodfellow who invented the ATM – so it would seem that, after all the squabbling, his place in history is now assured.
Back in the mid-1960s, Goodfellow was working as a development engineer and had been asked to devise a way to enable customers to withdraw cash from banks on Saturdays. “Most people working during the week couldn’t get to the bank. They wanted a solution. The solution was a machine which would issue cash on demand to a recognized customer,” he recalls. “I set out to develop a cash-issuing machine and, to make this a reality, I invented the PIN [personal identification number] and an associated coded token.”
This token took the form of a plastic card with holes punched in it. The patent documents proposed a system incorporating a card reader and buttons mounted in an external wall of the bank and stated: “When the customer wishes to withdraw a pack of banknotes from the system, he simply inserts his punched card in the card reader of the system and operates the set of ten push-buttons in accordance with his personal identification number.”
Aside from the cards with punched holes, that pretty much describes today’s ATM. After Goodfellow successfully demonstrated the methodology by producing a model, prototypes were built and the first machines were installed in 1967.
At around the same time, Shepherd-Barron was developing a rival cash-dispensing device. His machine didn’t use plastic cards – instead, it used cheques impregnated with carbon-14, a mildly radioactive substance. The machine detected the carbon-14, matched the cheque against a PIN and paid out the cash.
It is widely accepted that the Shepherd-Barron ATM was the “world’s first” when it comes to being installed and used by the public; the first one, at a bank in north London, was opened on 27 June, 1967 – a month before Goodfellow’s ATM made its public debut. However, the patent for Goodfellow’s machine was lodged on 2 May, 1966, 14 months before the London ATM machine came into service.
The rivalry between the two men bubbled up when Shepherd-Barron received an official honour for his achievement. Goodfellow says: “My one big regret is that I never said anything about it until John Shepherd-Barron received the OBE in 2005. This honour was granted on the basis that he was the inventor of the automatic cash dispenser. That really stuck in my throat and I kicked up a bit of a fuss.” Shepherd-Barron is no longer alive to put his case but, in a 2005 interview, he was fairly withering about his rival: “I don’t know him but it’s clear that the difference between Goodfellow and us was that we thought through the whole system concept and that was important to the banks who bought it. His invention reminds me of the hovercraft, an elegant failure.”
The cash machine has become a world-conquering piece of technology and nothing – the contactless revolution, bitcoin, wearable technology, etc – seems to be slowing its growth: there are now 3m ATMs worldwide, with the number forecast to hit 4m by 2020.
Goodfellow accepts he didn’t invent the concept of a cash-issuing machine “but I did invent a way of doing it. When people talk about the Wright brothers, they didn’t invent the concept of flying – everyone was trying to do it – but they did it and got the credit for inventing the aeroplane so I think I should get the credit for inventing the cash dispenser.”
The good news for Goodfellow is that this is now starting to happen. The website ATMInventor.com concludes: “Who invented the idea of an ATM? We believe it was Luther George Simjian. Who invented the ATM as we know it? We have to think it was James Goodfellow in Scotland for holding a patent date of 1966. Who invented the ATM design we recognize today? We think it was John D White for Docutel in the US.”
Even better for Goodfellow, his achievement has been officially recognized in the latest edition of a 180-page guidebook called Life in the United Kingdom. In the section about “great British inventions of the twentieth century ”, it states: “In the 1960s, James Goodfellow (1937-) invented the cash-dispensing automatic teller machine (ATM) or 'cashpoint'.”
So after all these years, Goodfellow finally finds himself being talked about in the same breath as John Logie Baird (the television), Alan Turing (the Turing machine), Sir Frank Whittle (the jet engine) and Sir Tim Berners-Lee (the World Wide Web). Asked what he did with the £10 he received back in the 1960s, Goodfellow says he thinks he blew it on a wild night out, adding: “It didn’t change my life.” But, he concludes, it’s been a good working life: “I was very happy doing the job I was doing.”


Intermediate
A car with a top speed of 25mph, two seats and no pedals or steering wheel might not make much of an impression at a motor show. But Google, in the US, sent a shock through the car and taxi industries as it unveiled the latest version of its driverless car.
The electrically powered vehicle, which Google has begun testing around its headquarters in Mountain View, California, dispenses with all the normal controls, including foot pedals. Instead, it has a smartphone app that calls it and tells it the destination, and a single STOP button between the two front-facing seats in case the passengers need to override the computer.
The car, in fact, does all the tasks of navigation, steering, acceleration and braking.
The company is building about 100 prototypes for a two-year test. The companys co-founder, Sergey Brin, told a conference in California that the vehicle was still in the prototype stage but that the project was about changing the world for people who do not have good transportation today.
He said of the car: Youre just sitting there; no steering wheel, no pedals. For me, it was very relaxing. About ten seconds after getting in, I forgot I was there. I found it really enjoyable.
Google says that the aim of the project is to improve safety and that, because the car is constructed with impact-absorbing foam at the front and a plastic windscreen, it should be far safer than any other car for pedestrians.
The cars, which have been built specially by an unnamed company in Detroit, will be used to find out how best to make driverless vehicles work. Google will run a pilot programme using the cars, which are not yet for sale.
One challenge is creating high-definition scans of the roads and surroundings before the cars can drive along them because they cannot collect and process enough information in real time.
So far, there are high-detail maps of about 2,000 miles of Californias roads, but the state has more than 170,000 miles of public roads.
Google says it is interested in licensing the technology to traditional vehicle manufacturers once it has been refined.
But the idea of driverless cars replacing humandriven taxis has been the cause of some alarm.
Dennis Conyon of the UK National Taxi Association says that drivers will become unemployed.
London has about 22,000 licensed black cabs and Conyon estimates that the total number of people who drive taxis for hire in the UK is about 100,000.
Other car makers, including Volvo, Ford and Mercedes, are working on driver-assisted vehicles, which, unlike Googles version, do not dispense with the driver controls.
But Chris Urmson, director of the self-driving car project at Google, said that the new prototypes dispensed with the steering wheel and brakes because a human passenger might not be able to take over in an emergency, and that it was simpler just to have an emergency stop button.
Urmson said: The vehicles will be very basic. We want to learn from them and adapt them as quickly as possible. But they will take you where you want to go at the push of a button. And, thats an important step towards improving road safety and improving mobility for millions of people.
So far, the Google versions of the self-driving cars have driven 700,000 miles without an accident caused by the computer. The company says that thousands of people die each year on the roads and that about 80% of crashes are caused by human error.


Intermediate
Ever since he was diagnosed HIV positive, Moses King, 48, has had one major problem. He has been able to cope with the stigma of being HIV positive  widespread in Liberia  and he was able to access antiretroviral medication, distributed by the Liberian government. But King and his family of six children could not get the right food to eat. A subsistence farmer, he grew vegetables and bought rice. But he could not afford meat and fish  expensive, luxury products in Liberian markets but essential sources of protein.
Pate K Chon, a counsellor who works with HIV sufferers in Liberia, provided a surprising solution. Since watching a documentary about a fish farm in Thailand several years earlier, she had thought of setting up a similar project in Liberia, allowing HIV sufferers to have work and also access a stable source of protein.
I saw this film about fish in a cement pool and I thought it was a good idea, said Chon, herself diagnosed with HIV in 1992. So many of the people I work with dont have the money to have a balanced protein diet and fish is such a clean source of protein  it doesnt cause health problems like other sources, and it is something we can farm.
Chon began building a pool in which to farm fish. In June 2012, Chon met John Sheehy, a philanthropist. Sheehy raised money for the non-profit fish farm in the northeast of Monrovia, Liberias capital, and set about learning about fish farming, doing an online course through Cornell University and speaking to other fish farmers in Africa.
I raised the money and built the farm, learned the proper tank layout and water flow system, said Sheehy. A lot of my knowledge was self-taught, and now I would love to be able to write a manual and share it with other people, he added.
The project has now grown into the Grow2Feed Liberia Fish Farm, with 12 tanks, which, when full, will each have 5,000 fish  providing up to 200,000 fish per year, serving a community of 1,200 mainly HIV-positive people, including King and his family.
In addition to the fish, waste from the tanks is collected and used to irrigate crops, also providing food and money for the community.
The members of the community live near the farm, and have agreed to be part of the co-operative, said Sheehy. Many work on the farm and what they get in return is fish. They can use those fish to feed themselves and to sell in the market so that they get money to buy other essential items. The fish farm gives these people with HIV a way of getting back into society  now they are trading with people in the market every week.
According to Liberias health survey,1.5% of Liberias 3.5 million people are HIV positive, with 60% of those women or girls. Stigma and discrimination still surround the illness, and around half of all people with HIV in the country are untreated.
Good nutrition is particularly important for people with HIV. Research has shown they need much higher levels of protein to stop their health deteriorating and to allow healthy growth. Nutrition is one of the key things if you are taking antiretroviral drugs, said Chon. The drugs are toxic and, if you dont have food to eat, they can make you very ill. But food in Liberia is very expensive. We buy expensive imported rice, even though we should be growing it ourselves and fish is difficult for most people to afford.
Fish farming is absolutely possible in Africa, said Paul White, owner of the HydroFish fish farm in Ivory Coast, which produces 3,000 tonnes of fish each year. A lot of the fish on the market comes from China and is imported frozen. It is of a quality that could never enter Europe or America. He said there had been a lack of investment in fish production but that things were changing now.
Some critics are sceptical of farmed fish, saying fish can be inbred and have high levels of toxins. But Sheehy said good practice can reduce these problems. A lot of farmed fish is inbred, which does cause problems, but we are using a process with local fish from Liberia, not fish from another region, said Sheehy. And we are not using lakes that are cornered off, where the fish absorb all the toxins in the lake. We can control the environment using the tanks and we test the water and monitor it constantly.
Sheehy hopes to open more fish farms throughout Liberia and the region. A rice-growing co-op in Sierra Leone asked us if we could do this on our property so that they can feed their workers and we have had interest from Nigeria and Central America, said Sheehy. But we operate 100% non-profit and we always will.


As soon as the children at a primary school in Stirling, Scotland, hear the words “daily mile”, they leave the classroom and start running around the school field. For three-and-a-half years, all the pupils at St Ninian’s Primary School have walked or run a mile each day. They do it at different times during the day. There has been an increase in obesity in children in the UK but none of the children at this school are overweight.
The daily mile has done a lot to improve these children’s fitness, behaviour and concentration in lessons so many other British schools are doing the same. Their children also 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 amazing.”
One in ten children are obese when they start school at the age of four or five, say the Health & Social Care Information Centre. And, in the summer of 2015, a study found that schoolchildren in England are more unfit than they have ever been. For this reason, primary schools can see the benefits of the daily mile. It has been introduced in schools in various parts of the UK and other schools are planning to introduce it soon. Just in Stirling, 30 schools have already started or are going to start the daily mile.
“Running is a good way to improve children’s fitness, and it’s free and easy. The most important thing is that the children really enjoy it. If they didn ’t enjoy it, you couldn’t continue with it.
They come back inside with bright eyes and rosy cheeks. It’s how children used to look,” said Wyllie. At St Ninian’s, teachers take their pupils out of lessons to the school’s playing field for their daily mile at a time that suits that day’s timetable. Only ice or very heavy rain stop them. Researchers from Stirling University have begun a study to look for evidence of the physical, cognitive and emotional benefits of the daily mile. Dr Colin Moran, who is leading the study, said: “The children don’t seem to have problems with obesity; they seem happier and teachers say they learn better. So we designed a study that tests all of these things.” They will compare St Ninian’s pupils with children from another school in Stirling where children haven’t started running yet.
Kevin Clelland, a primary school teacher from Leeds, visited St Ninian’s. Then, he convinced the other teachers in his school that it was a great idea. He said: “It’s such a simple thing to do but seems to have such an amazing impact. We really want to improve the fitness of our pupils.” His school is now building a running track.
Paralympian, Tanni Grey-Thompson, chair of ukactive, a health organization for physical activity, said: “All children need to achieve 60 active minutes every day – this can be in a lesson, on the walk to school or in the playground. It’s fantastic to see ideas like the daily mile. It shows that schools want to improve children’s fitness 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 help them for the rest of their lives.”
The Scottish government also supports the idea. A spokesperson said: “Learning in PE is improved by ideas like the daily mile, which can help parents keep their children healthy. We are pleased to see that so many Scottish schools are taking part or want to.”


John Lewis’s 2015 Christmas advert shows a lonely old man who lives on the moon.
Department store John Lewis’s Christmas ad, which, for many people, shows that the Christmas shopping season has begun, aims to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds for the charity Age UK. John Lewis will also encourage staff and customers to care for elderly people who might be alone over the holiday.
The department store has spent £7 million on a campaign that includes the TV ad, a smartphone game and merchandise, including glow-in-the- dark pyjamas. It has also built areas that look like the surface of the moon in 11 of its stores.
After two years of successful ads with cute animals – a bear and hare, then a penguin – this time, the story is about a young girl, Lily, who sees an old man living in a small wooden house on the moon through her telescope. The girl tries to send him a letter and a note via bow and arrow. Then, she floats him a present of a telescope tied to balloons. This helps them to make contact.
The ad’s message is: “Show someone they’re loved this Christmas”. This is similar to Age UK’s campaign: “No one should have no one at Christmas”. Profits from three products – a mug, gift tag and card – will go to the charity.
Rachel Swift, head of marketing at John Lewis, said that people talk about charities at Christmas and the ad makes you think about someone who lives on your street that might not see anybody.
The campaign features the Oasis track Half the World Away sung by Norwegian singer Aurora.
The ad cost £1 million to make. The moon scenes were shot at the Warner Bros Studios, where the Harry Potter films were made, and the specially built set was created by one of the team behind the latest Star Wars film, The Force Awakens.
As in the last few years, John Lewis showed a short film on TV and social media using the hashtag #OnTheMoon before it showed the full advert. There will be a full moon on Christmas Day 2015 – a complete coincidence, says Swift.
In 2014, the department store also spent £7 million on a campaign with a penguin and a young boy playing together. It had 22 million views on YouTube by the first week of January – more than the 16.6m views of Sainsbury’s ad with First World War soldiers sharing a bar of chocolate, the UK’s second most popular ad of 2014.
Swift said that John Lewis wants to just get “something right for the company at this time of year and do something we hope customers really love.”
Sarah Vizard, from Marketing Week, said “There are a lot more companies doing Christmas ads this year but I think a lot of those companies just show what you can buy in store. John Lewis does the emotional piece the best. I think people will think the ad is really cute.”


Intermediate
He is not the first person to express scepticism about Mars One, a private mission that aims to send humans to live on Mars from 2025. But Joseph Roche is different from most critics: hes on the shortlist of astronauts.
Roche, an astrophysicist at Trinity College Dublin who was announced in February as one of the 100 people shortlisted for the mission, has written for the Guardian expressing his doubts about the viability of Mars One.
The selection process, Roche writes, was not rigorous enough to reach the standard of more traditional astronaut selection programmes. He also says the Dutch Mars One team have shown a certain naivety because they believe they can succeed alone in the $6bn mission. He says they should now accept it is very unlikely to happen.
Roche also expressed worries about the way the mission organizers publicized a top-ten list of candidates. The ranking, he said, didnt mean these were the best astronauts. It was based on how many supporter points each had earned.
He says that these points only show how much each supporter has donated to Mars One, for example by buying official merchandise.
The official timeline for the mission says the group plans to send 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 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 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 in person. Initially, there were going to be regional interviews; we would travel there, wed be interviewed and wed be tested over several days. In my mind, that sounded like a proper astronaut selection process.
But, 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 that he did not want to give more interviews because he didnt want to sound negative about the idea of space travel.
He writes: I am passionate about scientific endeavour and that is why the ambitiousness of the Mars One plan appealed to me. Mars One were never likely to overcome the financial and technical barriers during their proposed timeline. But it was nice to hear a new idea that challenges us to think about our own role in the future of space exploration.
He said that being part of the public debate about future missions has been one of the most interesting and enjoyable aspects of his involvement with Mars One. He went on to say 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.