Intermediate
Low-income countries will continue to be the most affected by human-induced climate change over the next century. They will experience gradual sea-level rises, stronger cyclones, warmer days and nights, more unpredictable rainfall, and larger and longer heatwaves, according to a recent report.
The last major United Nations (UN) assessment, in 2007, predicted temperature rises of 6 C or more by the end of the century. That is now thought unlikely by scientists, but average land and sea temperatures are expected to continue rising throughout this century, possibly reaching 4 C above present levels  enough to devastate crops and make life in many cities unbearably hot.
As temperatures rise and oceans warm, tropical and subtropical regions will see sharp changes in annual rainfall, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, released in Stockholm and published online in September.
East Africa can expect increased short rainfalls and west Africa should expect heavier monsoons. Burma, Bangladesh and India can expect stronger cyclones; elsewhere in southern Asia, heavier summer rains are anticipated. Indonesia may receive less rainfall between July and October, but the coastal regions around the south China Sea and Gulf of Thailand can expect increased rainfall extremes when cyclones hit the land.
In the long term, rainfall patterns will change. Northern countries, such as those in Europe or North America, are expected to receive more rainfall, but many subtropical arid and semi-arid regions will likely experience less rain, said the reports authors.
They added that the monsoon season is likely to start earlier and last longer.
Scientists in developing countries and commentators have welcomed the report, which they said supported their own observations.
The IPCC says that climate change is real and happening much more strongly than before. We are already seeing the effects of climate change in Bangladesh and across south Asia. Its not news to us. Most developing countries are facing climate change now. They do not need the IPCC to tell them that the weather is changing, said Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development.
Scientists have also lowered their projections of sea-level rises. Depending on future greenhouse gas emissions, sea levels will rise an average of 4062 cm by 2100. Nevertheless, there will be signifi cant geographical variations; many millions of people living in the developing worlds great cities, including Lagos and Calcutta, are threatened.
Weather disasters are also more likely in a warmer world, the report suggests. Although the global frequency of tropical cyclones is expected to decrease or remain unchanged, they may become more intense, with stronger winds and heavier rainfall.
Life in many developing-country cities could become unbearable, especially as urban temperatures are already far above those in surrounding countryside. Much higher temperatures could reduce the length of the growing period in some parts of Africa by up to 20%, the report said.
The charity Oxfam predicted that world hunger would worsen because climate changes inevitably hurt crop production and reduce incomes. They said the number of people at risk of hunger might rise by 10% to 20% by 2050.
The changing climate is already jeopardizing gains in the fi ght against hunger, and it looks like it will get worse, said Oxfam. A hot world is a hungry world.


Such is the lot of the modern-day chemist: you wait ages for a new element to turn up and then four come along at once. Discovered by researchers in Japan, Russia and the US, the four new elements are the first to be added to the periodic table since 2011, when elements 114 and 116 were included. The new elements, all spectacularly short-lived and highly radioactive, complete the periodic table’s seventh row and render science textbooks around the world out of date.
The US-based International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), the global organization that governs chemical nomenclature, terminology and measurement, verified the elements on 30 December, 2015 after poring over studies dating back to 2004. The scientists who found them must now come up with formal names to replace the clunky Latin- based placeholders – ununtrium, ununpentium, ununseptium and ununoctium – which reflect their atomic numbers, 113, 115, 117, and 118. The atomic number is the number of protons found in an element’s atomic nucleus.
IUPAC announced that a Russian-American team of scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California had produced sufficient evidence to claim the discovery of elements 115, 117 and 118. The body awarded credit for the discovery of element 113, which had also been claimed by the Russians and Americans, to a team of scientists from the RIKEN Institute in Japan. The decision means Japan becomes the first Asian country to name an element. Under IUPAC rules, new elements can be named after mythological concepts, minerals, a place or country, or a scientist.
When elements 114 and 116 were assigned formal names in 2012, scientists chose flerovium and livermorium respectively, after the Flerov Lab at Dubna’s Joint Institute of Research and the Lawrence Livermore Lab in the US, where the elements were discovered. Kosuke Morita, who led the research at RIKEN, said his team now planned to “look to the uncharted territory of element 119 and beyond.” Jan Reedijk, president of the Inorganic Chemistry Division of IUPAC, said: “The chemistry community is eager to see its most cherished table finally being completed down to the seventh row.”
The Japanese team is believed to be considering three names for ununtrium: japonium, rikenium and nishinarium, after the Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science, where the element was found. “They will have been thinking about it for a while already,” said Polly Arnold, professor of chemistry at Edinburgh University. “This is painstaking work. All this trying to understand Mother Nature helps us with our models and with understanding radioactive decay. If we understand it better, hopefully we can do better at dealing with nuclear waste and things that are important in the real world. It also leads to fantastic technological advances in building the kit to make these observations.”
Along with new names, the scientists must propose two-letter symbols for the elements. When IUPAC has received the researchers’ suggestions, they will be put up for public review for five months. That allows scientists and others to raise any objections. In 1996, the symbol Cp was proposed for copernicium, or element 112, but it was swapped to Cn when scientists complained that Cp referred to another substance.
To discover the elements, researchers at the three labs slammed lighter nuclei into one another and looked for signature radioactive decays that should come from the new elements. Ununtrium and ununpentium are thought to be metals, while ununseptium could be a metalloid – a material bearing some metallic properties. The fourth element, ununoctium, may be a noble gas, like other group-18 elements, helium, neon and argon. It is hard to know for sure because so few atoms of each element have ever been made.
Paul Karol, chair of the IUPAC panel that verified the elements, said: “For now, most of the successes will be used by nuclear theorists to improve their understanding of the structure and stability of these very heavy nuclei as experimenters seek the alleged but highly probable 'island of stability' at or near element 120 or perhaps 126. It might be that those elements have long enough lifetimes for their detailed chemistry to be explored. Practical applications of the new elements, if any, are a long way off because of the difficulty in synthesis.”


Hundreds of young Cubans are using a free, unrestricted internet service in the communist island nation. A small cultural centre in the capital city, Havana, has suddenly become a rare source of free wi-fi. The internationally known Cuban artist Kcho is providing the service. Perhaps more surprisingly, the state-owned telecommunications company, Etecsa, is allowing the service.
People say the service is very slow, especially when the centre gets crowded. But, in a country where only about 5% of the population has open access to the internet, a facility that is both free and has no restrictions is very welcome.
The chance to visit international news websites, communicate with friends and family overseas and use sites like Facebook and Twitter has created a lot of excitement. “I come as often as I can,” said Adonis Ortiz, 20. He is video-chatting with his father, who lives in the US and whom he has not seen in nine years.
Diplomatic and trade relations between the US and Cuba are improving and American tech giants such as Google and Apple may soon enter the Cuban market. In the meantime, Cuba has installed a high-speed fibre-optic cable under the sea from Venezuela and internet users have some access to Chinese equipment.
Another estimate is that a quarter of Cubans have access to the internet – still one of the lowest rates in the Western Hemisphere. But this estimate measures residents who use a restricted domestic intranet that only has certain websites and has limited email.
Kcho, who has close relations with the Cuban government, said that his actions are allowed by the Ministry of Culture. The artist said he wanted to encourage Cubans to become familiar with the internet. “It’s only possible if you are determined and if you pay for it,” Kcho told the Associated Press. “It is expensive but the benefit is tremendous. I have something that is great and powerful. I can share it and I am doing so.”
Kcho’s real name is Alexis Leiva Machado. He became famous internationally for his painting, sculpture and drawings when he won the grand prize at a festival in South Korea. Born on one of Cuba’s islands, he is known for contemporary art with rustic, seaside and patriotic themes and imagery.
In the centre’s courtyard, tech-savvy young people relax throughout the day or just sit outside when it’s crowded. They use laptops and tablets or are glued to their smartphones.
Cuba has some of the lowest internet-use rates in the world – dial-up accounts are restricted and at-home broadband is extremely rare. Only foreigners can pay for it because it costs hundreds of dollars a month for the service – in Cuba, the average salary is between $17 and $20 a month. Kcho pays $900 a month to provide the free wi-fi.
Since 2013, Cuban authorities have opened hundreds of internet salons, where an hour online costs $4.50. The speeds are far lower than the speeds at Kcho’s studio, where they are about two megabytes per second (mbps). A 2014 report says that average internet connectivity speeds are about 10.5mbps in the US. South Korea has the fastest speeds in the world – 23.6mbps. The average speed in the world is about 3.9mbps.
Lots of people usually use Kcho’s wi-fi at the same time so the signal strength is usually not strong. One user said he sometimes visits in the middle of the night, when nobody else is around, and, then, the speed is extremely fast.


Prince Harry has flown out of Afghanistan at the end of a four-month tour, during which he admitted killing insurgents while piloting his Apache helicopter and spoke in rare depth about the tensions and frustrations of being a royal who craved life out of the spotlight.
He also revealed his disdain for and distrust of some sections of the media and described how his father constantly reminded him to behave more like a member of the royal family.
A commander of the army’s most sophisticated attack helicopter, the prince said he had fired on the Taliban during operations to support ground troops and rescue injured Afghan and NATO personnel. His remarks may be seized upon by insurgents to stir anti-British sentiment, but the prince said he was only doing his job. Most of the time the helicopter acted more as a deterrent, he said.
In a series of interviews during his time based at Camp Bastion in Helmand Province, he hinted at the difficulty of reconciling the different roles in his life. The prince, known as Captain Wales in the army, explained his 'three mes'. “One in the army, one socially in my own private time and then one with the family and stuff like that. So there is a switch and I flick it when necessary.”
He admitted he sometimes 'let himself down' with his laddish behaviour, which he put down to “probably being too much army and not enough prince”, but he said he was entitled to privacy, too.
In another unusually frank exchange, he aimed biting criticism at the media, especially the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, three of the royal family’s most ardent supporters in Fleet Street. He said he was particularly annoyed by articles comparing his role as an Apache co-pilot gunner to Spitfire crews waiting to scramble during the second world war. “No, it’s not like that at all,” he said.
The prince said his suspicion of the media was rooted in the treatment of his family when “I was very small”, but that he couldn’t help monitoring the stories written about him. “Of course I read them,” the prince said. “If there’s a story and something’s been written about me, I want to know what’s being said. But all it does is just upset me and anger me that people can get away with writing the stuff they do; not just about me, but about everything and everybody. My father always says, 'Don’t read it'. Everyone says, 'Don’t read it, because it’s always rubbish'.”
The prince was posted to Afghanistan last September to command a £45m Apache helicopter – one of the military’s most sophisticated and well-armed aircraft. During his tour, the Apaches flew missions supporting NATO troops fighting the Taliban and accompanied British Chinook and US Black Hawk medical helicopters during casualty evacuations.
Four years ago, the prince had to be spirited out of Afghanistan during his first tour after a media embargo was broken by mistake by an Australian magazine. This time, the Ministry of Defence chose to publicize his deployment on the understanding that newspapers and broadcasters would not give a running commentary on his life out there to allow him to get on with his job. Two-man crews from the BBC, Sky and ITN were sent once each to report on his visit, while a photographer and a reporter from the Press Association were embedded on all three visits.
Asked whether he felt more comfortable being Captain Wales than Prince Harry, his reply was one of the most revealing he has given about his relationship with Prince Charles. “Definitely. I’ve always been like that. My father’s always trying to remind me about who I am and stuff like that. But it’s very easy to forget about who I am when I am in the army. Everyone’s wearing the same uniform and doing the same kind of thing. I get on well with the lads and I enjoy my job. It really is as simple as that.”
Shortly before he went to Afghanistan, the prince was caught in another media furore, when pictures emerged of him frolicking naked in Las Vegas during a private party. Harry said he had let himself down, but also blamed the media. “I probably let myself down, I let my family down, I let other people down. But, at the end of the day, I was in a private area and there should be a certain amount of privacy that one should expect. It was probably a classic example of me probably being too much army, and not enough prince. It’s a simple case of that.
“The papers knew that I was going out to Afghanistan anyway, so the way I was treated from them I don’t think is acceptable.” He added, “Certain people remind me, 'Remember who you are, so don’t always drop your guard'.”
Asked where he and his brother’s fascination with helicopters came from, he said, “Probably the fact that you can only fit a certain amount of people in a helicopter, therefore no one can follow us, like you guys.”


Intermediate
The roof is plastic and the desks are just old chairs, but the students inside the Chemin des Dunes school are studying hard and hoping for a new life in France.
The French language is very difficult but we try hard. If we come every day, maybe our dreams will come true, says Kamal, a refugee from Sudans Darfur district who comes to three or four hours of classes every day. Its a good thing to keep your brain active.
The 29-year-old electrical engineer is one of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of refugees living in the jungle camp outside Calais who have applied for asylum in France and really want to learn the language of what they hope will be their new home.
Like many of his fellow students, he is frustrated by the media coverage of the sprawling tentvillage. He says it focuses only on those people who use the village as a place to stay while they make risky attempts every night to sneak on board cross-Channel lorries or trains.
I want people in the UK to know that not everyone wants to go there. There are a lot of people here who want to stay in France, Kamal said.
France is already home to more than a quarter of a million refugees, according to United Nations data  this is more than twice as many as the UK, even though the countries have similar populations.
There are also 56,000 asylum seekers waiting for permission to stay in France  the second highest number in Europe  while, in the UK, there are 36,000.
But, while the applicants wait to hear if they can stay, France does not give them any financial support or allow them to work  and the slow process can take many months. The jungle camp offers a free meal a day and a plastic roof over their heads. Many decide to live in these basic conditions for a few extra months, rather than jeopardize their chance to stay in France by working illegally.
The idea for the school was first suggested by some of the asylum seekers at the start of the summer, when they were bored with sitting around waiting and nervous about starting a new life in France totally unable to communicate. It opened within weeks, on 11 July.
We did it so people can learn French, said Zimarco Jones, the schools Nigerian founder, who arrived in Calais in 2013 and is still waiting to hear if he can stay. Now, we need to build another one, he says with a grin.
The tiny classroom can hold 30 pupils, crammed into five rows of desks in front of a big green chalkboard and pictures of cartoon animals for each letter of the French alphabet. There are also classes in English, art and tai chi but the French lessons, given by volunteers from Calais and other towns, are the most popular.
French is not as easy as English but, two weeks ago, I decided there was no way to get to the UK, says George, another Darfur refugee and student. He wanted to cross the Channel because he speaks fluent English but, with language classes, he says he is happy to settle in France.
Anywhere there is peace, I can stay, no problem, he says. He is already waiting at the classroom more than half an hour before his teachers arrive.
He admits he doesnt know much about France but says that the classes are slowly helping him understand the country as well as the language.
Many of the volunteers at the jungle school are local teachers who are giving up their summer holidays.
Jenny Flahaut, 33, who works at a childrens home, volunteered after seeing an advertisement on Facebook. I saw these people in Calais every day and I wanted to do something for them, she said.
She is angry about the depiction of migrants in the media and about politicians who have never visited the camp, most recently David Cameron, the British prime minister, who talked about swarms of people trying to reach the UK.
They dont know them; they are not like that, Flahaut said as she prepared for an afternoon lesson. Most of them are very good people. They are welcoming and friendly. They want to improve their life and make it better, and learning is part of that.
The teachers and Zimarco are focused, now, on setting up a separate classroom for around 200 women and two dozen children. There are ten times more men than women in the Calais camp. Most feel uncomfortable going to classes with male students they dont know, the volunteers say.
Zimarcos work starting the school is remembered in its unofficial name  everyone in the camp just calls it Zimarcos school. After setting up the new classroom, Zimarco has more dreams for making the camp a place to live, not just survive. He wants to start a football team for migrants and even dreams of changing the camp name. He hates the jungle because he says it implies the residents arent people.
We have a discotheque, a house, a mosque, a school, shops, he says. We are not animals.


Intermediate
Robert Mys_ajek stops. Between two paw prints on a muddy mountain track, the scientist  nds what he is looking for. Droppings! he says happily. It is so rare to see a wolf that seeing faeces makes it a good day.
But it is getting easier. There are now about 1,500 wolves in Poland. The number has doubled in 15 years. Wolves are  along with the brown bear, the lynx and the wolverine  Europes last large predator carnivores. Conservationists from Britain, Germany and the Netherlands are coming here to  nd out how the country has saved wolves who are criticized even in fairy tales.
Bits of bone and hair stick out from the black faeces. It ate a red deer, says Mys_ajek, the University of Warsaw biologist. In my lab, I can tell you all about this wolf  not only its diet but its gender, sexual habits, age, state of health and family connections.
DNA tests have shown that Polish wolves are travellers. One wolf reached the Netherlands, where unfortunately it was hit by a car. They have a very big range. They need space. The average territory required by a Polish pack is 250 square kilometres, says Mys_ajek.
Can we ever reintroduce wolves to Scotland? asks student Alex Entwisle, 23, on a study trip to southern Poland from the UK. He and other animal science students have spent the day looking for droppings and paw prints in the Beskidy mountains of the Polish Carpathians.
Their hot discussion topic is whether to reintroduce wolves to the British Isles for the  rst time since the 18th century.
Mys_ajek toured the Scottish Highlands in 2015 for the Wolves and Humans Foundation and answered questions from villagers about the Polish experience. The big difference between Scotland and Poland is that we eat pork. We do not have many sheep here.
The similarity is that we have a lot of animals  300,000 red deer and more than 800,000 roe deer. In Poland, we also have too many wild boar  about 200,000  and these are eating and destroying farmers cereal crops. Here, wolves are part of the solution, he says.
The scientist says wolves can move up to 30 kilometres during a single hunt. The Beskidy pack is a strong unit, eight or nine animals. This year, we have recorded  ve cubs, two young wolves and two adults.
We track them using motion cameras in the forest and by following their prints in the mud and snow. In each family group, only one pair of adults has cubs each year. All pack members care for the young.
Mys_ajek, the son of a shepherd, doesnt understand wolves bad reputation. Why did we have to have the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood, with its big bad wolf?
He is fascinated by these aloof animals who remained in the wild 33,000 years ago when others decided on a much more comfortable life as domestic dogs.
Mys_ajek says only scienti c arguments  the need to regenerate forests and control the wild animal population  can save Europes wild carnivores, especially the unpopular wolf. Natural predators balance the ecosystem. They reduce the number of herbivores, which allows trees to grow tall for birds to nest in.
The ban on wolf hunting in the western Carpathians became law in 1995 and in the whole of Poland in 1998. There are now wolf packs in nearly all the countrys major forests where the wolves coexist with humans.
The Polish government pays compensation for farm animals killed by wolves. Mys_ajek advises farmers to put up electric fences. He has helped bring back the use of two deterrents that, for reasons no one understands, wolves  nd very scary: strings of small red  ags (that you hang around sheep pens) and the Tatra Mountain Sheepdog.
Polands wolves have been helped by the countrys late infrastructure development. In 1989, when the communists left power, Poland had only one motorway. Major road projects began after Poland joined the European Union in 2004 and they are required to consider wild animals.
Attitudes have also changed. For many years, hunting was cultural. In 1975, there were fewer than 100 wolves in Poland. From the 1950s, hunting wolves was encouraged by the authorities. They paid a reward for killing a wolf worth a months salary. It was carnage.
Mys_ajek says that Polish wolves are much safer now but they are not completely safe. Packs of wolves cross country borders and hunting still happens in neighbouring Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Slovakia.
He says Polands new government, elected in October 2015, doesnt like wolves. The Environment Minister, Jan Szyszko, is a hunter. There are 120,000 licensed hunters in Poland and they have a lot of in uence.
Being a wolf advocate is not easy. You cant argue to the politicians that wolves are a big tourist attraction. Most tourists want to see the animals but wolves stay away from humans. They have a very sensitive sense of smell.
The 12 British animal science students leave the Polish Carpathians without seeing a wolf. Entwisle does not believe that Scotland will ever be able to match Polands success.
It would be amazing for the environment to have wolves back in Scotland because of the problem of too many deer. But it would just not be possible because of the roads and sheep.
There would be problems with farmers, too. In Britain, we like predators to be far away and to watch them on television, said Entwisle.


Roger McKinlay is the former president of the Royal Institute of Navigation. He says that our use of GPS (global positioning system) technology is damaging our ability to find our way. “If we do not look after them, we will lose our natural navigation abilities because we rely on technology more and more,” he wrote.
McKinlay believes it will take a lot of time and money before navigation systems will be good enough for technologies such as driverless cars to become successful. He says we need better research into systems for navigation. Also, children should learn to find their way using more traditional methods. “Schools should teach navigation and map reading,” he wrote.
In 2012, 39% of adults in the UK had a smartphone. In 2015, 66% of adults had a smartphone. So most people now use GPS technology. But McKinlay, a satellite communication and navigation consultant, believes that we should be careful not to only use our smartphones for navigation. “If we don’t practise using our navigation skills, we will lose them,” he wrote.
Research from 2009 supports this idea. “We studied a group of current London taxi drivers and a group of retired London taxi drivers,” said Dr Hugo Spiers of University College London, who is an author of the study. The results showed that the retired taxi drivers did worse on navigation tests than the current drivers. “We were able to show that their abilities decreased after they stopped using their knowledge.”
Spiers also believes it is dangerous to rely on technologies like GPS. But he says that the biggest problem is that technologies can lead drivers into dangerous situations. One of the deaths caused by satnavs (satellite navigation) was of a driver who, in 2010, drove into a lake in Spain. “It can be dangerous to use a satnav,” said Spiers.
The way we use navigation technology also has an impact on our own abilities, says Spiers. If drivers listen to instructions, they don’t need to think about where they are going, he says, but the use of smartphone apps as digital maps is better. When you use digital maps, “you have to think hard about where you are going,” he said.
McKinlay believes there have to be big improvements in navigation technologies before we can have futuristic things like driverless cars and smart cities. “For really important jobs – like landing aeroplanes or flying aeroplanes – GPS is still not good enough, ” he said.
McKinlay believes humans must still able to take control of their navigation. “We don’t want people to go into total shock when their smartphone disappears or the battery goes flat,” he said. “Technology isn’t magic – it is just a tool.”


Intermediate
Introduction Did you know that, in the UK, there is no legal requirement for restaurants to pass on tips to staff?
For a new government report, workers, employers and customers were asked about their views on tipping. After reading the report, government ministers said they wanted to change the rules and make sure low-paid workers get the money left for them by happy customers.
The report said that some waiters are charged up to a 15% administration fee on tips that are left when customers pay by credit or debit cards. The government said it would consider not allowing employers to charge workers an administration fee.
The government also said that it wanted customers to know that tips are voluntary and they want the system to be more transparent, with restaurants clearly displaying their tips policy.
We asked waiters around the UK what they think of the tipping process (including how much they take home from tips and whether its fair) and what would improve it for them.
1. Rodri, 37, London: Around 50% of a waiters income is tips Average tips: 60 per eight-hour shift I think they treat waiters best in ... the US
Everything has got fairer since the tipping scandal was exposed in the summer of 2015. This is when dozens of restaurants were exposed for taking money from tips for administration fees. However, you still hear horror stories from new employees at some chains. Some restaurants take 4% of all sales to pay the chefs and as an admin fee. It doesnt matter how much you make in tips. This means that, if a table has a 100 bill and doesnt tip, the waiter has to pay 4 of their own money. This leads to bad service. If a table doesnt tip, the waiter feels as if the company is stealing their money and resents the customers.
I get an average of around 60 of tips per shift. On a good night, this can go up to over 100 and, on a poor night, its around 40. Around 50% of a waiters income is tips. All restaurants should have to publicly state their exact tipping policy. America has it pretty good  everyone tips.
2. Elle, 22, Edinburgh: We never know whether its fair Average tips: 20 per eight-hour shift I think they treat waiters best in ... France
I have three part-time catering jobs. My main day job is in a cafe where the small number of staff work both in the cafe and in the kitchen so all our tips go in a pot and they are shared equally. My main evening job is at a restaurant where we dont get our tips but our wages are minimum wage plus an extra 2.50 per hour. My third job is events catering and nobody ever tips.
In restaurants, because a lot of customers add tips through card payments, the staff never see how much the tip is  so we dont know whether what we get is fair or not. The system seems better in France, where they dont tip much but being a waiter is seen as a proper job, with job security and a decent income.
3. Ashley, 22, London: Tips go towards customer breakages Average tips: 10-15 per eight-hour shift I think they treat waiters best in ... Australia
I work in a London pub in the evenings and I do day shifts at a local restaurant. In both places, all the tips are collected and shared out at the end of the night. Money is also taken from the tips to pay for breakages by either staff or customers.
It is incredibly unfair that our tips are shared out, especially when one member of the team doesnt work hard enough. Or, when a member of the team does incredibly well, they dont get what theyve earned. Its really unfair that tips go towards breakages made by customers. The managers should have ways to pay for broken glasses and plates without taking our tips. I make around 20 a shift in tips but often I only get 10-15 of that money.
I really rely on tips because I am only paid 7 an hour. Id rather we earned a good basic wage (like in Australia) and didnt have to rely on tips.
4. Tom, Manchester: A big night of tips can help pay the rent Average tips: 40 per eight-hour shift I think they treat waiters best in ... Italy
Where I used to work, waiters kept 80% of cash tips and 40% of card tips. The other 20% of cash went into a pot for the commis waiters and bar staff. The 60% from the card tips went to the kitchen staff.
Its hard to say how much I earned a shift; maybe around 40. It can make a massive change to your weekly  nances. Sometimes, the waiters needed a good night to pay their rent.
They have got tipping right in Italy, where customers dont add a service charge but usually round up their bill so, if their meal is 19, they leave a 20 note and dont ask for change. They respect the staff. In Italy, people often make a career as a waiter and the experience these waiters have shows in the service the customers get.


Intermediate
An extraordinary press conference at Leicester University has revealed the identity of the man in the car park with the twisted spine. It has also revealed his appalling last moments and the humiliating treatment of his body in the hours after his death. There were cheers when Richard Buckley, leader of the team of archaeologists, finally announced that they were certain they had found the body of Richard III.
The evidence was overwhelming. The scientists who carried out the DNA tests, those who created the computer-imaging technology to examine the bones in extraordinary detail, the genealogists who found a distant descendant with matching DNA, and the academics who investigated contemporary texts for accounts of the kings death and burial all reported their findings.
Work has started on designing a new tomb in Leicester Cathedral, only 100 yards from the excavation site, and a ceremony will be held to lay him into his new grave there, probably next year. Leicesters Museums Service is working on plans for a new visitor centre in an old school building overlooking the site.
Richard died at Bosworth on 22 August 1485, the last English king to die in battle, and, for the first time, the researchers revealed how. There was an intake of breath as a picture showed the base of his skull sliced off by one terrible hit, probably from a razor-sharp iron axe blade on a wooden pole. The blade probably went several centimetres into his brain and, experts say, he was certainly unconscious at once and dead almost as soon.
The injury confirms the story that he died in the middle of the battle and without his horse  as in his cry in Shakespeares play: A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse! Another cut from a sword, which also went through the bone and into the brain, would also have been fatal. But many of the other injuries were after death, suggesting that the kings 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 body was brought back on a horse and humiliated all the way is true. Bob Savage, a medieval weapons expert, said it was probably not a war weapon but the sort of sharp knife or dagger any workman might have carried.
Michael Ibsen, the Canadian-born furniture maker proved to be the descendant of Richards sister, heard the confirmation on Sunday and listened to the evidence in shocked silence. My head is no clearer now than when I first heard the news, 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 uncovered the body, in the first hour of the first day of the excavation. He did not believe he had found the king. The mechanical digger was still removing the tarmac from the car park, a place identified by years of research by local historians and the Richard III Society as the probable site of the lost church of Grey Friars. The priests of Grey Friars bravely took the body of the king and buried him in a hastily dug grave, probably still naked, but in a position of honour near the high altar of their church. The leg bones, which were just showing through the soil, were covered up again.
Ten days later, on 5 September, when further excavation proved Morris had hit the crucial spot, 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 proceeding gradually towards the torso  so it was only when we finally saw the twisted spine that I thought: My word, I think weve got him.
For Philippa Langley of the Richard III Society, Richard was the true king, the last king of the north, a brave leader who became a victim of some of the most brilliant propaganda in history, in the hands of Shakespeare. There remains the dark shadow of the little princes in the tower, an infamous story even in Richards day: the child Edward V and his brother Richard were declared illegitimate when Richard III claimed the throne, imprisoned in the Tower of London and never seen alive again. Although it is not certain that the bones found at the tower centuries later are theirs, there may be more DNA detective work to be done there.


Temperature rises resulting from unchecked climate change will be at the severe end of those projected, according to a new scientiﬁc study. The scientist leading the research said that, unless emissions of greenhouse gases were cut, the planet would heat up by a minimum of 4C by 2100, twice the level the world’s governments deem dangerous. The research indicates that fewer clouds form as the planet warms, meaning less sunlight is reﬂected back into space, driving temperatures up further still. The way clouds affect global warming has been the biggest mystery surrounding future climate change. Professor Steven Sherwood, at the University of New South Wales in Australia, who led the new work, said: “This study breaks new ground twice: ﬁrst, by identifying what is controlling the cloud changes and, second, by strongly discounting the lowest estimates of future global warming in favour of the higher and more damaging estimates.”
“4C would likely be catastrophic rather than simply dangerous,” Sherwood said. “For example, it would make life difﬁcult, if not impossible, in much of the tropics and would guarantee the eventual melting of the Greenland ice sheet and some of the Antarctic ice sheet”, with sea levels rising by many metres as a result.
The research is a “big advance” that halves the uncertainty about how much warming is caused by rises in carbon emissions, according to scientists commenting on the study, published in the journal Nature. Hideo Shiogama and Tomoo Ogura, at Japan’s National Institute for Environmental Studies, said the explanation of how fewer clouds form as the world warms was “convincing” and agreed this indicated future climate change would be greater than expected. But they said more challenges lay ahead to narrow down further the projections of future temperatures.
Scientists measure the sensitivity of the Earth’s climate to greenhouse gases by estimating the temperature rise that would be caused by a doubling of CO in the atmosphere compared with pre-industrial levels – as is likely to happen within 50 years, on current trends. For two decades, those estimates have run from 1.5C to 5C: a wide range. The new research narrowed that range to between 3C and 5C, by closely examining the biggest cause of uncertainty: clouds.
The key was to ensure that the way clouds form in the real world was accurately represented in computer climate models, which are the only tool researchers have to predict future temperatures. When water evaporates from the oceans, the vapour can rise over nine miles to form rain clouds that reﬂect sunlight; or, it may rise just a few miles and drift back down without forming clouds. In reality, both processes occur and climate models encompassing this complexity predicted signiﬁcantly higher future temperatures than those only including the nine-mile-high clouds.
“Climate sceptics like to criticize climate models for getting things wrong and we are the ﬁrst to admit they are not perfect,” said Sherwood. “But what we are ﬁnding is that the mistakes are being made by the models which predict less warming, not those that predict more.” He added: “Sceptics may also point to the ’hiatus’ of temperatures since the end of the 20th century, but there is increasing evidence that this inaptly named hiatus is not seen in other measures of the climate system and is almost certainly temporary.”
Global average air temperatures have increased relatively slowly since a high point in 1998 caused by the ocean phenomenon El Niño, but observations show that heat is continuing to be trapped in increasing amounts by greenhouse gases, with over 90% disappearing into the oceans.
Furthermore, a study in November 2013 suggested the “pause” may be largely an illusion resulting from the lack of temperature readings from polar regions, where warming is greatest. Sherwood accepts his team’s work on the role of clouds cannot deﬁnitively rule out that future temperature rises will lie at the lower end of projections. “But,” he said, for that to be the case, “one would need to invoke some new dimension to the problem involving a major missing ingredient for which we currently have no evidence. Such a thing is not out of the question but requires a lot of faith.” He added: “Rises in global average temperatures of at least 4C by 2100 will have profound impacts on the world and the economies of many countries if we don’t urgently start to curb our emissions.”


From glow-in-the-dark trees to underground bike sheds and solar-powered bins, we look at some of the more leftfield solutions to help make our cities more livable.
City living has many upsides but a sustainable lifestyle is increasingly not among them. Pollution, traffic and loss of green spaces are just some of the daily trials that city-dwellers have to deal with.
Step forward the inventors. We consider ten of the wackier solutions to making our cities more livable.
1 Pop-up parks
Today’s cities sometimes look like they’re built more for cars than people. The pop-up park is a simple idea. Take an empty car park, a pocketful of change and a pot plant or two, and make yourself your own private park. The PARK(ing) project kicked off as an arts experiment in San Francisco and has since spread across the world. Temporary urban farms and ecology demos are just some of the ideas to have emerged out of the movement, which celebrates a day of action every September.
2 Subterranean storage
Not all urban dwellers are hooked to the car. Bikes are ever more in vogue. The question is: where to keep it safe? Tokyo-based engineering firm Giken has come up with a concept for a solution: an “ecocycle, anti-seismic underground bicycle park”. At just seven metres wide, the cylindrical storage facility buries deep enough into the ground to house 204 bikes. Owners can retrieve their bike at the touch of a button, with the automated system delivering it back above ground in around 13 seconds.
3 Glow-in-the-dark trees
When most people think of trees that glow in the dark, Christmas baubles and fallen pine needles usually come to mind. Not Daan Roosegaarde. The Dutch designer-artist has comes up with a “bioluminescent” plant. The experimental technology splices DNA from luminescent marine bacteria with the chloroplast genome of a plant to create a jellyfish-type glow. Trials are underway to create an industrial-scale version of the biomimicry-inspired technology that Roosegaarde hopes could one day replace conventional street lighting.
4 Footfall harvesting
Every day, hundreds of commuters and shoppers in the east London neighbourhood of West Ham cross the elevated pedestrian walkway close to the underground station. Few probably notice the springiness beneath their feet. Fewer still connect that five-millimetre flex in the rubber surface to the powering of the streetlights above. The paved flooring is decked with smart tiles that capture the kinetic energy from pedestrians’ footsteps and convert it into electricity. Pavegen, the UK firm behind the innovation, has installed a similar system at London’s Heathrow Airport, among other international locations.
5 Supertrees
It had to happen eventually: man-made trees. Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay has a small copse of them. Up to 50 metres high, these steel-framed 'supertrees' not only have flowers and ferns growing up them but their metallic canopies act to absorb and disperse heat too. They’re equipped to harvest rainwater, too, as well as provide air ventilation for two “climate-controlled biomes” (large conservatories, in other words) below. Eleven of the 18 trees also boast solar panels along their ’branches’.
6 Water-producing billboard
We live in a consumer world. And, so we don’t forget it, advertisers wallpaper our cities and highways with banks of billboards. Researchers at Lima’s University of Engineering and Technology have come up with a billboard with a difference. Using a system of condensers and filters, it traps the humidity in the air and extracts the water vapour to produce around 96 litres of drinking water a day. The public can help themselves to it for free.
7 Neo-walled gardens
Gardens stopped being just the preserve of people’s front lawns long ago. For a while, roof gardens were all the rage. Now, it’s all about walls. Drawing on advances in hydroponics (growing plants without soil), the facades of a growing number of libraries and offices, shops and hotels are bursting into flower. One of the companies at the forefront of the “living wall” boom is UK-based firm Biotecture. The company’s “vertical gardens” can be seen gracing the Taj Hotel in central London and the exit wall of Edgware Road Tube Station, among other locations. Aesthetics aside, green walls are credited with reducing air pollution and improving air quality.
8 Algae-powered building
To prove the dynamism of the “living wall” concept, look no further than Hamburg’s International Building Exhibition. Instead of sweet-smelling flowers, the south-facing facades of the zero-carbon apartment complex are laced with green-tinged algae. The walls’ external fabric includes a “bio-skin” of hollow grass panels on which the algae photosynthesizes and grows. Periodically, the algae is harvested from the walls and fermented in a biogas plant to produce electricity.
9 Smart rubbish bins
Forget gas-guzzling dumper trucks and smelly skips. City authorities around the world are now turning to solar-powered “trash compactors” to keep litter off the streets. The 150-gallon-capacity rubbish bins are equipped with a motor that pushes down the rubbish when it nears the top. The motor is powered by solar panels embedded in the lid. The newest BigBelly bins include a wireless monitoring system that notifies rubbish collectors when the bins are full.
10 Spray paint
Finally, desperate times may sometimes call for desperate measures. That’s clearly what was going through the minds of authorities in Chengdu, one of China’s fastest growing cities. To brighten up the place, the municipal landscaping department has taken to spraying the yellowing grass green. Use of the non-toxic green spray has now spread to Tianjin and a host of other cities in China’s north-west.


Intermediate
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has asked the USA to sort out its finances after the US avoided a debt default and hundreds of thousands of federal employees returned to work after a 16-day government shutdown.
As the US President, Barack Obama, warned, Weve got to get out of the habit of governing by crisis, the IMFs managing director, Christine Lagarde, asked for more stability.
The Senate wrote a peace deal that included almost no concessions to the conservatives who had driven the country to the precipice of a new financial crisis. The deal was passed by the Republican-dominated House of Representatives at the last minute.
The World Bank, too, expressed its relief that the global economy had avoided a catastrophe. Its president, Jim Yong Kim, told politicians in all countries that they should continue to focus on making policies that encourage economic growth and give jobs and opportunity for everyone.
Stock markets in Japan, China, Hong Kong and South Korea first showed relief after the Republicans finally capitulated in their failed attempt to undermine Obamas healthcare reforms. But, in Asia and Europe, stock markets generally did not show much reaction, because traders apparently expect another fight in Washington early in 2014.
The shutdown cost the US $24bn. Chinas official Xinhua News Agency accused the US of jeopardizing other countries dollar assets. China is the US governments largest creditor.
Obama signed the legislation just after midnight on Thursday. The bill had passed easily with support from all parties in the Senate. It offers a temporary solution, funding the government until 15 January and raising the debt limit until 7 February.
But the president made clear that he did not expect another serious budget fight and shutdown in 2014.
At the White House, Obama said he hoped the deal would lift the cloud of uncertainty that had hung over the country in recent weeks.
When this agreement arrives on my desk, I will sign it immediately, he said. Hopefully, next time, it wont be in the eleventh hour. Weve got to get out of the habit of governing by crisis.
The president was asked by a journalist whether the crisis would happen again in a few months. Obama replied: No.
Earlier, the Republican senator Mike Lee said there may be more trouble ahead: The media keeps asking: Was it worth it? My answer is, it is always worth it to do the right thing. He added: This is not over.
However, the political deal was one of the worst of all possible results for Republicans. None of their goals was achieved and polls showed that voters blamed them for the crisis.


Intermediate
More than one million British workers might be employed on zero-hours contracts, a new poll shows. This suggests that British businesses are using the controversial employment contracts far more than previously thought.
After the results  which come from a poll of more than 1,000 employers by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)  people began asking the government to launch a full inquiry into the use of the contracts. Recently, many organizations  from retail chains to Buckingham Palace  have been criticized for hiring staff but offering no guarantee of work and pay each week. Employees on zero-hours contracts often get no holiday or sick pay and have to ask permission before looking for additional work elsewhere.
The CIPD found that 38% of zero-hours contract workers describe themselves as employed full-time, typically working 30 hours or more a week. One-third of voluntary sector employers use the contracts and one in four public sector organizations.
Peter Cheese, from the CIPD, said: There does need to be a closer look at what is meant by a zero-hours contract. And this needs to consider both the advantages and disadvantages for businesses and employees.
Retailer Sports Direct recently became the focus of controversy on zero-hours when it was reported that the company employs around 20,000 of its 23,000 staff on the contracts. The retailers use of the contracts was followed by details of many other companies using the contracts, including cinema chain Cineworld and Buckingham Palace, which uses them for its 350 summer workers. Pub group J D Wetherspoon has 24,000 of its staff  80% of its workforce  on zero-hours contracts.
Vidhya Alakeson, from the Resolution Foundation, added: If its true that there are around one million people on zero-hours contracts, then that would be a substantial portion of the workforce  this could no longer be dismissed as an issue affecting only a tiny minority.
Unions and poverty campaign groups have accused employers of pressuring staff into signing the contracts so that they can avoid their responsibilities and reduce staff bene ts.
Dave Prentis, of the trade union Unison, said: The vast majority of workers are only on these contracts because they have no choice. They may give  exibility to a few, but the contracts favour the employers and make it hard for workers to complain.
Workers on zero-hours contracts are often only told how many hours they will work when weekly or monthly rotas are created, but are expected to be on call for extra work at short notice. They should get holiday pay, but they do not get sick pay.
The charity National Trust, which employs many of its seasonal workers on zero-hours contracts, said it offered the same pay and bene ts to those workers, pro rata, as full-time staff, but needed some workers to be on more  exible contracts.
We believe zero-hours contracts are essential in our organization, as we are very weather-dependent, a spokeswoman said. Its important to be able to reorganize staff rotas quickly to respond to the weather and zero-hours contracts allow us to do this.
Politician Chuka Umunna said the contracts should be the exception to the rule. While some employees welcome the  exibility of such contracts, for many, zero-hours contracts leave them insecure and unsure of when work will come, he said.
Some people have argued that the  exibility of zero-hours contracts may have allowed the UK to avoid higher levels of unemployment during the economic crisis.
Figures from the poll suggest that 17% of employers in the private sector use zero-hours contracts, considerably lower than the 34% of organizations in the voluntary sector and 24% in the public sector.
Industries where employers were most likely to have at least one person on a zero-hours contract were hotels, catering and leisure (48%), education (35%) and healthcare (27%).


We may not yet be living in an age of flying cars, as predicted in the 1985 film Back to the Future II, but the rise of smartphones and other new technologies is creating a reality that is arguably as exciting and almost as far-fetched. Experts agree that economic and demographic changes, technological advances, and environmental concerns are fundamentally altering the transportation landscape. “It’s a very dynamic time,” said Robert Puentes, of the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program think- tank. “There’s a focus on a tighter connection between the role of transportation and the economic health of cities and its impact on people.”
As the average US commute lengthens and the country’s infrastructure ages badly, cities across the US are being forced to redefine what transportation is. Increasingly, urban planners, transportation experts and scientists are realizing that old auto-centric models focused on easing traffic congestion aren’t enough to tackle issues like population growth and carbon emissions, and transportation is now, more than ever, an integral component of a city’s larger sustainability efforts.
Big US cities like Los Angeles, Seattle and Chicago are working to make better use of their streets by adding more bus lanes, augmenting pedestrian walkways and expanding their rail options, while at the same time working with the private sector on advanced technologies that will allow a vehicle to drive itself and communicate with other vehicles and its environment, essentially making transportation intelligent. “The most sustainable places to live are those places that have multi-modal transport systems,” Puentes said. “You can’t be a global competitive city if you don’t have a robust transportation network.”
Here are three of the key trends that experts predict will shape the transportation industry over the coming years.
The rise of ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft – essentially taxis booked at the click of a smartphone button – and apps like Waze, which uses real-time traffic data to find the quickest routes for drivers, are dramatically changing how people get around and affecting the very way in which traffic moves through a city. Communication between riders and drivers, between different vehicles and between cars and infrastructure is bringing transportation into a new era, according to Allan Clelland, an expert on transportation technology.
According to a recent study from the UCLA’s Institute of Transportation Studies, vehicle travel has declined among millennials – individuals born roughly between the early 1980s and early 2000s – compared to previous generations. According to the study, those born in the 1990s are making 4% fewer car trips and travelling 18% fewer miles per year, on average, than members of previous generations did at the same stage in their lives.
Meanwhile, those still driving cars are dealing with less traffic thanks to Waze. Experts say the traffic app has eased congestion on motorways and reduced travel times for drivers but also led to a problematic rise in cars moving through residential neighbourhoods. This has angered residents, who claim the increased traffic on their quiet roads reduces their quality of life.
This trend could continue as vehicle-to-vehicle data communication, as well as communication between vehicles and the surrounding infrastructure, grows. Currently, a traffic light can detect when a car is approaching but that’s about it. Companies are working to develop technology that will enable a vehicle to tell traffic control systems not only that it is present but also where it is going and how fast it is travelling.
Driverless cars have been in the headlines ever since Google began road testing the vehicles back in 2012 but no-one really knows when driverless cars will become commonplace. However, the partial automation of cars is already underway. Alexandre Bayen of the University of California expects automation will progress in stages: first, there might be automated buses with their own lanes, then perhaps lorries in ports or mining towns: essentially, vehicles that are connected electronically and travel in single file.
The idea of a fully automated transportation system is intriguing because it has the potential to improve safety by removing human error and increase the efficiency of car owners, who can get on with other tasks during a long commute. It can also help reduce carbon emissions and traffic congestion and allow more people access to cars. But, even if driverless technology were ready to hit the roads now, it would take a long time to get fully automated given the average age of cars on the road is 11.5 years old.
To see what driverless cars might look like in action, go to the video at: vimeo.com/37751380.
As the world races to avoid catastrophic climate change, and countries, states and cities work to meet ambitious emissions goals, these policies could also have a big impact on the future of transportation, spurring everything from zero- and low-emission vehicles to apps that encourage more walking, biking and carpooling.
Sharon Feigon, executive director of the Shared Use Mobility Center, envisages a future where a person can use a transit pass that gives them access to numerous modes of transport in a given day. If their train is delayed, for instance, they can access a city bike, take a shuttle or rent a vehicle through a car share programme using the same pass. “We’re going to see these systems packaged together and make it as easy as possible to connect them up with each other so people can transfer seamlessly between them,” she said.
When considering the future of transportation, it’s also important to keep in mind why people travel: they may be going to work, to meet friends or family, or to do the shopping. Technologies and trends that reduce the need for those trips – say, virtual meetings or telecommuting – could also have a big impact on transportation.
There was a time when the idea of a flying car represented the height of innovation but the technologies being imagined and developed now could be seen as even more sophisticated – and more useful in tackling the social and environmental threats that we face over the coming decades.”


Every morning, before the temperatures in India’s capital start to rise, a handful of old friends gather. On the parched grass not far from the India Gate monument at the centre of Delhi, they stretch, breathe and meditate.
“It is the only healthy way to start the day. Much better than an egg or a sandwich or a cup of tea,” said Arvind Singh at 6.15am as he did his breathing exercises on a bench.
Singh, a 42-year-old salesman, and his friends are far from alone. All across India, in the overcrowded cities, on whatever green space is left, similar scenes are being played out.
On 21 June – the new International Day of Yoga – Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, hopes the world will join in. The grass near India Gate will be transformed into the venue for what, it is hoped, will be the biggest single yoga session ever held, with up to 45,000 people running through a 35-minute routine.
The participants will include 64-year-old Modi, most of his government and, they hope, a range of celebrities. Officials have been sent to round up volunteers from scores of countries to reinforce the international credentials of the ancient Indian practice.
Getting Indians, and others, stretching has emerged as something of a focus for Modi, who led his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to a landslide election victory in 2014. In May 2015, schools were directed to make sure students attended yoga events timed to coincide with the big demonstration in Delhi, even though it is being held on a Sunday.
Officials have already signalled the introduction of compulsory yoga for India’s famously out-of-shape police officers and said that daily yoga lessons would be offered free to three million civil servants and their families. Air India, the national carrier, has also said it will introduce yoga for trainee pilots. More controversially, senior politicians in India have suggested more widespread practice of yoga could bring down soaring levels of sexual violence in the country.
Modi, an ascetic who is a committed vegetarian and an enthusiastic yoga practitioner himself, suggested an international yoga day when speaking to the United Nations on a visit to New York in 2014.
“Yoga is an invaluable gift of India’s ancient tradition. It embodies unity of mind and body, thought and action, restraint and fulfilment, harmony between man and nature, a holistic approach to health and wellbeing. It is not about exercise but discovering the sense of oneness with yourself, the world and nature,” Modi said at the time, adding that yoga could help in tackling climate change.
The discipline is between 3,000 and 6,000 years old and originated somewhere on the Indian subcontinent, possibly among religious ascetics. Its meditative practices, as well as its physical exercises, have long been associated with local religious traditions including Buddhism and Jainism, as well as the Hinduism practised by 80% of Indians.
Modi, who started his career as an organizer for a hardline Hindu nationalist organization, has been previously criticized for promoting a view of Indian culture that has little place for other traditions. One commentator called the event on 21 June “a mix of cultural nationalism, commercialization and subtle coercion”.
Novelist Ajaz Ashraf wrote on India’s Scroll website: “Underlying it is the hope of bringing into the BJP tent the modern-day gurus and their teeming followers, who largely constitute the urban middle classes.”
Others, however, point to a recent US court ruling that said yoga was not inevitably linked to faith. A court in California ruled that: “While the practice of yoga may be religious in some contexts, yoga classes as taught in the [San Diego] district are, as the trial court determined, 'devoid of any religious, mystical or spiritual trappings.'” This came after two parents claimed yoga in schools promoted Hinduism and inhibited Christianity.
Amish Tripathi, the author of best-selling novels set 4,000 years ago in India that retell stories from Hindu mythology, said characters in his books practise yoga.
“In ancient India, it was part of daily life, both the physical and the mental aspects. Every culture has gifted something to the world and this is our gift,” Tripathi said.
Suneel Singh, a guru in south Delhi, agreed that yoga did not belong to any one religion: “Is t’ai chi just Chinese? Is football just English? Same with yoga. It is a complete package for everybody’s body and a cheap way to keep you hale and hearty.”


Intermediate
On the market square in Rjukan stands a statue of the towns founder, a respected Norwegian engineer and businessman called Sam Eyde. The great man looks north across the square at a mountainside in front of him.
Behind him, to the south, rises the 1,800-metre peak known as Gaustatoppen. Between the mountains, along the narrow Vestfjord valley, lies the small, but once powerful, town that Eyde built at the beginning of the last century, so the workers in his factories could live there.
Eyde used the power of the 100-metre Rjukanfossen waterfall to make hydroelectricity in what was, at the time, the worlds biggest power plant.
But one thing he couldnt do was change the sun. Deep in its eastwest valley, surrounded by high mountains, Rjukan and its 3,400 inhabitants are in shadow for half the year. During the day, from late September to mid-March, the town, three hours north-west of Oslo, is not completely dark, but its certainly not bright, either.
Now, high on the mountain opposite Eydes statue, 450 metres above the town, three large, solar-powered, computer-controlled mirrors slowly track the movement of the sun across the sky. They reflect the sunshine down on to the square and fill it with bright sunlight.
Its the sun! grins Ingrid Sparbo, lifting her face to the light and closing her eyes. A retired secretary, Sparbo has lived all her life in Rjukan and says people do sort of get used to the shade. You end up not thinking about it, really. But this ... this is so warming. Not just physically, but mentally. Its 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 smiling at the warmth on their faces. Children smile. Lots of people take photographs. A shop assistant, Silje Johansen, says its awesome. Just awesome.
Electrical engineer Eivind Toreid is more cautious. Its a funny thing, he says. Not real sunlight, but very similar. Like a spotlight.
Heidi Fieldheim says she heard all about it on the radio. But its far more than I expected, she says. This will bring much happiness.
Across the road, in the Nye Tider caf, sits the man who created this unexpected happiness. Martin Andersen is a 40-year-old artist who moved to Rjukan in the summer of 2001.
The idea of an artwork Andersen called the Solspeil, or Sun mirror, came to him at the end of one September: Every day, we would take our young child for a walk, he says, and, every day, I realized we were having to go a little further down the valley to find the sun. By 28 September, the sun completely disappears from Rjukans market square. It doesnt reappear until 12 March.
In the months between September and March, Andersen says, Wed look up and see blue sky above, and the sun high on the mountain slopes, but the only way we could get to it was to go out of town. Its sad, a town that people have to leave in order to feel the sun.
Twelve years after he first dreamed of his Solspeil, a German company specializing in CSP  concentrated solar power  brought in, by helicopter, the three 17-sq-m glass mirrors that now stand high above the market square in Rjukan. It took, he says, a bit longer than wed imagined.
It really works. Even the people who were against it at first agree that it works.
I was strongly against it, admits Nils Eggerud. Like many others, he felt that the money should have been spent on other things  on extra carers to look after Rjukans old people, perhaps, or improved school facilities, cycle paths and roads.
And I still dont know about the continued maintenance costs, he says. What will they be, who will pay them? But ... well, it does feel nice, standing here. And, really, you just have to look at the peoples faces.
In his office overlooking the square, Rjukans young mayor, Steinar Bergsland, is interested not so much in the cost but in the benefits the mirrors might bring to the town.
Already, Bergsland says, visitor numbers are higher than usual for the time of year and Rjukans shopkeepers have reported that they are earning more money than usual. A hi-tech company is interested in moving to Rjukan, attracted by the cutting-edge technology at the top of the mountain and the publicity it has attracted.
This is a powerful symbol for Rjukan, Bergsland says, and, helped by government grants and a donation from a local business, the town needed to find just 1m krone  100,000  of the mirrors total 5m-krone cost. And, he says, just look out of the window. Look at those happy faces. Now its here, people love it.


The age of the big British summer music festival, including Glastonbury, is drawing to a close, according to the leading rock promoter and manager Harvey Goldsmith.
The man who has produced and worked with most of the western world’s biggest music stars, from the Who, the Rolling Stones and Queen to Madonna, Bob Dylan and Luciano Pavarotti, said the biggest problem was a dire lack of major new bands to succeed the old ones.
“The festival circuit has peaked,” he said, speaking at the Hay Festival of Literature and Arts in Powys, Wales. “It really peaked about two years ago. There’s too many of them and there are not enough big acts to headline them. That is a big, big problem in our industry. And, we are not producing a new generation of these kind of acts – the likes of the Rolling Stones, Muse, even the Arctic Monkeys – that can headline.”
There were about 900 music festival events in the UK between May and September 2014, he said, and there is no way they can all continue. “Music festivals have probably run their course. What is going to happen is a growth in events where it isn’t just music but, like this one, with poetry or books or magic shows. There will be lots of small combination festivals that give something extra – not people standing around in a massive great field unable to go to the toilet because they might miss the band.”
Clearly, the way music is being delivered has changed, he said. “People don’t seem to want to listen to a body of work, an album, any more. And, most rock bands built a reputation on a body of work – they might take three albums to really hone their art, to become great, but young people don’t want that. They home in on a track, a sound, then, ping, off again to the next one. Pop pervades, not that there’s anything wrong with pop. I think it will come round again but it will take time.”
Goldsmith, 69, also revealed that he has teamed up with Robin de Levita, the Dutch producer of the Who’s 1970s rock musical Tommy, at a new 1,100-seat theatre in Wembley, which is due to be finished in time for the first stage adaptation of the phenomenally successful teen book and movie series The Hunger Games in June 2016.
De Levita would, said Goldsmith, be bringing his experimental SceneAround concept to London – theatre that puts the audience seating on a turntable that rotates round a series of scenes built around its circumference, accompanied by projections on panel screens. The concept was pioneered in an aircraft hangar outside Amsterdam and has proved hugely successful.
Goldsmith, who is already planning to bring a production of the Anne Frank story to the as-yet-unnamed venue, said: “It’s a whole completely different way of producing shows.”
During his Hay appearance, the impresario also revealed some of the “access-all-areas” secrets from his long career in the music industry, talking about Keith Moon putting dynamite down a Sydney hotel room toilet in an effort to unblock it and witnessing the paralysing stage fright that gripped John Lennon just before an appearance at Madison Square Garden in 1974 and led to him being dragged, vomiting, out of his dressing room and shoved out on stage. “It’s the most bizarre thing, really, how common that is among artists. It’s odd how stricken with fear they’ll get but, as soon as the first chord is hit, they’re fine,” he said.
He also laid to rest a long-running rock’n’ roll mystery: why Elvis Presley never performed outside North America. Presley’s long-time manager, Colonel Tom Parker, admitted to him over tea, he said, that the real reason why Goldsmith’s attempts to bring the singer to London had failed was Parker’s own uncertain immigration status.
“He explained that it was because he was an illegal Dutch immigrant. He didn’t want to risk leaving the US – it was him, not Elvis,” said Goldsmith.
And, his ultimate rock’n’ roll performer? “Freddie Mercury had to be our most powerful stage performer, the best live performer we’ve ever had. At Live Aid, he went out and saw that audience and just grabbed it.”
But, the next Queen was still far from being formed, he said. “We’re not producing a new generation of this kind of act. Coldplay is probably the last one to come up and that was ten years ago. There isn’t much out there that looks like it is forming the next generation of heritage artists.
“So, with no big acts to headline, there are no big shows. Glastonbury has got to the point where it can’t find any more big acts and that’s the pinnacle of the festivals. They are really over.”


He was a normal millionaire. He had a gold and silver Rolex watch and lots of expensive cars. He liked to buy modern art. This Chinese businessman had many companies and a large villa in Madrid. But, he had almost no money in the bank. This interested the Spanish authorities.
Gao Ping sold goods to 4,000 Chinese markets in Spain. But, authorities suspected he was not paying taxes on the clothes, furniture and other goods he was bringing in from China.
When police went to his warehouses in 2012, they found lots of cash: €100, €200 and €500 notes. Police took away around €12m, the most cash ever found by Spanish police.
Police have been worried about €500 notes for a long time. Small and easy to transport, they are the favourite banknotes of criminals. The sum of €1m in €500 notes fits easily into a small laptop bag. The same amount in €50 notes would need a small suitcase.
The UK stopped using the €500 note in 2010 because they were used “almost entirely by criminals”. In 2009, Italy’s central bank said that mafia money launderers and terrorists used the notes. Canada got rid of its $1,000 note in 2000 because the police advised them to.
These days, we have electronic payment systems and contactless cards so people are asking why it is still necessary to have these banknotes. Peter Sands, the former head of Standard Chartered Bank, said we should get rid of large notes, including the €500, the $100, the 1,000 Swiss Franc note and the £50. Sands said it was time to get rid of high-value notes that make life easier for “bad guys”. Criminals would instead use smaller banknotes, or gold or diamonds, but these are big so criminals cannot carry them easily”, he said.
The purple €500 note was introduced in 2002: it replaced the 1,000 Deutschmark, the 10,000 Belgian franc and the 500,000 Italian lira. In Germany and Austria, people still pay with paper money and coins more than half the time.
Europol would like central banks to take more responsibility for what happens with €500 notes. EU finance ministers have asked banks and authorities to look at whether countries should limit high-value notes or get rid of them.


When two islanders spotted a small fibreglass boat washed up on a remote Pacific atoll, they decided to take a closer look. What they found inside was a tale of adventure and unlikely survival to rival the blockbuster book and film Life of Pi: an emaciated man with long hair and a beard, who claimed to have been drifting for 16 months after setting out from Mexico, more than 12,500km away.
The man, dressed only in a ragged pair of underpants, told his rescuers that he had been adrift in the 7.3-metre fibreglass boat, whose engines were missing their propellers, since he left Mexico for El Salvador in September 2012. A companion had died at sea several months earlier, he said.
“His condition isn’t good, but he’s getting better,” said Ola Fjeldstad, a Norwegian anthropology student doing research on the isolated Ebon Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands archipelago. The man had said his name was José Ivan and he had indicated that he survived by catching turtles and birds with his bare hands, but, because he spoke only Spanish, further details were sketchy. There was no fishing equipment on the boat, but a turtle was inside when it washed up. “The boat is really scratched up and looks like it has been in the water for a long time,” Fjeldstad told reporters.
According to the researcher, the islanders who found the man took him to the main island in the atoll – which is so remote it has only one phone line and no internet – to meet the mayor, Ione de Brum, who contacted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Majuro, the Marshall Islands capital. Officials at the ministry said that they were awaiting more details and expected the man to be taken to the capital.
The government airline’s only plane that can land at Ebon is currently undergoing maintenance and is not expected to return to service for several days. Officials are considering sending a boat to pick up the castaway. “He’s staying at the local council house and a family is feeding him,” said Fjeldstad, who added that the man had a basic health check and was found to have low blood pressure, but did not appear to have any life-threatening conditions and was able to walk with the aid of men on the island. “We’ve been giving him a lot of water and he’s gaining strength.”
Fraser Christian, who teaches maritime survival courses at his Coastal Survival School in Dorset, said the man’s story, if true, would be remarkable but far from unique. It was entirely possible to catch turtles or small fish by hand, he said, since “they are inquisitive and they will approach a small boat to shelter underneath it”. Christian advises clients who find themselves forced to eat turtles to start with their eyes – “lots of fluid” – then move on to the blood.
he major problems the man would have faced were exposure and dehydration. “The basic rule is: no water, no food. You need water to digest protein. If you have no fresh water and it doesn’t rain for a few days, so you can’t collect rainwater, you have basically had it.” Individual physiology also plays a part, he said, with some people better suited to survival than others. “The mental thing is key and that’s often down to people’s situation in life and how used they are to dealing mentally with hardship.”
Stories of survival in the vast Pacific Ocean are not uncommon. In 2006, three Mexicans made international headlines when they were discovered drifting, also in a small fibreglass boat near the Marshall Islands. They claimed to have survived for nine months at sea on a diet of rainwater, raw fish and seabirds, with their hope kept alive by reading the Bible. But Cliff Downing, who teaches sea survival to sailors, said he was sceptical about the latest tale. “It just doesn’t sound right to me. There are 1,001 hazards that would make his survival for so long very unlikely. One would want to know a lot more.”
More castaways: Poon Lim, a Chinese sailor from a British ship sunk by a German submarine in 1942, survived 133 days on a wooden raft floating in the South Atlantic before being rescued by Brazilian fishermen. In 1971, experienced Scottish sailor Dougal Robertson and his family were sailing to the Galápagos Islands from Panama when their boat was sunk by killer whales. They survived 38 days on a lifeboat before being rescued by a passing fishing trawler.
In 2006, three Mexican fishermen were discovered drifting in a small boat near the Marshall Islands, nine months after setting out on a shark-fishing expedition. They apparently survived on a diet of rainwater, raw fish and seabirds. Before being rescued by the US coastguard, the men stayed alive by eating tuna. A Panamanian fisherman sued Princess Cruises in 2012 after one of their ships ignored cries for help from him and two companions who were stranded in their broken boat. He survived 28 days adrift, but his friends both died of thirst.


In Iceland, you can be called Aagot, Arney or Ásfríður; Baldey, Bebba or Brá. Dögg, Dimmblá, Etna and Eybjört are fine and so are Frigg, Glódís, Hörn and Ingunn. Jórlaug is OK and so are Obba, Sigurfljóð, Úranía and Vagna. But, if you are a girl in Iceland, you cannot be called Harriet.
“The situation is silly,” said Tristan Cardew, a British cook who moved to Iceland in 2000. With his Icelandic wife, Kristin, Cardew is appealing against a decision by the National Registry in the capital Reykjavik – the registry decided not to renew the Cardew’s ten-year-old daughter Harriet’s passport because it does not recognize her first name.
The registry does not recognize the name of Harriet’s 12-year-old brother Duncan either, so, until now, the two children have travelled on passports with the names Stúlka and Drengur Cardew, which mean Girl and Boy Cardew. But, this time, the registry has decided to apply the law. “And the law says no official document will be given to people who do not have an approved Icelandic name.”
The situation meant the family were going to miss their holiday in France but they have applied to the British embassy for an emergency UK passport, which should now allow them to leave.
Names are important in Iceland, a country of only 320,000 people. The law says that – unless both parents are foreign – the names of children born in Iceland must be submitted to the National Registry within six months of birth. If a name is not on a recognized list of 1,853 female and 1,712 male names, the parents must get approval from the Icelandic Naming Committee.
About 5,000 children are born in Iceland each year and the committee receives about 100 applications. It rejects about half of these names because it wants to preserve the Icelandic language. There is a law that says names must be able to have Icelandic grammatical endings and should be written using the ordinary rules of Icelandic spelling.
What this means is that names with letters that do not officially exist in Iceland’s 32-letter alphabet, such as “c”, are not permitted. Also, names that cannot be used with the case endings used in Icelandic are also rejected. “That was the problem with Harriet,” said Cardew.
The country’s naming laws have been criticized in recent years: in 2013, Blær – “Light Breeze” – Bjarkardóttir Rúnarsdottir won the right to be officially called her name, not “Girl”. The former mayor of Reykjavik, Jón Gnarr, has also called Iceland’s naming law “unfair, stupid and against creativity”.
The Cardews could solve Harriet’s problem by giving her an Icelandic middle name. “But it’s a bit late for that and much too silly,” said Cardew. “Are they saying they don’t want us here?”


SeaWorld has suffered an 84% collapse in profits as customers have deserted the controversial aquatic theme park company following claims it mistreated orca whales.
The company, which trains dolphins and killer whales to perform tricks in front of stadiums full of spectators, has reported declines in attendance, sales and profits because of “continued brand challenges”.
SeaWorld has been in the headlines since the 2013 documentary Blackfish detailed claims that its treatment of orca whales provoked violent behaviour, contributing to the deaths of three people. Following the release of the documentary, attendance collapsed, the company lost more than half of its market value on Wall Street and its former CEO was forced out.
The company has since launched a nationwide marketing campaign to combat animal rights activists claims that, among other things, captive orcas die at a younger age than their wild counterparts.
Despite cutting ticket prices and spending $10m on the marketing blitz, which features its veterinarians caring for whales, SeaWorld CEO Joel Manby was forced to admit that the company is still struggling to convince the public that it treats its whales well.
“We realize we have much work ahead of us to recover more of our attendance base, increase revenue and improve our performance, as returning to historical performance levels will take time and investment,” Manby said. “On the reputation side, early feedback on our campaign has been positive. However, we recognize that fully resolving our brand challenges in California will require sustained focus and commitment to correct misinformation.”
“We will continue to fight with the facts because the facts are on our side,” he said recently on a conference call with journalists and analysts.
Manby, who joined the company as CEO in 2015 to help the company rehabilitate itself, said he would set out his vision for the future of the company at a special event on 6 November. Already in the pipeline are plans for a new shark exhibition in Orlando and an attraction in San Antonio that will allow customers to swim with dolphins in a “naturalistic” setting.
The company’s financial report, released on 6 August, showed net income in the second quarter dropped from $37.4m in 2014 to $5.8m in 2015, an 84% decrease. Revenue fell from $405m to $392m. Attendance dropped by more than 100,000 from 6.58 million to 6.48 million. Analysts will now be closely watching SeaWorld’s sales and attendance numbers in the third quarter, which is traditionally the company’s most profitable and covers the summer holiday season.
Attendance may suffer from a fresh scandal in July 2015, in which a SeaWorld employee was alleged to have infiltrated animal rights protest groups against the company. Jared Goodman, director of animal law for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which has been leading campaigns against SeaWorld, said: “SeaWorld is in the midst of a spying scandal, animals are dying in its tanks and tens of thousands of people have opposed its bid to build a new orca prison so it should come as no surprise that SeaWorld’s quarterly earnings have plummeted yet again in the second quarter. Families just don’t want to buy tickets to see orcas going insane inside tiny tanks and SeaWorld’s profits, like the orcas, won’t recover until the abusement park empties its tanks and builds coastal sanctuaries.”
SeaWorld’s shares, which were worth $39 in 2013, were changing hands for just under $18 in August 2015.


Intermediate
Governments across Europe dream of  nding a magic solution to rising unemployment. But, in the hardest-hit parts of the EU, unemployment continues to rise and the talk does little to reduce the number of people without work.
Now, in a corner of Italy, one mayor thinks he has found an answer to his towns serious lack of work. Valter Piscedda, the mayor of Elmas, a small town near Sardinias capital, Cagliari, wants to pay residents to leave. The council will pay for ten unemployed locals to take intensive English lessons, get on a cheap  ight and look for jobs elsewhere in Europe.
This idea is a result of common sense and experience, the mayor told the Guardian. Over the past year and a half  especially in the past few months  I have been seeing young people, almost every day, who are despairing about their search for work. Some ask for help in  nding it here. Others have tried everything and are so discouraged that they no longer want to stay and wait. And they want to go and gain work experience abroad; life experience, too.
So, my idea was this: put everything in place so that those who want to gain experience abroad are able to, he said.
As the national economy continues to falter, Sardinia, along with much of southern and central Italy, is struggling with high unemployment. Unemployment was at 17.7% in the second quarter of 2014, according to Italys National Institute of Statistics, Istat. More than 54% of people under 25 are out of work.
For the Adesso Parto (Now Im leaving) programme, Elmass council will give 12,000 on a  rst-come,  rst-served basis to applicants aged between 18 and 50. They just have to be out of work and have lived in the town for three years. They do not have to be university educated and their annual income must be no more than 15,000.
The idea of encouraging people to leave is sensitive at a time when huge numbers of Italians  many of them bright young graduates  are leaving their country every year. But Piscedda, who belongs to the Democratic Party of the Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, believes that the people he is sending away might return and give me back 100 times what they were given. More importantly, he wants the scheme to help those most in need.
Its a programme for those with no other resource; its the last-chance saloon. It will allow them the dignity of not having to ask a friend for money or put burdens on families, he said.
Earlier in 2014, he added, the council launched a scheme for businesses  they were given  nancial incentives to hire young workers from Elmas. We advertised 20 of these positions, he said. We got 120 applications.
In Elmas, the scheme has got mixed reactions. The reality is that there is little work here, said Alessandro Macis. The opportunity to go abroad to learn about the workplace and experience other cultures can be very worthwhile. The son of a friend of mine who didnt study much is in London and hes really  nding his way. He started as a waiter. Now, hes a cook and hes learning English.
Others were perplexed. I heard about it but I thought it was strange. If you have that money to pay for people to go away, why dont you use that money to keep them here? said Consuelo Melis, who works behind the bar in a local cafe. On Twitter, one of many reactions was disbelief. The states admission of defeat, commented Marco Patavino. Institutions are raising the white  ag, remarked Carlo Mazzaggio.
Piscedda, however, says of his online critics: Probably, they are people that arent in need ... Every day, I deal with peoples problems and I have to do something to try to solve them. These people, if they had an alternative, they wouldnt be asking for help.
The work I can create, as mayor, is temporary. I can have a piazza cleaned. I can have it cleaned again. I can have the streets cleaned. But these are all temporary things that give nothing beyond that little bit of money for a few months. I want to go beyond that.


It was a beautiful summer evening and I decided to go for a swim off Doolin Pier in County Clare, Ireland, where I moved in 2012. There was a woman in the water with Dusty, a dolphin who has a great relationship with a group of people she regularly swims with.
Dusty arrived in Doolin in about 2008 and hundreds of people have swum with her since, giving the impression that she’s totally tame. She has even starred in an Irish tourist-board ad campaign in which a girl says she would like to touch a dolphin.
That evening, this woman was tickling Dusty’s tummy and it just looked so inviting. There were about 20 tourists and locals on the pier, looking at this lovely spectacle. Just after I got into the water, Dusty left the woman she was with and went ballistic – I found out afterwards that she’s very territorial when she is with somebody. Her tail was flapping wildly and, at first, I thought it was a display but, then, I twigged: maybe she’s angry. I knew I had to get out of the water so I swam towards the pier but, within microseconds, Dusty had ploughed into me with her snout. It was very powerful and painful, and the speed was amazing. I went hurtling forwards.
All these people on the pier were staring down at me open-mouthed. Dusty was still in the water beside me, her tail flapping crazily. That was more frightening than anything: I thought, if she hits me with her tail, I could go under; I’m gone.
I was at the pier but couldn’t get out because of my injuries. I felt pure terror. I shouted for help and a guy put his arm in and pulled me out on to the steps. Then, another man appeared and said he was an orthopaedic surgeon who specialized in marine trauma. He had been driving into Doolin when he saw what was happening on the pier. I was so cold and very worried – I didn’t know how bad my injuries were and my biggest fear was internal bleeding. He checked me over and was very reassuring, saying he couldn’t feel any evidence of it but that I probably had broken bones. I found out later that I had six spinal fractures, three broken ribs and a damaged lung.
I was in hospital for five days, in a back brace for several weeks and off work for five months with limited mobility, stiffness and pain. Then, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress. My near-death experience had left me anxious about everything and overreacting in a way I had never done before. I felt that people were looking at me in the wrong way, I began to struggle with loud noises and I suffered from memory loss. Three months before the accident, I had opened a health-food shop but I had to let it go because I could no longer work. It was the toughest year ever but, now, it’s all behind me. I had craniosacral therapy, osteopathy and massage, and am building up my own osteopathy practice now. I have a new empathy with patients because I have been one.
I am grateful that I am healthy and I really want to prevent other people being injured. We have this lovely idea about dolphins and have faith in them – who would think a dolphin would ever attack a person? If you see a ferocious animal coming at you with its teeth bared, it’s scary, but dolphins have this lovely, wide smile.
I don’t have any anger towards Dusty. I respect her. But I was in her territory and she’s a wild, unpredictable animal. People need to know that. So many come here to swim with her and they don’t understand how dangerous it can be. Mine were reportedly among several injuries that summer.
After the man pulled me out of the water, Dusty swam away but, then, she came back and was bobbing vertically next to me, looking at me. We locked eyes and I felt there was complete remorse in her. She was a totally different dolphin; the anger had gone. The people on the pier were in awe. When she had that little moment with me, that was the end of the terror. I made my peace with her.