Intermediate
Wales will become the first country in the UK that will presume people have consented to donate their organs unless they opt out.
The Welsh Assembly has voted to adopt the opt-out policy, which will allow hospitals to act on the assumption that people who die want to donate unless they have specifically registered an objection.
The policy was passed by 43 votes to eight, with two abstentions, in spite of objections from religious groups for moral reasons and worries that the scheme could add to the unhappiness of grieving families.
This is a huge day for Wales and, most importantly, for the 226 people in Wales waiting for an organ transplant, said the Welsh Health Minister, Mark Drakeford.
I am proud that Wales will be the first nation in the UK to take this step. As a society, we have shown we are prepared to take action to increase organ donation and to provide hope to those people waiting every week for a transplant.
Family refusal is a major factor that affects the numbers of organ donations and the main reason for refusal is lack of knowledge of their loved ones wishes.
The aim of the scheme has always been to respect the wishes of the deceased; however, relatives or friends may object to consent.
When family members know that organ donation is what the deceased wanted, they usually agree to the donation. The new law will work by making clearer peoples wishes around the issue of organ donation and it will increase the rate of consent to donation.
The issue is controversial  opponents are worried that the urgent need for more kidneys and hearts will lead to hospitals overruling the wishes of those who have died and their family. But the government insists their wishes will be protected.
Relatives will have a clear right of objection, giving them the chance to show that the deceased would not have wanted to be an organ donor.
Wales has acted because of an acute shortage of organs. We have the problem of not having enough organs for people who need them, said Drakeford. About one person every week dies in Wales while on a waiting list.
Around a third of the Welsh population is on the organ donor register, but well over two-thirds in surveys say they are happy to be organ donors. That other third is people who dont find the time to put their names on the register.
The new law would apply to anybody over 18 who has lived in Wales for at least the year before his or her death. Donated organs would not only go to people in need of a transplant in Wales but to anybody in the UK.
Doctors are delighted at the new policy. The British Medical Association has campaigned for a long time for an opt-out system because it is worried about the growing number of people who need transplants.
Big efforts have been made in recent years to increase the number of those who carry an organ donation card, with a good deal of success. Hospitals have also introduced improved systems for coordinating transplants, including the important discussions with relatives when no one really knows what the wishes of the deceased were. But the increase in numbers of organs that are donated is still not enough.
Some religious groups, on the other hand, strongly disagree with the new law  they argue that it would cause further unhappiness to relatives. Members of the Muslim Council of Wales and the South Wales Jewish Representative Council have expressed worries, while the Archbishop of Wales, Barry Morgan, said that donation ought to be a gift of love, of generosity. If organs can be taken unless someone has explicitly registered an objection, thats not an expression of love. Its more a medical use of a body.


JMW Turner, one of Britain’s greatest painters, is to be the face of the new £20 note, following a nationwide vote.
It will be the first time an artist has appeared on a British banknote, after the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, asked the public to nominate a deceased cultural figure they felt deserved the high honour.
Turner, renowned for his dramatic seascapes, beat off competition from 590 painters, sculptors, fashion designers, photographers, film-makers and actors put forward by 30,000 members of the public.
The list included Alfred Hitchcock, Alexander McQueen, Derek Jarman, Laura Ashley, William Morris and Vanessa Bell, which was then narrowed down by a panel of artists, critics and historians to a final choice of five.
The final five – Barbara Hepworth, Charlie Chaplin, Josiah Wedgwood, William Hogarth and Turner – were selected on the basis of their “unquestioned” contribution to both the visual arts and British society as a whole, as well as their enduring influence.
Fittingly, the announcement of the new banknote was made at the Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate, which stands on the former site of Mrs Booth’s lodging house, where Turner would always stay when he visited. The announcement was made jointly by Carney and the artist Tracey Emin, who grew up in the town.
Carney said it had been “so important to get this right and have a proper process that involved the public,” adding that, far from banknotes being purely a practical necessity, “if done properly, they can be a piece of art in everyone’s pocket”.
“Money is memory for a country and its people,” said the Bank of England governor. “Banknotes of the Bank of England are a celebration of the UK’s heritage, a salute to its culture, a testament to its great achievements, including those of its most notable citizens. In short, money has not just economic value, it has cultural value as well.
“Turner is arguably the single most influential British artist of all time. His work was transformative and endures today. And his work will now feature on another 2bn works of art – our new £20 notes.”
“The fact that we will have Turner on the £20 note shows now that the British people are a nation of people who appreciate creativity and appreciate the arts,” said Emin.
The note will feature Turner’s 1799 self-portrait, which currently hangs in Tate Britain, as well as one of his most recognizable works, The Fighting Temeraire, a tribute to the ship that played a distinguished role in Nelson’s victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.
Emblazoned on the note will also be a quote from the artist – “light is therefore colour” – as well as his signature, taken from his will, in which he bequeathed many of his works to the nation.
The new £20 note, which replaces the one featuring social philosopher and economic theorist Adam Smith, will enter circulation by 2020. This is the first time the public have been given a say over whose face appears on a British banknote.


Police and intelligence agencies around the world have, for almost 100 years, relied on lie detectors to help convict criminals or unearth spies and traitors.
The polygraph is beloved of the movies, with countless dramatic moments showing the guilty sweating profusely as they are hooked up.
But the invention could soon be defunct. Researchers in Britain and the Netherlands have made a breakthrough, developing a method with a success rate in tests of over 70% that could be in use in police stations around the world within a decade. Rather than relying on facial tics, talking too much or waving of arms – all seen as tell-tale signs of lying – the new method involves monitoring full-body motions to provide an indicator of signs of guilty feelings.
The polygraph is widely used in the US in criminal and other cases and for security clearance for the FBI and CIA but is much less popular in Europe. There has been a lot of scepticism in the scientific and legal communities about its reliability. By contrast, the new method developed by the researchers has performed well in experiments.
The basic premise is that liars fidget more and so the use of an all-body motion suit – the kind used in films to create computer-generated characters – will pick this up. The suit contains 17 sensors that register movement up to 120 times per second in three dimensions for 23 joints.
One of the research team, Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University, said: “Decades of deception research show that the interviewer will tell truth from lies only slightly better than random, about 55 out of 100.
“The polygraph has been around since the 1920s and, by measuring physiological stress induced by anxiety, you can get to 60. However, it can easily be abused as an interrogation prop and many people are anxious anyway facing a polygraph on which their job or liberty depends.”
He said the new method, by contrast, achieved a reliability rating of over 70% and he was confident they would be able to do better. In some tests, the team has already achieved more than 80%. Anderson said: “The takeaway message is that guilty people fidget more and we can measure this robustly.”
Anderson added that the research had a special significance at this time, against the background of the US Senate report on torture by the CIA. Apart from the moral case against torture, Anderson pointed out that it was a very unreliable way of gathering accurate information. “We have known for a long time that torture does not work,” he said. The new method offers a pragmatic, scientifically backed alternative to conducting interviews. The research paper was written by Dr Sophie van der Zee of Cambridge University, Professor Ronald Poppe of Utrecht University, Professor Paul Taylor of Lancaster University and Anderson.
The polygraph was created in 1921 by policeman John Larson, based on research by the psychologist William Marston. It records changes in pulse, blood pressure, sweating and breathing to ascertain whether a subject is lying.
While cinema depictions suggest the device is near-infallible, the US Supreme Court ruled, in 1998, that there was no consensus that the polygraph was reliable, a finding supported by the US National Academy of Scientists in 2003. The experiment carried out by Anderson and his colleagues involved 180 students and employees at Lancaster University, of which half were told to tell the truth and half to lie. They were each paid £7.50 for their participation in the 70-minute experiment, involving two tests.
Some were interviewed about a computer game Never End , which they played for seven minutes, while others lied about playing it, having only been shown notes about it.
The second test involved a lost wallet containing £5. Some were asked to bring the wallet to a lost-and-found box while others hid it and lied about it.
“Overall, we correctly classified 82.2% (truths: 88.9%; lies: 75.6%) of the interviewees as either being truthful or deceptive based on the combined movement in their individual limbs,” the report says. Anderson said: “Our first attempt looked at the extent to which different body parts and body signals indicated deception. It turned out that liars wave their arms more but, again, this is only at the 60% level that you can get from a conventional polygraph.
“The pay dirt was when we considered total body motion. That turns out to tell truth from lies over 70% of the time and we believe it can be improved still further by combining it with optimal questioning techniques.”
Another advantage is that total body motion is relatively unaffected by cultural background, anxiety and cognitive load (how much you are thinking), which confound other lie-detection technologies, Anderson said.
The use of all-body suits is expensive – they cost about £30,000 – and can be uncomfortable, and Anderson and his colleagues are now looking at low-cost alternatives. These include using motion-sensing technology from computer games, such as the Kinect devices developed by Microsoft for the Xbox console.
Anderson acknowledges that agencies such as the CIA could teach agents how to counter the full-body motion method by freezing their bodies but he said that in itself would be a giveaway.


Intermediate
The customer next to you in the queue looks quite normal. But, instead of a shopping list, you notice shes carrying handwritten notes about the appearance and cleanliness of the store. Shes been timing the speed of the queue on her phone ... and is that a tiny camera lens in her purse? Shes probably a mystery shopper.
There are approximately 50,000 mystery shopping trips carried out every month in the UK, according to the Mystery Shopping Providers Association, and, as more and more spending takes place online, the demand for mystery shoppers is growing. Retailers are becoming increasingly aware that shoppers who are prepared to set foot in a physical store want a service and an experience they cant get online, says Simon Boydell, spokesman for Marketforce, which has more than 300,000 mystery shoppers. Our clients want to measure how well their stores are delivering on that experience.
We assign different store locations to each shopper and rotate them so that they never go back to the same shop within three months, says Jill Spencer of mystery shopping company ABa. Each day, they typically spend up to eight hours visiting  ve to ten stores, plus another hour or two  ling detailed reports on every aspect of their visit. For that, the mystery shoppers can earn up to 155 a day. They are also reimbursed for their expenses. Mystery shoppers who  lm their visits with a hidden camera can earn even more  around 300 a day.
Shoppers are usually repaid any money they spend in the stores and may also be allowed to keep the products they buy. Im typically given between 5 and 20 to spend at each store, to assess the service I receive at the till, says mystery shopper Laura. Im always given a scenario, such as buying something from a speci c department or a new product range, but I can often buy whatever I want  and keep it.
Like most full-time mystery shoppers, Laura is self-employed. Her income is around 30,000 to 40,000 a year and that doesnt include all the freebies she gets on the job. With the perks, its enough to live on. She  nds it satisfying to return to a store she has previously mystery shopped and see standards have improved. I know it must be because of my feedback or why would they pay me to give it? Some of the retailers I shop at win awards for customer service and I think that is down to us mystery shoppers. I feel Im not just doing a service for my company; Im doing a service for all shoppers everywhere.
Its estimated that more than 500,000 people have registered as mystery shoppers in the UK, but just 10% or less manage to get regular work each month. This has led to a dramatic reduction in pay. Once you got a fee, reimbursement for your purchase and mileage, but you now often just receive a contribution towards a purchase, say Val, a 51-year-old former mystery shopper. I worked for 40 different mystery shopping companies for almost 20 years but I gave up entirely three years ago because I had bills to pay and very few assignments paid an acceptable rate.
Nowadays, mystery shopping companies mostly give freebies to incentivize their workers. Marketforce shoppers typically get a couple of pounds for a visit as a token gesture for their time and effort, says Boydell. At the most, well pay 15 to 25 plus reimbursement for, perhaps, a meal for two or a hotel stay. We dont directly employ any shoppers so we dont have to pay them the minimum wage.
Id go on a cruise for nothing, says Laura. But I think mystery shopping companies that pay you a nominal fee to travel to a restaurant and eat a meal are exploiting people. I wont touch those jobs anymore. There are plenty of people, however, that would. Hannah, a 41-year-old lawyer, has done nearly 500 visits for the Mystery Dining Company in her spare time without receiving 9 3 pay or travel expenses. She carries out their most exclusive assignments, enjoying 200 meals at Michelin-starred restaurants and overnight stays at boutique hotels.
But theres no such thing as a free lunch, even if you work for a mystery dining company. Hannah says she typically spends two to four hours after each visit writing detailed reports on everything from the quality of the food to speci c interactions with staff, whom she always needs to be able to name or describe. She has to memorize all these details while eating her meal because she cannot openly write anything down.
Theres lots to remember. Youre expected to give feedback while its fresh, so Ive had to get up at 5am to write a report before work. Its a challenging thing to do; you need to be focused, articulate and detail orientated.


It is difficult to know exactly where the noise is coming from, but you can hear it everywhere in Damascus. All day and all night you can hear the sound of guns, rockets or planes attacking rebels – the sound of war is getting closer to Syria’s capital. The Syrian war began two years ago and now the people of Damascus try not to listen to the sound of explosions just a few miles away.
“Actually you get used to it after a while,” said George, who lives in the city. “But you never know exactly what they are hitting.” That usually becomes clear later from videos that the opposition puts on YouTube.
The constant noise of bombs is more worrying because the government tries so hard to pretend that life is normal. “As you can see, everything here is fine but we have to hit the terrorists, these extremists,” an army officer said. One government official said: “If I was afraid, I would just shut my door and stay inside. I have to work and I am not afraid. If I don’t defend my country, who will?”
In private conversation, ordinary people say something different. In the centre of town, a shopkeeper complained sadly that his baby daughter cries at the sound of explosions. Zeina, a student, worries that she has learnt to live with suffering and danger. “In the beginning, when there started to be explosions, I used to have nightmares,” she said. “Now I can sleep through anything.”
And, the dangers are increasing even closer to home. Sabaa Bahrat Square was the safest part of Damascus, but recently a car bomb exploded there and damaged the Syrian Central Bank. The square is often used for pro-government rallies, with people shouting slogans under enormous pictures of President Bashar al-Assad.
That bombing was not the worst one in Damascus in recent months. In February, reports say that 80 people, including schoolchildren, died near the ruling Ba’ath Party headquarters in Mazraa. You can still see the crater. “I live nearby but luckily I wasn’t there,” says Munir, a university lecturer.
Rebels, who are now very close to the city, have recently started to fire mortar bombs. The bombs killed 15 students in a university cafeteria on 28 March. They probably wanted to hit a government building.
In July 2012, a bomb killed four of Assad’s senior aides. After that, security increased. Concrete barriers – often painted in the Syrian flag’s black, red and white – now protect official buildings, not just the military or defence installations that are obvious targets.
Moving around the city has become difficult and takes a lot of time – another part of life today in a nervous city. Checkpoints on main roads stop traffic for ID checks and bags are searched for explosives. Only drivers with official permission can use special fast lanes to avoid the wait.
There is one question on everyone’s mind: will there be a battle for Damascus – one of the world’s oldest cities – like the one that has badly damaged Aleppo? One view is that there will be a battle for Syria’s capital, but not yet – in the summer perhaps. Others argue that there will probably not be a complete victory for either side and hope for a political solution that comes from abroad. But most people here do not expect things to get better.


After being told for the umpteenth time that the beer she wanted would be “too dark and too strong for you, love – have something sweeter”, Rebecka Singerer had had enough.
“No, I don’t want a fruit beer. Women can drink whatever we want,” she says.
Now Singerer, a childminder, has joined FemAle, a group of like-minded drinkers in Gothenburg, to launch Sweden’s first beer made by women.
We Can Do It, a bottled pale ale, has just gone on sale in stores across Sweden. Its label is a take on Rosie the Riveter, the creation of a US Second World War propaganda campaign that went on to become a symbol of women’s power in the workplace.
The group’s founder is Elin Carlsson, 25, who paints cars at the Volvo factory outside the city. “We Can Do It is not a female beer but a beer brewed by women that anyone can drink,” she says. “It’s nothing to do with feminism; it’s about equality – we wanted to show we can do it.”
FemAle is up against decades of prejudice in the beer world. In an irony not lost on FemAle, Carlsberg and other big brewers have spent millions in recent years trying to sell beer to women, attempting to “pink it and shrink it” to appeal to perceived feminine tastes. Carlsberg’s Eve and Copenhagen offerings, Foster’s Radler and Coors’s Animée were among lighter, flavoured and even “bloat-resistant” beers that failed to find a market.
FemAle’s approach is different, with women- only tastings that allow potential customers to experiment with flavours and styles of beer that they may not normally try. This education process is the way to “get more girls into the beer world”, the group says. “Bring your mother, sister, girlfriend, aunt and grandmother so we can all learn more about beer.”
The idea for FemAle arose after the women kept bumping into each other at beer festivals.
We Can Do It was the brainchild of Felicia Nordström, a bar worker who says she was fed up with bearded beer snobs telling her: “What do you know about beer, sweetie?” She approached FemAle and they teamed up with Ocean, a local independent micro-brewery. One weekend they concocted the recipe and the next they brewed 1,600 litres.
“This is not a beer that is aimed at women – it’s our hoppiest brew,” says Thomas Bingebo, the head brewer at Ocean. “When the big breweries target women, it usually fails. This is something completely different.”
The first batch of We Can Do It was sold out almost before it was brewed. FemAle has already been approached by other breweries asking if they can brew new beers with them.
We Can Do It uses three malts – Maris Otter, Amber and a Thomas Fawcett wheat malt – and the hop varieties Galaxy and Cascade. Its IBU, or bitterness level, is 65 and its alcohol content is 4.6%.
“Women opt for a glass of wine because they don’t know what beer is all about; they don’t know what to order,” says Carlsson. “We open up new worlds to them.”
“I used not to like stout but, back then, I only drank Pripps [a light, Swedish lager],” says Singerer, 38. “Guinness tastes like water to me now. There are imperial stouts that are like drinking biscotti dipped in espresso.”
The women are part of a brewing explosion in Sweden, which is developing a passion for “craft” ales, bottled and on draught. The standard stor stark (large strong) lager is now “almost extinct” in Gothenburg, the women say, as pubs and bars replace the big brands with a choice of specialist beers.
“All the girls are different – there is no typical woman beer-lover. Anyone can do it,” says Emma Henriksson, 22, a group member who works in a garden equipment company.
“Every pub wants to learn how to reach women,” adds Singerer. “And Elin has found the way. It’s awesome. We feel so proud.”


Intermediate
During a momentous day at Liverpool Cathedral for the families of the 96 people who died so needlessly at Sheffield Wednesdays Hillsborough football ground, you could hear one phrase again and again: the truth. These were the words used in a headline in The Sun newspaper. We now know that the story in the newspaper was given to the paper by the South Yorkshire Police to move the blame for the disaster onto the innocent victims.
Margaret Aspinalls son James, then 18, died at the match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. She said the families had had to fight for 23 years for the truth. Aspinall, Chairperson of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, said that the families loss would never go away, but she was delighted that the Prime Minister gave a profound apology for Hillsborough.
An independent panel studied 450,000 documents created by the police, Sheffield Wednesday and all other bodies responsible. Then it produced a 395-page report, criticizing official mistakes and highlighting the fact that the victims and other fans were not responsible. Some of the causes of the disaster have been exposed before but the depth of the cover-up was still shocking, in particular the police campaign to falsely blame the supporters.
The panel found that the South Yorkshire Police, led by the Chief Constable, Peter Wright, told their story that drunken supporters or those without tickets had caused the disaster. The victims blood was tested for alcohol levels. This was an exceptional decision, the panel said, and it found no rationale for it. When victims had alcohol in their blood, the police then checked to find if they had criminal records. The report found there was no evidence  to prove the serious allegations of exceptional levels of drunkenness, ticketlessness or violence among Liverpool fans.
The report found that Wright met his police federation in a Sheffield restaurant to prepare a defence and a rock-solid story. The meeting was held just four days after the disaster. It was the day that The Sun newspaper published its headline The Truth over lies told to it by four senior South Yorkshire police officers.
The panel found that officers statements were changed to delete criticism of the police and emphasize misbehaviour by supporters. The panel found that 116 of 164 statements were changed to remove or change negative comments about South Yorkshire police. The police had claimed they changed statements only to remove opinion, but the panel had no doubt they did more than that. It was done to remove criticism of the police, the report said.
This propaganda did not convince the original inquiry. It found in August 1989 that the police stories of fan drunkenness and misbehaviour were false, and criticized the police for making the claims. It revealed that Sheffield Wednesdays football ground was unsafe, that the Football Association had chosen it as the stadium for the match without even checking if it had a valid safety certificate (it did not).
But it was the mismanagement of the crowd by the police, led by an inexperienced Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield, that was the main cause of the disaster. The police lost control outside the ground, where 24,000 Liverpool fans had to go through just 23 turnstiles, so Duckenfield ordered a large exit gate to be opened and a large number of people to be allowed in. His mistake, according to the inquiry, was the failure to close the tunnel that led to the central section behind the goal, which was already overcrowded.
But the police still repeated their claims at the inquest. The coroner decided not to take evidence of what happened after 3.15pm on the day of the disaster, so the chaotic emergency response was not examined. The panel found that 41 of the 96 who died could possibly have been saved if the police and ambulance service had done their jobs properly.
Following the panels report, the Attorney General will now decide whether to have a new inquest. There may be prosecutions too, after all these years, of Sheffield Wednesday, South Yorkshire Police and Sheffield City Council, which failed in its duty to oversee safety of the football ground. Trevor Hicks, President of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, whose two teenage daughters died in the disaster, said: The truth is out today. Tomorrow is for justice.


Striding on stage, Donald Trump had a surprisingly humble confession to make for someone defying all the laws of political gravity.
“Unless we win, it doesn’t mean a damn thing,” the would-be Republican presidential nominee warned a campaign rally in South Carolina, despite finishing his fourth month in a row at the top of the opinion polls. “I want to pick my date for the election. I want it next Tuesday,” he confided to the 11,000-strong crowd – typical of the grassroots support that needs to flourish into March 2016 for him to win the nomination, let alone November’s general election. Such moments of self-doubt are fleeting, quickly replaced by the now-familiar bombast of a billionaire whose status as a “winner” has become his defining policy platform.
Trump is not the only one beginning to wonder whether his improbable campaign can confound the pundits and go the distance, particularly after a burst of recent controversy only seemed to cement his polling lead over bewildered rivals. Conventional wisdom holds that any one of these outbursts would have sunk most politicians by now.
First, there was the time he outraged prisoners of war by doubting the heroism of Vietnam veteran John McCain because he allowed himself to be captured. Then, there was the first television debate, where he insulted Fox News moderator, Megyn Kelly, because she asked him difficult questions.
As if PoWs, Fox News and women were not enemies enough, Trump has also insulted Mexican immigrants to the US, claimed that a Black Lives Matter protester who was violently ejected from a rally deserved to be “roughed up”, appeared to mock a New York Times journalist for his disability and falsely accused Muslim Americans of cheering on the 9/11 attackers.
Trump has complained that many of these incidents were exaggerated by the political media, 70% of whom, he says, are “scum”. But, he has nonetheless refused to retract any of the comments. “I could have said, 'Oh, I misspoke', but I am not big on that,” Trump told the crowd in South Carolina. Some rivals still hope that, eventually, even Trump’s supporters will tire of what critics view as his relentless attacks on minorities in particular. One poll shows his support among Republicans down by 12 points – although, at 31%, he still leads the field.
Other opponents question whether there is much overarching political ideology to Trump. “He is an egomaniac; he’s a narcissist. He’s not a conservative, he’s not a liberal – he believes in himself,” former presidential rival, Bobby Jindal, told the Guardian, shortly before dropping out of the race.
Liz Mair, a Republican strategist organizing an anti- Trump fundraising committee, worries that many of the comments seen as gaffes by the liberal media are, in fact, carefully designed to boost his standing with his core constituency. “I personally think it’s best that people who don’t like Trump and his policies do some work to try to actively undercut him,” she says. “And not just pray for him to commit real political suicide.”
Yet, there is more to Trump than attention-grabbing outrage. As he delights in telling supporters, the three issues that he rails against most – immigration reform, free-trade deals and Barack Obama’s national security policy – have become perhaps the defining issues of the election.
His policies for deporting every undocumented immigrant in the US and demanding that Mexico pays for a border wall – “A real wall. A very tall wall, taller than that ceiling.” – might sound unrealistic but they have arguably destroyed the campaign hopes of Jeb Bush, who favours immigration reform.
So what might it take to stop Trump? One source of optimism among opponents is the strong evidence that polls this far away from election day are an average of eight percentage points out, simply because most people have not made up their minds. Among Americans who identify as Republicans, current polls suggest he has 25-30% of the vote.
In the battle for hearts and minds, converting Trump’s passionate supporters will be hard. To blunt his lead, another candidate would need to tap into his support base without jeopardizing their own. Polling experts believe this to be unlikely, as it is hard to imagine anyone doing Trump better than Trump, let alone anyone doing Trump without sacrificing their own support.
This scenario can be best understood by looking at responses to the question: “Are there any of these candidates you would definitely not support for the Republican nomination for president?” While 20-30% of voters say they would support Trump, another 20-30% say they definitely would not.
Steve Deace, a prominent Iowa conservative, said that Trump’s antics are “both a good and a bad thing. On one hand, it produces a loyal following that is attracted to that persona which will not leave you. On the other hand, it limits your ability to grow beyond that.”
Top Republican pollster, Frank Luntz, believes Trump speaks for voters who, for the first time, feel as if they have a mouthpiece and like the fact that they feel like they are being heard. As the pollster notes: “Trump says what they’re thinking and, the more outrageous he is, the more they agree with him. He’s saying what no politician would say and that’s another reason they like him.”
That is certainly the feeling among ordinary supporters who have attended his increasingly packed campaign events in recent months.
“I like the way he speaks,” says Sandra Murray of Dubuque, Iowa. “This country is a huge mess and we need to get out of this and, honestly, he could be the man to do it.”
Other supporters offer a simpler explanation. “He’s not afraid of anybody or anything. That’s pretty cool.”


Intermediate
He had the tastes of a typical millionaire. He owned a gold and silver Rolex and lots of expensive cars. He liked to buy modern art. But, although this Chinese businessman had several companies and a large villa in Madrid, he had almost no money in the bank. This detail interested the Spanish authorities.
Gao Ping supplied 4,000 Chinese bazaars across Spain. But, authorities suspected he was not paying taxes on the clothes, furniture and other goods he was importing from China.
When police searched his warehouses in 2012 they found piles of cash: 100, 200 and 500 notes were wrapped in elastic bands. Around 12m was taken away, the largest amount of cash ever found by Spanish police. Gaos gang is accused of laundering up to 300m a year, as well as selling counterfeit goods and toys with fake safety marks.
Law enforcement officials have been worried about 500 notes for a long time. Small and easy to transport relative to their value, they are the payment method that tax dodgers, money launderers and drug barons prefer to use. 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 distribution of the 500 note in 2010 because it was used almost entirely by criminals. In 2009, Italys central bank warned that the notes were widely used by mafia money launderers and terrorists. Other countries have limited their own high-denomination notes due to links to organized crime  Canada got rid of its $1,000 note in 2000 on the advice of law enforcement officers.
Now, with electronic payment systems and contactless cards, people are asking whether we should print these notes. Peter Sands, the former head of Standard Chartered Bank, said we should get rid of high-denomination notes, including the 500, the $100, the 1,000 Swiss Franc note and the 50. In a report for the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Sands said it was time to get rid of high-value notes that make life easier for bad guys. Criminals would instead use smaller-denomination bills, or gold or diamonds, but these are too big to be carried easily and more traceable. This makes it more likely they will get caught, he said.
At a conference on terrorist financing in London, the Head of Europol, Rob Wainwright, asked the European Central Bank to look at whether it should continue to produce these notes that make it easier for criminals and terrorists to hide their business and to provide money for illegal activities. According to Europol, the purple 500 note makes up 30% of the value of all the euro notes, although most people have never seen one.
The 500 note was introduced in 2002 when the euro was born: it replaced the 1,000 Deutschmark, the 10,000 Belgian franc and the 500,000 Italian lira. In Germany and Austria, more than half of all transactions are still made with paper money and coins.
Europol would like to see central banks take more responsibility for what happens with 500 notes. Luxembourg, for example, issued more than twice its annual GDP in banknotes in 2013 alone. Europol asked Luxembourgs central bank to explain. The reply from Luxembourg was that they simply issue the notes that are asked for and do not ask or know why people want them, said Jennifer MacLeod, a specialist in Europols financial intelligence group. I find it surprising that a central bank does not consider itself to have a responsibility in this area.
This could be changing. EU finance ministers have asked policymakers to think about appropriate limits on high-value notes and report back by 1 May 2016.


Intermediate
Scientists have created an atlas of the brain that shows how the meanings of words are arranged across different regions of the brain. The atlas shows in rainbow colours how individual words and their meanings can be grouped together in areas of the brain.
Our goal was to build a giant atlas that shows how one speci c aspect of language is represented in the brain, in this case semantics (the meanings of words), said Jack Gallant, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley.
No single brain region holds one word or concept. A single brain spot is associated with a number of related words. And, each single word lights up many different brain spots. Together, they make up networks that represent the meanings of each word we use: life and love, death and taxes. All light up their own networks.
The atlas was described as a great achievement by one researcher who was not involved in the study. The atlas shows how modern imaging can transform our knowledge of how the brain does some of its most important tasks. If scientists make further advances, the technology could have an enormous impact on medicine and other areas of study.
It is possible that this approach could be used to decode information about what words a person is hearing, reading or possibly even thinking, said Alexander Huth, the main author of the study. One possible use would be a language decoder that could allow people who cant talk, because they have a serious illness, to speak through a computer.
To create the atlas, the scientists recorded peoples brain activity while they listened to stories. Then, they matched the transcripts of the stories with the brain activity data to show how groups of related words produced brain responses in 50,000 to 80,000 pea-sized spots all over the cerebral cortex.
Huth used short, compelling stories. The stories had to be interesting so that the people in the experiment would focus on the words and not drift off. Seven people listened to two hours of stories each. Per person, that was a total of about 25,000 words  and more than 3,000 different words  as they lay in the scanner.
The atlas shows how words and related terms light up the same regions of the brain. For example, on the left-hand side of the brain, above the ear, is one of the tiny regions that represents the word victim. The same region responds to killed, convicted, murdered and confessed. On the brains right-hand side, near the top of the head, is one of the brain spots activated by family terms: wife, husband, children, parents.
Each word is represented by more than one spot because words often have several meanings. One part of the brain, for example, responds to the word top, as well as other words that describe clothing. But, the word top lights up many other regions. One of them responds to numbers and measurements, another to buildings and places. The scientists have created an interactive website where the public can explore the brain atlas.
Interestingly, the brain atlases were similar for all the people in the experiment. This suggests that their brains organized the meanings of words in the same way. The scientists only scanned  ve men and two women, however. All are native English speakers. It is highly possible that people from different backgrounds and cultures will have different semantic brain atlases.
Using the atlas, researchers can now piece together the brain networks that represent very different concepts, from numbers to murder and religion. The idea of murder is represented a lot in the brain, Gallant said.
Uri Hasson, a neuroscientist at Princeton University, said the work was great. He said that many studies just looked at brain activity when a single word or sentence was spoken but Gallants team had shed light on how the brain worked in a real-world scenario. The next step, he said, was to create a more complete and precise semantic brain atlas. In the future, Hasson believes it will be possible to reconstruct the words a person is thinking from their brain activity. The ethical implications are enormous.
Lorraine Tyler, a neuroscientist and head of the Centre for Speech, Language and the Brain at Cambridge University, said the research was a great achievement. But, the brain atlas in its current form does not show small differences in word meanings. This research is  Centre for Speech, Language and the Brain at Cambridge University, said the research was a great achievement. But, the brain atlas in its current form does not show small differences in word meanings. This research is 4 Comprehension check ground-breaking but there is still a lot to learn about how semantics is represented in the brain.


Governments in Europe dream of finding a magic solution to rising unemployment. But, in the poorest parts of the EU, unemployment continues to rise.
Now, in Sardinia, Italy, a mayor thinks he has found an answer to his town’s unemployment problem. Valter Piscedda, the mayor of Elmas, a small town near Sardinia’s capital, Cagliari, wants to pay residents to leave. The town will pay for ten unemployed local people to take English lessons, get on a cheap flight and look for jobs in other parts of Europe.
“This idea comes from common sense and experience, ” he told the Guardian. “In the past year and a half – especially in the past few months – I have seen young people, almost every day, who have lost hope that they will find work. Some ask for help in finding work here. Others have tried everything and, now, they want to go and gain work experience abroad; life experience, too.”
So he decided to help people who want to gain experience abroad.
Sardinia, and also much of southern and central Italy, is struggling with high unemployment. Unemployment was at 17.7% in the second quarter of 2014, according to Italy’s National Institute of Statistics. More than 54% of people under 25 are out of work.
For the Adesso Parto (Now I’m leaving) programme, Elmas will give €12,000 to the first ten applicants aged between 18 and 50. The applicants must be out of work and have lived in the town for three years. They do not have to be university educated and they must not earn more than €15,000.
The idea of helping people to leave is sensitive at a time when many Italians – many of them clever young graduates – are leaving their country every year. But Piscedda believes that the people he is sending away might return “and give me back 100 times what we gave them”. More importantly, he wants the scheme to help the people most in need.
In Elmas, the scheme has got mixed reactions. “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 didn’t study much is in London and he’s doing very well. He started as a waiter. Now, he’s a cook and he’s learning English.”
Others were not sure. “I heard about it but I thought it was strange. If you have that money to pay for people to go away, why don’t you use that money to keep them here?” said Consuelo Melis, who works in a local café.
But Piscedda says, “The work I can create, as mayor, is temporary. I can ask someone to clean a piazza. I can ask them to clean it again. I can ask someone to clean the streets. But these are all temporary things that give nothing more than a little bit of money for a few months.”


JMW Turner, one of Britain’s greatest painters, will be on the new £20 note, after a national vote. It will be the first time an artist is on a British banknote. The governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, asked the public to say which deceased cultural person they wanted to see on the new banknote.
Turner, who is famous for his paintings of the sea, won the vote. There was a list that included 590 painters, sculptors, fashion designers, photographers, film-makers and actors. Thirty thousand members of the public suggested the people on the list.
The list included Alfred Hitchcock, Alexander McQueen, Derek Jarman, Laura Ashley, William Morris and Vanessa Bell.
The final five – Barbara Hepworth, Charlie Chaplin, Josiah Wedgwood, William Hogarth and Turner – were chosen because of their importance to the visual arts and British society and because of their influence.
They made the announcement about the new banknote at the Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate. Carney and the artist Tracey Emin, who grew up in the town, made the announcement together.
Carney said that banknotes are not just practical – they “can be a piece of art in everyone’s pocket”.
The note will show Turner’s 1799 self-portrait and also one of Turner’s most famous paintings, The Fighting Temeraire , a painting of a ship that had an important role in Nelson’s victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.
The note will also inlude a quote from the artist – “light is therefore colour” – and his signature. The signature is from his will, in which he left many of his paintings to Britain.
Historical people first appeared on banknotes in 1970. Turner, and also Winston Churchill and Jane Austen, will appear on the new polymer notes – a plastic-type material. Churchill is on the £5 and Austen is on the £10 note. The new £20 note will appear by 2020.
Turner was born in 1775 in London, the son of a barber, and he went to the Royal Academy Schools at the age of 14. In 1786, he went to Margate and there his love of painting and drawing the north-east Kent coast began. He returned to the Kent coast many times in his life and it was where he painted some of his most dramatic paintings. He said that, on the Kent coast, the skies were “the loveliest in all Europe”.
Turner painted more than 550 oil paintings and 2,000 watercolours in his lifetime. A film about Turner was made in 2014, with Timothy Spall as the artist.
Victoria Pomery, the director of Turner Contemporary, said: “The vote shows that Turner is Britain’s favourite artist.”


You’ve spent eight hours in the office. You’ve finished the most important work of the day. This is the time when most workers would think about going home.
But, for millions of Japanese employees, if they leave work and arrive home in time for dinner, people say that they are disloyal to their company.
But now, the government is trying to do something about Japan’s culture of overwork. It wants to make workers take at least five days’ paid holiday a year.
Japanese employees are allowed an average of 18.5 days’ paid holiday a year. Companies must allow them a minimum of ten days’ paid holiday, plus 15 one-day national holidays. But very few employees take these days. Most take only nine days of holiday, according to the labour ministry. Many British workers think that a two-week summer holiday is their right but workers in Japan think that a four-night vacation in Hawaii is a big self-indulgence.
By 2020, the government hopes that the law will make Japanese employees follow the example of British workers, who take an average of 20 days’ paid annual leave, and workers in France, who take an average of 25.
Japan’s employees are respected and admired in the rest of the world for their commitment to the company. But they often have no time for anything else.
Couples don’t have time to start families. So, Japan has a low birth rate and the population is declining. More employees are falling ill from stress or even dying through overwork.
About 22% of Japanese work more than 49 hours a week, compared with 16% of US workers and 11% in France and Germany, according to data from the Japanese government.
“Nobody else uses their vacation days,” says Erika Sekiguchi, a 36-year-old worker. She spends 14 hours a day at work and used only eight of her 20 days of paid vacation in 2014, six of which were sick leave.
Yuu Wakebe, who works at the health ministry, admits that he does 100 hours of overtime a month. “It is a worker’s right to take paid vacations,” Wakebe said. “But workers in Japan have to do a lot of extra work for no money.”
Workers are scared that their colleagues will think they are not working hard enough. This is one reason for a rise in stress-related illness, early death and suicide. About 200 people die every year from heart attacks and strokes in Japan, caused by long hours and hard work.


Intermediate
The Greek island of Agios Efstratios is so remote, so forgotten by the banks, the government and most of the modern world that there isnt a single ATM or credit-card machine on the island. Before the economic crisis in Greece, residents of this tranquil island in the northern Aegean managed quite well. They did their banking at the post of ce and the few dozen rooms to rent were fully booked every summer with people who had heard  by word of mouth  of its spectacular empty beaches, clear seas and fresh seafood.
But, because the island still uses only cash, the closure of the Greek banks has been devastating. Residents have to make nine-hour round trips to the nearest big island to get cash and Greek visitors say they cant get hold of enough money to come. Tourist numbers have reduced by 80% this year, said Mayor Maria Kakali, in an of ce in the village where she grew up, with a population of around 200 people. Even people born here and living in Athens, who have their own places on the island, arent coming.
Kakali has badgered the government and a major Greek bank into promising an ATM within weeks but she still feels it may be too late for this season on an island where tourism is the main source of income: We have almost no reservations in August, when usually we have people calling us up asking to  nd a room and we cant help them. A hard winter ahead may be slightly improved because 50 workers will live and work in the village to expand the harbour. But there is an even bigger crisis ahead because the government has said it will end a tax break for islands.
The tax break was created to help island communities survive the problem of mass emigration. The lower sales tax reduced the costs of living on the islands, where everything had to be imported and it made tourism more affordable. Tourist favourites such as Mykonos fear that losing the tax breaks will make it hard for them to compete with Turkey. But, for Agios Efstratios, it is a far greater problem. If we have to pay a tax of 23%, Im sorry to say it but we will all die on the island, says Kakali.
Food and fuel are already more expensive than on the mainland. Even in summer the island has only three shops, two restaurants and not a single of cial hotel. This is an expensive island. Everything, even milk or bread, has been bought and sold three or four times before it gets to us and everyone has to take a pro t, said Provatas Costas, a 58-year-old  sherman.
For Agios Efstratios and its closest large neighbour, Lemnos, the timing of the crisis is particularly cruel. They were seen as remote for years partly because you could only reach the islands by slow and unreliable ferries. In 2015, the government had  nally given the contract to a new, ef cient company and this has brought many new visitors to explore the islands charms. But, then, the bank controls hit. It started as the best season in 30 years and, in one week, it became the worst, said Atzamis Konstantinos, a travel agent in Lemnos.
Lemnos has dozens of wild beaches, where you can swim and sunbathe virtually alone, a small nightlife scene and many cultural sites. It is the eighth largest island in Greece so it is in line for the  rst round of tax increases in autumn 2015 but it is far less wealthy than many smaller islands. It has just over 3,000 beds for visitors, compared with tens of thousands on an island such as Rhodes. We have been suffering economically in recent years and now we will suffer more, said Lemnos Mayor, Dimitris Marinakis. When there is not enough money, you reduce your consumption and the whole economy gets worse.
If taxes go up, even more young people will leave, warns Mayor Kakali, who has worked to improve education on the island to help keep it an attractive place for families. Because it is one of the smallest islands, Agios Efstratios has until 2017 before the tax rise comes in. Kakali hopes that, because things change very fast in Greek politics, the island might still avoid the tax. If not, though, she plans to travel to Athens to remind the distant government what the tax rise would cost.
The truth is the government doesnt pay much attention to the islands of the north Aegean, she said, so I would take all the kids from our school to the gates of parliament, to tell them: There is still life in these islands.


Tua Pittman from Raratonga in the Cook Islands is a traditional navigator. To him, a canoe is more than just a form of transport. “The canoe is our island, the crew is the community and the navigator is the leader,” he says. “On a canoe, you are not just going from one place to another using the stars, the moon, the sun and the birds. Navigation is showing your crew the light of life.”
It has been a busy week for the crews of four sailing canoes – they are in Sydney for the start of the World Parks Congress. Tua’s journey began at the Cook Islands on 25 September. The islanders sailed to Samoa, then Fiji, Vanuatu and onto the Gold Coast. Then, they travelled south to Sydney. Around 100 crew were involved in the voyage and they tried to travel using only traditional navigation techniques. Sadly, said Tua, the crews had to use modern navigation equipment sometimes to reach Australia in time for the Congress.
The trip is called the Mua Voyage. It is a partnership between the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Oceania Regional Office and five Pacific Island countries: Samoa, Tonga, New Zealand, the Cook Islands and Fiji. The main aim of the 11,000km trip was to deliver a special message to the World Parks Congress.
The message said “We see fewer fish than in the past, and they are smaller. And foreign fisherman take our fish. Our coral reefs, the greatest in the world, and our fishing grounds are disappearing. Our ocean is very big but not limitless.”
The Pacific Islanders’ message to the delegates of the Congress was urgent. But a lot of time has been spent at the Congress trying to set a new target for the amount of the ocean that needs special protection. According to the IUCN, in 2013, less than three per cent of the world’s oceans was in marine protected areas and less than one per cent of that is ‘no take’ (no fishing). But there should be a lot more ‘no-take’ areas because the last World Parks Congress in 2003 set a target of 20-30%.
After difficult talks, the World Parks Congress agreed new targets for marine protected areas. The new target is not 20-30%; it is at least 30%. And they must try to solve the problem of biodiversity.
Tua Pittman is very happy with what the Congress has decided for the world’s oceans. “It’s a huge reward for all the effort that we made to be here. To hear they made that decision is fantastic. It’s a step in the right direction.”
He is 55 and, in his lifetime, he can already see that it is much harder to catch fish. He also said that pollution is getting worse, particularly close to big cities such as Sydney. And climate change is already having a serious effect on Pacific Islanders. “The decisions of the big countries have a small effect on developed, large countries, but they have a very big effect on small countries.”
The Mua Voyage had taken years of preparation and planning. It was critical to the voyagers that the world listened to their message and took action. Pittman said that the leaders of rich countries should think more like traditional navigators who see that their boats are just tiny specks in an enormous sea. Most importantly, Tua says that politicians must change how they do things. “The world needs to find a different path.”


A long time ago, cinema audiences were transported to a galaxy far, far away: one where imperial cruisers battled rebel fighters, where droids rubbed circuits with Wookiees and where a spaceship called the Millennium Falcon could make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs. That was 1977 but, in 2015, as the franchise approaches its seventh big-screen instalment, interest in Star Wars shows no sign of abating – now, there is news of a new film about Han Solo and of a reappearance for Darth Vader. “Countless fans around the world are in a constant state of vigilance waiting for the release of new poster art, new trailers and other information,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at box-office monitor Rentrak. “It’s hard to imagine any other movie franchise that could evoke such a level of passion, enthusiasm and excitement.”
The latest Star Wars mania dates from the Hollywood studio Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm from the film’s creator, George Lucas, in 2012; the $4bn acquisition was accompanied by an announcement of three more sequential “episodes” – VII, VIII and IX – plus then unspecified plans for spin-off movies and “stand-alones” to fill the gaps in the release schedule. Details of the second spin-off have now been made public: an “origins story” about Han Solo, the intergalactic smuggler played by Harrison Ford in the first three films, which is scheduled to be released in May 2018.
It will follow the release in December 2015 of Episode VII, directed by JJ Abrams and titled Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the unnamed Episode VIII due out in 2017 and the already announced spin-off, Rogue One, which will arrive in cinemas in 2016.
That movie will outline a rebel mission to steal the plans of the Death Star, a key plot element of the first film in 1977. Levels of interest in the rumour that Rogue One will also feature the reappearance of Darth Vader, the black-clad villain of the original series, only confirmed the power of Star Wars nostalgia.
In creating a multi-stranded, multi-character cinema “universe” around Star Wars, Lucasfilm-Disney are taking their cue from the phenomenally successful series of films produced by Marvel Studios, which Disney also acquired, in 2009.
Disney has brought a whole new level of marketing savvy to an already popular product: Dergarabedian cites the decision to make all six existing Star Wars films available on streaming services as “a brilliant way to build the anticipation for the new film and reinvigorate the idea of Star Wars in the minds of the fans”.
Whether it needs reinvigorating is questionable. The level of enthusiasm that has surrounded Star Wars for at least the last two decades is evidenced by what has become known as the “Expanded Universe”: the plethora of novels, comic books, video games and merchandising that Lucasfilm has created or licensed over the years.
This extra material began emerging as far back as 1978 but was given a massive kick by the mushrooming of the internet in the 1990s. Role-play and fan participation show no sign of slowing: in the UK, event-cinema brand Secret Cinema have found considerable commercial success with their live staging of The Empire Strikes Back.
Michael Rosser, news editor for Screen International, suggests that it is this “shared universe” of highly infectious nostalgia that keeps Star Wars in pole position among film franchises. “The great thing about the original films was that they created a huge universe of characters and possibility that sparked the imagination of viewers,” he said.
“For years, people have been wondering how the different strands would play out. This new film, because it’s going back to Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, looks as though it will reconnect with the original Star Wars in a way that the prequels failed to.”
Rosser is referring to the three films Lucas directed between 1999 and 2005 – The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith – which chronicled the life of Luke Skywalker’s father, Anakin, who transforms into Darth Vader. Despite being greeted with less-than-stellar reviews, the prequels took $2.5bn at the worldwide box office, shortly after the release of restored and augmented “special editions” of the first trilogy had netted $469m in 1997.
“It shows the power of Star Wars that, although they were disappointing, the prequels still managed to make a lot of money,” said Rosser.
In a film business where branding is all and a successful franchise the answer to everybody’s prayers, is there a risk that movie studios will simply become branding machines and lose their interest in cinema for its own sake?
Rosser thinks not. “They are desperate to ensure the longevity of the franchise and make sure the quality is kept up. They are also trying to bring people into the cinema at a time when lots are staying home for entertainment. But you don’t want to watch Star Wars on your iPhone so I don’t think it’s going to run out of steam any time soon.”
Meanwhile, Dergarabedian is anticipating massive business when The Force Awakens reaches cinemas in December 2015. “We are certainly looking at a record opening for December and it should go on to make at least a billion dollars worldwide. Truly, Star Wars is the ultimate movie brand.”


Back in 2010, the old city in Srinagar was the sort of place police would only venture into wearing body armour. A stronghold for violent separatists agitating for an independent Kashmir, it was at the centre of uprisings that left more than 100 people dead, buried along with dreams of peace in the mountainous north-Indian region.
How quickly things change. Now carefree tourists line up in the same streets for barbecued mutton tikka and steaming plates of rogan josh. The Nowhatta mosque, where in the summer of 2010 youths would gather after Friday prayers to throw stones at the security forces, is to become part of an official walking tour focused on heritage, crafts and markets. Down by Dal Lake, houseboats have been booked out months in advance. In the stunning gardens lining the lake’s green slopes, visitors can have their picture taken against one of Asia’s prettiest backdrops. Until the snow melted, the nearby ski resorts were packed with rich Russians, too.
In 2002, only just over 27,000 tourists dared to visit the Kashmir Valley, frightened off by the anti-Indian insurgency, which has claimed up to 70,000 lives. So far in 2012, the area has received almost one million holidaymakers – more than 23,000 of them from outside India. But fewer than 150 Britons were among them – largely because the UK’s Foreign Office refuses to amend its somewhat hair-raising advice, which deters most travellers by providing a list of recent security incidents in the region.
Omar Abdullah, the UK-born Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, has lobbied the British High Commission in Delhi to relax the guidelines, but to no avail. “It’s a source of frustration,” admitted Abdullah, who has been in charge of India’s most sensitive state since the start of 2009. “Today, unfortunately, as a result of that travel advisory, people’s insurance is null and void when they visit here.” The last publicized case of foreign tourists being murdered in J&K was in 1995, when six westerners including two Britons were kidnapped by Al-Faran, a Kashmiri militant Islamist group. Only one escaped with his life.
“You’ve had British citizens killed more recently in countries that you still haven’t stopped people from visiting. I mean, how many British citizens did you lose in 9/11? Did you stop people from visiting New York? You’ve lost them in Spain, in Bali; tell me where you haven’t lost them,” said Abdullah. “We’ve lost Indians in London. There is still a possibility that al-Qaida could do something stupid like they have done in the past, but we haven’t stopped Indians from travelling to London. There is no reason to single out Jammu and Kashmir, or even Srinagar, as an unsafe destination.”
Germany relaxed its guidelines for those thinking of travelling to the region in 2011. “Foreigners are generally not direct targets of clashes,” counselled Germany’s amended advice. At the time, it was viewed by many outsiders as a bold move, coming less than a year after the 2010 disturbances finally died down. A nationwide holiday on 15 August marked 65 years of Indian independence – in the past, a day fraught with peril in a state where many do not feel part of the world’s biggest democracy. But this time at the independence celebrations there was no trouble.
Abdullah insists tourists are safe in the state, “as long as you take the sort of precautions that one normally would ”. In other words, do not go trekking near the border that separates the Indian and Pakistani controlled parts of J&K. Syed Ali Shah Geelani, leader of the pro-Kashmiri independence party, disagrees bitterly with much of Abdullah’s politics. But on the issue of tourism, the two are united. At the start of the summer season, Geelani wrote an open letter to tourists and pilgrims that said: “Whatever your faith, whatever language you speak and to whatever region you belong, we are bound by a common bond, the bond of humanity. You are our honoured guest – respecting and protecting guests is not only our moral obligation but an article of faith.”
Some visitors may worry about the ethics of having fun in a place with a population suffering from record levels of anxiety and mental health problems. But all the locals we spoke to in Srinagar were wholeheartedly in favour of tourism. Amjid Gulzar, 26, said Abdullah could search for truth and reconciliation as well as encouraging foreign visitors. “He must do both; but without tourism, our economy will be in chaos,” he said, adding that while he welcomed the million tourists who visited this year, Kashmir had to do more to attract big-spending visitors, especially foreigners.
“We need better infrastructure, better roads, reliable electricity. We need more for tourists to do in the evening – we don’t even have one cinema in this city and there isn’t enough for tourists to do after dark,” he said. But will tourists feel welcome? In June, a local Islamic group issued a “dress code” for foreign tourists. Abdullah sighs at the mention of that furore. “Nobody expects tourists to come here and cover their faces. I think what they were talking about was short shorts and sleeveless vests, which even then would not be something that would attract too much attention … I think the basic point they were making was: be sensitive to our cultural identity and dress appropriately. I think that’s common sense.”
Abdullah said he was on a tourism drive “for no other reason than the fact that I need to stimulate the econom ”. J&K’s finances are in a dire state after more than two decades of turmoil. The state receives just £72m each year in taxes, and yet the salary bill for the 500,000 public employees is £155m, he said. It is clear why he needs to find more funds, fast. For now, though, he is just cautiously pleased to see tourists back. “I’m not suggesting that because we’ve had one million tourists here that it’s a sign of normality,” he said. “But it gives me some satisfaction that people can come, have a nice time, and go back.”


James Hamblin, senior editor of American magazine The Atlantic, recently joined the unwashed masses. As part of his series, ’If Our Bodies Could Talk’, Hamblin, a relatively sane- looking man, took on a no-showering challenge to examine the effect of over-cleansing the body. He reduced the number of showers he had and eliminated shampoo and soap when he did. In doing so, he discovered what thousands of others have: the more we fervently try to clean ourselves with soaps, body washes and those silly little body polishers, the harder our skin works to restore equilibrium, encouraging us to begin the whole bewildering process again. Showering strips the skin of its own oil and bacteria – which, many would argue, is the whole point of showering – but, apparently, this sometimes works a little too well, especially when you add hot water and cleansing products to the mix.
You know that feeling after a shower when you feel like you’re stuck in a skin suit two sizes too small? That’s because much of your skin’s natural moisture has been washed down the drain. Additionally, our skin, much like our gut, plays host to millions of beneficial bacteria. Showering destroys these happy bacterial colonies; they’re completely wiped out by all of our frequent rubbing and scrubbing. And, when the bacteria washed off by soap repopulate, they tend to favour microbes which produce an odour – yes, too-frequent showering may actually make you smell more. When you stop showering and using soap, however, your skin goes through an initial (likely gross) adjustment period, after which the skin typically restores balance, oil production slows and healthy bacteria flourish.
After everything was said and done, Hamblin realized what other no-soap/no-shower devotees have known for years: that the human body, functioning on its own, is actually quite lovely. It’s not just scent or aesthetics, either – although dermatologists suggest that slowing down on soap use can improve acne and eczema.
Reducing the frequency of showers (and the number of cleansing products used) has very real implications for our environment. The average shower lasts seven minutes and uses 65 litres of water. That’s 65 litres of clean, drinkable water that we’re infusing with soap and washing down the drain each and every day – sometimes more than once.
The vital importance of clean water is becoming harder and harder to ignore, as California enters another summer of drought. It’s becoming clear that clean water is one of the world’s most valuable commodities and one that will soon be in short supply. Add in the environmental effect of all those body wash bottles and you’ve got yourself a handful of very compelling reasons to let your body go au naturel.
If this whole thing is giving you the heebie-jeebies as you recall the last time you were cheek by jowl with those who evidently already skimp on the showers – and have clearly not reached the scent-free stage yet – relax. Many cleansing- reduction enthusiasts still use deodorant if they find it necessary (everyone’s natural scent varies in intensity and can be affected by a host of factors including diet, hydration and exercise) and hand-washing with soap is still recommended as a vital way to reduce the spread of infectious diseases.
You don’t need to go cold turkey, as Hamblin did, but in between thrice-daily disinfecting sessions and giving up showers altogether there lies room for our familiar, simple advice. Reduce. Skip a few showers, put down the soap and let those lovely little bacteria flourish a little, would you?


When Pope Benedict XVI was elected in 2005, he said he was “a simple, humble worker in God’s vineyard”. And on a grey, cold, windy Monday in February, he resigned in the same way: like an old workman with pains in his back and no more strength in his arms. The first German Pope in modern times gave an exact departure time. “From 28 February 2013, at 20.00 hours”, he told a gathering of cardinals in the Vatican, “the see of Rome, the see of Saint Peter, will be vacant and there will be an election for a new Pope.”
One of the cardinals at the gathering was a Mexican cardinal, Monsignor Oscar Sanchéz Barba, from Guadalajara. He was in Rome for an official meeting. “We were all in the Apostolic Palace,” he said. “The Pope took a sheet of paper and read from it.
“We were all …” – Sanchéz Barba couldn’t find the word. The cardinals had just heard the man they believe is God’s representative on earth resign. “The cardinals were just looking at one another,” Sanchéz Barba said.
Angelo Sodano, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, who probably already knew about the Pope’s decision, gave a short speech. He told the Pope that the cardinals would be loyal to him and added that he and the others present had listened to the Pope’s words with a feeling of confusion. At the end of his speech, the pope blessed the cardinals and left. “It was so simple; the simplest thing you can imagine,” said Sanchéz Barba. “Then we all left in silence. There was absolute silence … and sadness.”
John Thavis spent 30 years reporting on the Vatican and has a book, The Vatican Diaries, that will be published soon. He said he had a feeling before that the Pope was going to resign. Thavis said that in the long interview Benedict gave to a German journalist in 2010, he had said he would resign if he felt he could no longer do the job. “I asked myself: if I were Pope and wanted to resign, when would I choose? He has completed his series of books and most of his projects. Also, there were no dates in his calendar of events he had to attend. I thought the most likely date was 22 February but I got it wrong.”
Soon after the announcement, the Vatican was saying that the Pope’s decision was brave. Thavis agreed: “What I find particularly courageous is that he is going now, when he is not sick; and that he’s leaving because he’s tired and not because he’s ill.” But is that the whole story? Does the Pope know more about his state of health than the Vatican has so far made public?
Benedict said that he is resigning not just for physical reasons but also for psychological reasons. He said that the position of Pope needed both strength of mind and strength of body, and in the last few months he felt that he was slowly losing that strength. There will no doubt be other theories in future days and weeks, just as there were following the death of Pope John Paul I in 1978, 33 days after his election. Already people are saying that there was a secret in Benedict’s past and that somebody was going to tell everyone. The Vatican will no doubt say those stories are nonsense. But we can understand why some people think there might be a secret, because Benedict’s decision is so historic.
At St Peter’s Basilica, Julia Rochester, from London, still didn’t know what the Pope’s resignation meant. “If you’re God’s chosen person, how do you choose not be chosen?” she asked. It is a question many Catholics will be asking their priests in future weeks.


Intermediate
Prince Harry has flown out of Afghanistan at the end of a four-month tour. During his time there he admitted killing insurgents while flying his Apache helicopter. He spoke about the frustrations of being a royal who wishes for a life out of the spotlight.
He also told of 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 armys most sophisticated attack helicopter, the prince said he had shot at the Taliban during operations to support ground troops and rescue injured Afghan and NATO personnel. He said he was only doing his job.
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 one with the family.
He admitted he sometimes let himself down with his laddish behaviour, which he said was probably because he is too much army and not enough prince, but he said he was entitled to privacy, too.
In another interview, he criticized the media, especially the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, three of the royal familys strongest supporters. He said he was particularly annoyed by articles comparing his role as an Apache co-pilot gunner to Spitfire crews during the second world war. No, its not like that at all, he said.
The prince said his suspicion of the media came from the treatment of his family when I was very small, but that he couldnt stop reading the stories written about him. Of course I read them, the prince said. If theres a story and somethings been written about me, I want to know whats 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, Dont read it. Everyone says, Dont read it, because its always rubbish.
Four years ago, the prince had to be taken out of Afghanistan during his first tour after a media silence 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 do his job. Two-man crews from the BBC, Sky and ITN were sent once each to report on his visit.
When he was 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. Ive always been like that. My fathers always trying to remind me about who I am and stuff like that. But its very easy to forget about who I am when I am in the army. Everyones 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 photographed 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.
When he was asked where he and his brothers fascination with helicopters came from, he said, Probably the fact that you can only fit a certain number of people in a helicopter, therefore no one can follow us, like you guys.


Intermediate
George W Bush, Benedict Cumberbatch and Stephen Hawking have done it. David Cameron, Barack Obama and Pamela Anderson have refused to do it. The Ice Bucket Challenge began in the US in July and has raised $100m for the ALS Association, a US motor-neurone-disease charity, and 4.5m for a British one, as well as thousands more for charities in Hong Kong and Australia.
However, not everyone is happy with the Ice Bucket Challenge. Commentators, animal-rights groups and environmentalists have all criticized it, for reasons ranging from the waste of water to the fact that some people enjoy the fun and then do not donate anything to charity.
Meanwhile, the challenge continues to grow. For anyone who doesnt know how it works, someone gives a short speech to camera about the charity, then dumps a bucket of ice cubes in water over their head or gets a friend to do it. Then, they nominate three other people to either do the same or donate.
It was an unfortunate coincidence that 31 August to 5 September was World Water Week, with international delegates arriving in Stockholm to discuss the planets water crisis. The charity WaterAid is asking people to use recycled water from bathtubs or garden butts or to use sea water.
Douglas Graham, the UK Motor Neurone Associations fundraising director, said: The criticism is to be expected but, really, this is just a wonderful windfall and were so grateful. We didnt see it coming but, suddenly, the donations just started. The boost is an enormous help to a small charity looking after sufferers of a debilitating, little-understood disease that has no cure and kills five people a day in the UK.
Former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson, an animal-rights activist, wrote an open letter to the ALS Association, saying she could not support its record on animal experimentation. A few US stars have rejected the challenge because of Californias drought. Actor Matt Damon solved the problem by using water from his toilet. Actor Verne Troyer used milk, again saying it was for environmental reasons. And the challenge has been blamed for causing a water shortage on the Scottish island of Colonsay.
In Australia, a TV anchorman apologized over his strong no, thanks response to being nominated. Lincoln Humphries had said: Instead of pouring fresh water over your own head and wasting ice, here is a list of charities helping communities in desperate need of money across the world. Id like to nominate everyone, everywhere, who has more than they need, to donate what they can to the people who need it most ... because that is what charity is about, not putting yourself through mild discomfort with a bucket of icy water.
Another criticism has been that small charities wont be able to cope with the extra money, but the MND Association rejected this. Oh, we can cope here, said Graham. We fund world-class research into the causes of the disease to find a treatment or cure. We provide care and support for 3,500 people and they need it because this is such a rapidly progressing disease and its expensive to manage. Over 50% die within two years of diagnosis. Its heartbreaking to see the decline in people we work with over just a few months.
But, for many people with a connection to the disease, the awareness that the challenge has created is as valuable as the money. Graham says it is priceless. Normally, the MND Association gets around 300,000 hits a year on its website. On a single day recently, it had 330,000.
We couldnt have created this if wed tried. Charities are all worthwhile causes and I understand that some people might want to donate to a different one. In 2013, British people gave 62bn to charity  we should be proud of that. Its fabulous for us to get this windfall. Well be sitting down over the next few weeks to work out how to spend it in the best way but, I assure you, every penny will count for good.


Life isn’t fair sometimes. Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook and is now worth $48 billion. James Goodfellow also invented something that millions of people around the world use every day – the cash machine – but it didn’t make him rich. In fact, he earned just £10 from the patent and has not made any money from it since.
Who is the inventor of the ATM? People have argued for years over this question. In 2005, a man called John Shepherd-Barron received a UK honour as the “inventor of the automatic cash dispenser”. But, the UK government is now saying it was Goodfellow who invented the ATM.
In the mid-1960s, Goodfellow’s managers asked him to think of a way to allow customers to withdraw cash from banks on Saturdays. “Most people worked during the week and couldn’t go to the bank. They wanted a solution. The solution was a machine which would give cash to a customer,” he says. “I wanted to develop a cash machine and, to make this happen, I invented the PIN [personal identification number] and a coded token.”
Goodfellow’s first machines were installed in 1967. At around the same time, Shepherd-Barron was developing a similar machine. His machine didn’t use plastic cards – it used cheques.
Most people agree that Shepherd-Barron’s ATM was the “world’s first” to be installed and used by the public. The first one was at a bank in north London. It was opened on 27 June, 1967 – a month before Goodfellow’s ATM appeared. But, Goodfellow registered the patent for his machine on 2 May, 1966, 14 months before Shepherd-Barron’s ATM machine was first used.
Shepherd-Barron received an official honour for his invention and Goodfellow says: “My one big regret is that I never said anything about it until John Shepherd-Barron received the honour in 2005. The Queen gave him this honour for inventing the automatic cash dispenser. That really annoyed me and I complained about it.”
Shepherd-Barron is dead now but, in a 2005 interview, he criticized Goodfellow. He said Goodfellow’s invention was a failure.
The cash machine is now used all over the world and, every year, there are more and more: there are now three million ATMs worldwide and there will be four million by 2020. The good news for Goodfellow is that people are beginning to recognize him for his invention. The website ATMInventor.com says: “Who invented the idea of an ATM? We believe it was Luther George Simjian. Who invented the ATM as we know it? It was James Goodfellow for holding a patent date of 1966.”
Even better for Goodfellow, his invention is in a 180-page guidebook called Life in the United Kingdom. In the section about “great British inventions of the twentieth century”, it says: “In the 1960s, James Goodfellow (1937-) invented the automatic teller machine (ATM) or ‘cashpoint’.”
So after all these years, Goodfellow is finally among a group of famous British inventors with John Logie Baird (the television), Alan Turing (the Turing machine), Sir Frank Whittle (the jet engine) and Sir Tim Berners-Lee (the World Wide Web). When he was asked what he did with the £10 he received in the 1960s, Goodfellow said he spent it on a night out. “It didn’t change my life,” he said.


Ever since he was diagnosed HIV positive, Moses King, 48, has had one major problem. He has been able to cope with the stigma of being HIV positive – widespread in Liberia – and he was able to access antiretroviral medication, provided by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and distributed by the Liberian government. But King and his family of six children could not get the right food to eat. A subsistence farmer, he grew vegetables and bought rice.
But meat and fish – expensive, luxury products in Liberian markets but essential sources of protein – remained elusive. “Subsistence farming allowed us to survive, but we had so many problems,” said King. “We could not get any protein, and we were not getting the nutrients we needed to sustain ourselves.” Pate K Chon, a counsellor who works with HIV sufferers in Liberia, provided an unlikely solution. Since watching a documentary about a fish farm in Thailand several years earlier, she had thought of setting up a similar project in Liberia, enabling HIV sufferers to have work and also access a stable source of protein.
“I saw this film about fish in a cement pool and I thought it was a good idea,” said Chon, herself diagnosed with HIV in 1992. “So many of the people I work with don’t have the means to have a balanced protein diet and fish is such a clean source of protein – it doesn’t cause health problems like other sources, and it is something we can farm.”
Chon, founder of a faith-based NGO, began building a pool in which to farm fish. In June 2012, Chon met John Sheehy, a 'strategic philanthropist' and founder of consultancy Emerging Business Lab, who raised money for the non-profit fish farm in the northeast of Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, and set about learning aquaculture, doing an online course through Cornell University and speaking to other fish farmers in Africa.
“I raised the money and built the farm, learned the proper tank layout and water flow system,” said Sheehy. “A lot of my knowledge was self-taught, and now I would love to be able to write a manual and share it with other people,” he added.
The project has now grown into the Grow2Feed Liberia Fish Farm, with 12 tanks, which, when fully stocked, will each have 5,000 fish – providing up to 200,000 fish per year, serving a community of 1,200 predominantly HIV-positive people, including King and his family.
In addition to the fish, waste from the tanks is collected and used to irrigate crops, also providing food and income for the community, made up of 503 women, 206 men and 346 children.
“The members of the community live near the farm, and have agreed to be part of the co-operative,” said Sheehy. “Many work on the farm, or tending the crops, and what they get in return – when the fish are fully grown after 90 days – is fish. They can use those fish to feed themselves and to sell in the market so that they get money to buy other staple items.
“The fish farm gives these people with HIV a way of getting back into society – now they are bartering and trading with people in the market every week.”
According to Liberia’s demographic health survey, 1.5% of Liberia’s 3.5 million people are HIV positive, with 60% of those women or girls. Stigma and discrimination still surround the illness, and have led to around half of all cases in the country going untreated.
Good nutrition is particularly important for people with HIV. Research has shown they need much higher levels of protein to prevent their health from deteriorating and to allow healthy growth. “Nutrition is one of the key things if you are taking antiretroviral drugs,” said Chon. “The drugs are toxic and, if you don’t have food to eat, they can make you very ill. But food in Liberia is very expensive. We buy expensive imported rice, even though we should be growing it ourselves and fish is difficult for most people to afford.”
Sheehy says Grow2Feed is the first co-operative fish farm in Liberia to operate for the benefit of an HIV-positive community. The project has attracted the interest of the Liberian government, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, which has worked with Grow2Feed to provide training, will also support teaching at the University of Liberia.
Fish farming experts say the practice has huge potential in Africa.
“Fish farming is absolutely viable in Africa,” said Paul White, owner of the HydroFish fish farm in Ivory Coast, which produces 3,000 tonnes of fish each year. “A lot of the fish on the market comes from China and is imported frozen. It is of a quality that could never enter Europe or America. There has been a serious lack of investment and a lack of know-how in fish production. It is all coming to the forefront now,” he added.
Some critics are sceptical of farmed fish, citing inbred fish and high levels of toxins. But Sheehy said good practice mitigated these problems. “A lot of farmed fish is inbred, which does cause problems, but we are using a process with local fish sourced in Liberia, not fish from another region,” said Sheehy. “That means we can continue using local fish to bring in new broodstock. “And we are not using lakes that are cornered off, where the fish absorb all the toxins in the lake. We can control the environment using the tanks, and we test the water and monitor it constantly.”
Sheehy hopes to replicate the model throughout Liberia and the region. “A rice-growing co-op in Sierra Leone asked us if we could do this on our property so that they can feed their workers and we have had interest from Nigeria and Central America,” said Sheehy. “But we operate 100% non-profit and we will never lose our social justice aspect.”


For 85 years, it was little more than a featureless grey blob on classroom maps of the solar system, but, on 15 July, Pluto was seen in high resolution for the first time, revealing dramatic mountain ranges made from solid water ice on a scale to rival the Alps or the Rockies.
The extraordinary images of the former ninth planet and its large moon, Charon, beamed 4bn miles back to Earth from the New Horizons spacecraft, mark the climax of a mission that has been quietly underway for nearly a decade.
Alan Stern, the mission’s principal investigator, described the images as a “home run” for the team. “New Horizons is returning amazing results already. The data look absolutely gorgeous, and Pluto and Charon are just mind-blowing.”
One of the biggest surprises was the discovery that “there are mountains in the Kuiper belt ”, the solar system’s mysterious “third zone” where Pluto sits amid around 100,000 smaller icy objects. John Spencer, a mission scientist, said the mountains appear to be around 11,000ft high and several hundred miles across. “These are pretty significant mountains.”
The detailed image of one edge of the dwarf planet showed not a single crater, hinting that the surface has been recently “paved over” by geological activity, which could include dramatic geysers blasting plumes of ice into the atmosphere or cryo-volcanoes that erupt in explosions of ice rather than molten rock.
In a nod to Pluto’s former status as the ninth planet, until it was downgraded to a dwarf planet in 2006, the NASA press conference began with a rundown of spectacular images of the sun and the eight official planets. “We’ve brought what was previously a blurred point of light into focus,” said Dwayne Brown, NASA spokesman, as scientists and journalists waited for the image to be unveiled.
Stern described the images as “just skimming the surface” of what would be learnt about the planet during the coming year. They have already produced some surprises. Scientists believe the mountains are made from water ice with just a thin veneer of “exotic” ices, methane and nitrogen. “You can’t make mountains out of methane and nitrogen,” said Spencer.
“Water ice is strong enough to hold up big mountains and that’s what we think we’re seeing here. This is the first time we’ve seen this. The methane and nitrogen are just a coating.” The mountains on Pluto are likely to have formed no more than 100m years ago – extremely recently given the 4.56bn-year-old solar system. This suggests the close-up region, which covers about 1% of Pluto’s surface, may still be geologically active. The images are the first to show ice mountains outside of the moons of giant planets and raises the question of what kind of geological process could be generating the mountainous landscape.
The structures, together with the smoothness of Pluto’s surface, suggest that geological activity is taking place and smoothing over depressions caused by asteroid impacts. Scientists believe this “paving” process could be the result of internal heat that softens rock and ice or from snowfalls that cover the surface. For scale, the images are so detailed that, if the craft were flying over London, we would be able to pick out the runways at Heathrow airport.
The distance to Pluto – 5bn km – means it takes New Horizons hours to send back a single picture and it will take 16 months to send all the data it has accumulated during the fly-by. The team also announced that the heart-shaped feature visible on Pluto will now be known as the Tombaugh Regio, in honour of Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered the dwarf planet in 1930.
The new view of Charon reveals a varied, complex terrain. An area of cliffs and troughs stretching about 1,000km suggests widespread fracturing of Charon’s surface, which could also be the result of geological activity. The image also shows a dramatic canyon estimated to be 7 to 9km deep.
Cathy Olkin, a mission scientist, said: “Charon just blew our socks off when we had the new image today. The team has just been abuzz.
There is so much interesting science in this one image alone.” Pluto is thought to be composed of about two thirds rock encased in a lot of ice, with surface temperatures of about minus 230C. As the £460m mission travels onwards into the Kuiper belt, scientists hope that it will open up a window on the ancient solar system and the origins of planets, potentially helping to explain the formation of the Earth itself.
Andrew Coates, head of planetary science at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, said: “These Kuiper belt objects are the building blocks of the outer solar system. They’re all very cold – it’s like a cosmic deep freeze. It’s the best way of preserving solar system history. That is what is so fascinating about this. It’s a really thrilling time for solar system exploration.”
In August 2015, mission scientists will choose which of two objects to visit next. NASA estimates that the spacecraft will be able to keep recording and transmitting until the mid-2030s. Then, its plutonium power source will run out and it will shut down, drifting outwards towards the edge of the solar system and deep space beyond.
New Horizons also observed the smaller members of the Pluto system, which includes four other moons: Nix, Hydra, Styx and Kerberos. A new sneak-peek image of Hydra is the first to reveal its apparent irregular shape and its size, estimated to be about 43 by 33km. “New Horizons is a true mission of exploration, showing us why basic scientific research is so important,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
“The mission has had nine years to build expectations about what we would see during closest approach to Pluto and Charon. Today, we get the first sampling of the scientific treasure collected during those critical moments and I can tell you it dramatically surpasses those high expectations.”
The observations also indicate Hydra’s surface is probably coated with water ice. Future images will reveal more clues about the formation of this, and the other moon, billions of years ago.