text
stringlengths 1.44k
7.94k
| label
class label 3
classes |
|---|---|
Junior Smart knows a lot about gangs. He is now 36 and his life can be divided into two distinct phases. He tells how in his late teens, after his mother died, he became drawn into a south London gang, which, at the time, helped fill a huge vacuum.
“They became my new support group,” he says. “At first it was just a bit of fun but then it became more serious, more and more about making money. They got involved in criminality. That is how it was.” At school Smart failed his GCSEs, then retook them at college and passed the lot. He secured a full-time job in administration and worked as a DJ. But, on the side, he was making money illegally as part of the gang.
Eventually he was arrested for serious drug-related offences and was sent to prison for 12 years. Instantly, he says, his sense of invincibility was shattered. “The first night after I was arrested was the biggest wake-up call of my life,” he says. “I had been living a dual life. I had been living as one person to my peers and another person to my peers’ enemies. I spent a long time sorting myself out.”
Today, Junior Smart runs a team of 12 full-time workers and six volunteers, which aims to turn young criminals and gang members away from crime. Most of those working there are, like Smart himself, ex-offenders. A few are still serving their sentences but are regarded as having reformed enough to be allowed out during the day to help. They work with the police, the probation service and other, voluntary organizations to help those who feel trapped and frightened in the violent criminal gangs that operate across London.
For Smart, the extraordinary journey from gang member to mentor began when he witnessed, from within, a prison system that was so obviously failing its inmates. He recalls a drug addict he befriended who, to his dismay, kept returning. “I was touched by the people who kept coming back in,” he says. “I couldn’t believe that nothing was being done about it. I was talking to the inmates and they knew what needed to be changed in their lives, but the problem is that the prison system only deals with the 'index' offence.”
“One guy had a £300-a-week cocaine habit, which he funded through burglary. He would tell me stuff about how he would walk into a house, even when he knew people were there. So although he had a drug addiction, it never got dealt with. The thing that got me about that is that it is simply a revolving door.”
That case and scores of others persuaded Smart to start working as a prison “listener” – an inmate who helps reassure new arrivals and talks them through their first days inside. From there he developed what he calls his own “little plan” to run his own scheme once out of prison – using the experience of ex-offenders to help others reject the revolving door of prison life. He was released early, after five years. “At the end of my sentence I got an opportunity to put my little model into practice,” he says.
So what does he think now? Does he believe that, after the riots of last August, and the government’s promise to crack down on gangs, things are getting better? He is careful to offer some praise to the police and says much of their work in hauling in gang members has been good. But overall he is highly critical of a disjointed government approach that believes that, once the leader of a gang is arrested, the problem is solved. He agrees with the findings of a report that says the arrest of gang leaders can even make things worse. He says the effect of removing the leader is often to destabilize the entire gang.
He draws a diagram of the hierarchy on a pad. “When you arrest the top guy, people start fighting for position all the way up. Who was the most loyal? Who had the most respect? It is a bit like a family. They are more likely to act out, through violence. It means that the arrest of the gang leaders has been nullified because it has not had a long-term effect. They have not even given the community a respite.”
Can it actually make the streets more dangerous? “It can do, because in the vacuum the recruitment and manipulation of young people becomes even more prevalent, creating new lower levels all the way down ... People take sides. If one gang or another territorial street network knows that an elder [leader] has been taken out, then they suddenly think that gang’s weak ... And so we have inter-estate disputes going on. And what happens when that elder is in prison? He forms alliances with other gang members, or when he gets released he then tries to retake control. That is when violence happens.”
In order to spread risk down to the lowest levels, he says gangs are now recruiting far more in primary schools. The youngest members are called “tinies”. “Over the last years we have seen more and more of this. The tinies can be as young as eight to eleven years old.” The young are brought in to shield their seniors from risk. It is often they who are charged with doing the street dealing or even the stabbing, he says.
Smart says that, with a lack of government funding and commitment to long-term rehabilitation, the challenges are immense, particularly in the current economic climate. “I try to engage a young person who has been earning £300 a week through illegal methods. It was hard before, to try to convince him. But with unemployment high and cuts to benefits, it makes things tougher.”
That said, his project, which has well over 1,000 clients, is delivering results. Fewer than 20% of those who come in for help reoffend. From personal experience, Smart refuses to write off a single individual as beyond redemption and that is what drives him on. “I don’t think that about anybody,” he says. | 2adv
|
The Virunga National Park, home to rare mountain gorillas but targeted for oil exploration by a British company, could earn trouble-torn DR Congo $400m a year from tourism, hydropower and carbon credits, said a WWF report.
But, if the UNESCO World Heritage Site that straddles the equator is exploited for oil, as the Congolese government and exploration firm SOCO International are hoping, it could lead to devastating pollution and permanent conflict in an already unstable region, says the conservation body.
SOCO International is the only company seeking to explore inside the boundaries of the Virunga park. SOCO insist that their operations in Congo would be confined to an area in the park known as Block V, and would not affect the gorillas.
SOCO Chairman Rui de Sousa said: “Despite the views of WWF, SOCO is extremely sensitive to the environmental significance of the Virunga National Park. It is irrefutable that oil companies still have a central role in today’s global energy supply and a successful oil project has the potential to transform the economic and social well-being of a whole country.”
He added: “The park has sadly been in decline for many years, officially falling below the standards required for a World Heritage Site. The potential for development just might be the catalyst that reverses this trend.”
However, Raymond Lumbuenamo, country director for WWF Democratic Republic of the Congo, based in Kinshassa, said that security in and around the park would deteriorate further if SOCO went ahead with its exploration plans.
“The security situation is already bad. The UN is involved with fighting units and the M23 rebel force is inside the park. Oil would be a curse. It always increases conflict. It would attract human sabotage. The park might become like the Niger Delta. Developing Virunga for oil will not make anything better.
“The population there is already very dense, with over 350 people per square kilometre. When you take part of the land (for oil), you put more pressure on the rest. Oil would not provide many jobs; people would flood in looking for work,” he said.
One fear is that the area is seismically active and another eruption of one of the volcanoes in the park could damage oil company infrastructure and lead to oil spills in the lakes. “Virunga’s rich natural resources are for the benefit of the Congolese people, not for foreign oil prospectors to drain away. Our country’s future depends on sustainable economic development,” said Lumbuenamo.
“For me, choosing the conservation option is the best option. Once you have started drilling for oil, there’s no turning back,” he said.
But Lumbuenamo accepted that, while the gorillas were safe at present, the chances of the park generating its potential of $400m a year were remote. “It would be difficult to make the kind of money that the report talks of. Virunga used to be a very peaceful place and can be again. The security situation right now is bad. The UN is involved with fighting units. It’s not as quiet as it used to be.”
According to the WWF report, ecosystems in the park could support hydropower generation, fishing and ecotourism, and play an important role in providing secure water supplies, regulating climate and preventing soil erosion.
The park, Africa’s oldest and most diverse, is home to over 3,000 different kinds of animals, but is now heavily populated with desperately poor people, many of whom fled there after the Rwanda massacre in 1994.
“In all, the park could support in the region of 45,000 permanent jobs. In addition, people around the world could get an immense value from simply knowing that the park is well managed and is safe for future generations,” says the report.
“Virunga represents a valuable asset to DR Congo and contributes to Africa’s heritage as the oldest and most biodiverse park on the continent,” the report continues. “Plans to explore for oil and exploit oil reserves put Virunga’s potential value at risk,” it says.
“This is where we draw the line. Oil companies are standing on the doorstep of one of the world’s most precious and fragile places, but we will not rest until Virunga is safe from this potential environmental disaster,” said Lasse Gustavsson, executive director of WWF International. “Virunga has snow fields and lava fields, but it should not have oil fields.”
The UNESCO World Heritage Committee called for the cancellation of all Virunga oil permits and appealed to concession holders Total SA and SOCO International plc not to undertake exploration in World Heritage Sites. Total has committed to respecting Virunga’s current boundary, leaving UK-based SOCO as the only oil company with plans to explore inside the park. | 2adv
|
Nobody knows which came first: the economic crisis tearing Greece apart or shisha, the drug now known as the “cocaine of the poor”. What everyone does accept is that shisha is a killer; and at €2 or less a hit, it is one that has come to stalk Greece, the country long on the frontline of Europe’s financial meltdown.
“As drugs go, it is the worst. It burns your insides, it makes you aggressive and ensures that you go totally mad,” said Maria, a former heroin addict. “But it is cheap and it is easy to get, and it is what everyone is doing.”
This drug crisis has put Athens’s health authorities, already overwhelmed by draconian cuts, under further strain.
The drug of preference for thousands of homeless Greeks forced on to the streets by poverty and despair, shisha is described by both addicts and officials as a variant of crystal meth, whose potential to send users into a state of mindless violence is underpinned by the substances with which the synthetic drug is frequently mixed: battery acid, engine oil and even shampoo.
Worse still, it is not only readily available but easy to make – tailor-made for a society that sees little light at the end of the tunnel.
“It is a killer, but it also makes you want to kill,” said Konstantinos, a drug addict. “You can kill without understanding that you have done it. And it is spreading faster than death. A lot of users have died.”
For Charalampos Poulopoulos, the head of Kethea, Greece’s pre-eminent anti-drug centre, shisha symbolizes the depredations of a crisis that has led to record levels of destitution and unemployment. It is, he said, an “austerity drug” – the response of dealers who have become ever more adept at producing synthetic drugs designed for those who can no longer afford more expensive highs from such drugs as heroin and cocaine.
“The crisis has given dealers the possibility to promote a new, cheap drug, a cocaine for the poor,” said Poulopoulos at a centre run for addicts in Exarcheia, the anarchist stronghold in Athens. “Shisha can be sniffed or injected and it can be made in home laboratories – you don’t need any specialized knowledge. It is extremely dangerous.”
Across Greece, the byproducts of six straight years of recession have been brutal and cruel. Depression, along with drug and alcohol abuse, has risen dramatically. Delinquency and crime have soared as Greek society has unravelled under the weight of austerity measures that have cut the income of ordinary Greeks by 40%. Prostitution – the easiest way of financing drug addiction – has similarly skyrocketed.
“Desperation is such that many women agree to engage in unprotected sex because that way they’ll make more money,” said Eleni Marini, a British-trained psychologist with Kethea. “Shisha has been linked to a very intense sexual drive but it attacks your ability to think straight and we’re seeing a lot more pregnancies among drug addicts who engage in prostitution.” In 2012, two sex workers gave birth on the streets of Athens.
At a time when suicides have also shot up and the spread of HIV infections has assumed epidemic proportions, drug addicts (a population believed to be around 25,000 strong) have become increasingly self-destructive. And, experts say, young Greeks marginalized by record rates of unemployment – at 64% Greece has the highest youth unemployment in the EU – are leading the way.
“The crisis has created a widespread sense of pessimism,” said Poulopoulos. “For those who might have quit drugs, there is now no incentive. Instead, there’s an atmosphere of misery, where people knowing they won’t find work are becoming a lot more self-destructive. In Athens, where the economic crisis has hit hardest, shisha is part of that.”
Greece’s conservative-dominated coalition government has tried to deal with the problem by driving drug users and other homeless people out of the city centre – a series of controversial police operations has swept central streets, clearing crowded doorways and malls.
“But with such actions, authorities are only sweeping the problem under the carpet,” said Poulopoulos. “What, in reality, they are really doing is marginalizing these people even more by pushing them into the arms of drug dealers who offer them protection.”
Just when the demand for help has never been greater, state-funded organizations such as Kethea have had their budgets slashed by a third at the request of the “troika” – the EC, ECB and IMF – keeping the debt-stricken Greek economy afloat.
Since the outbreak of the crisis in 2009, Kethea has lost 70 of its 500 staff. The cuts come despite studies showing that, for every euro invested in programmes such as Kethea, the state saves about €6 in costs to the criminal justice and healthcare systems. “The cuts we have witnessed are a false economy, a huge mistake,” said Poulopoulos.
On the streets of Athens, the breeding ground of shisha, there is rising fear that austerity not only doesn’t work – it kills. | 2adv
|
Throughout a momentous day at Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral for the families of the 96 people who died so needlessly at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough football ground, one phrase dominated above all else: the truth. These were the words most infamously abused by a headline in The Sun newspaper, above stories which we now know, in extraordinarily shocking detail, were fed by the South Yorkshire Police to deflect their own culpability for the disaster on to the innocent victims.
Margaret Aspinall, whose son James, then 18, died at what should have been a joyful day out, an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, said the families had been forced to fight, for 23 years, for just that: the truth. Aspinall, Chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, said that, although the families’ loss would never fade, she was “delighted” at the unequivocal, “profound” apology given for Hillsborough’s savage failings by David Cameron.
The Hillsborough Independent Panel had inspected 450,000 documents generated by the police, Sheffield Wednesday and all other bodies responsible, and delivered its remarkable 395- page report indicting official failings and vindicating the victims and football supporters.
Some of what happened to cause the disaster, and the police’s subsequent blame-shifting, has been exposed before. But the depth of what the families call a cover-up, in particular the deliberate police campaign to avoid its own responsibilities and falsely blame the supporters, was still startling.
In a concerted campaign – led, the panel found, by the Chief Constable, Peter Wright – the South Yorkshire Police put out their story that drunken supporters or those without tickets had caused the disaster. The victims had their blood tested for alcohol levels. This was “an exceptional decision ”, the panel said, for which it found “no rationale ”. When victims had alcohol in their blood, the police then checked to find if they had criminal records.
The report, substantially authored by Professor Phil Scraton of Queen’s University, Belfast, and unanimously agreed by the panel of eight experts, found there was “no evidence … to verify the serious allegations of exceptional levels of drunkenness, ticketlessness or violence among Liverpool fans ”.
The report found that even as the nightmare began for the families of the victims, Wright was meeting his police federation in a Sheffield restaurant to prepare “a defence” and “a rock- solid story ”. The Secretary of the South Yorkshire Police Federation branch, Constable Paul Middup, told the restaurant meeting before Wright turned up: “The Chief Constable had said the truth could not come from him, but had given the secretary a totally free hand and supported him,” as had many senior officers.
The meeting was held just four days after the disaster. It was the day that The Sun splashed its headline “The Truth” over lies fed to it by four senior South Yorkshire police officers. Middup was encouraged to continue this police campaign of defaming Liverpool supporters for supposed drunkenness and misbehaviour and “to get the message – togetherness – across to the force ”.
The panel’s report sustained the allegation made in parliament that the orchestrated changing of junior officers’ statements by senior South Yorkshire police officers amounted to a “black propaganda unit ”. The officers’ statements, presented as official police accounts to the subsequent inquiry, were changed to delete criticism of the police themselves on the day, and, largely, emphasize misbehaviour by supporters. The panel found that 116 of 164 statements were amended “to remove or alter comments unfavourable to South Yorkshire police ”.
The police had claimed this was done only to remove “conjecture” and “opinion” from the statements, but the panel had no doubt the operation, to craft a case rather than deliver truthful police accounts, went further. “It was done to remove criticism of the police,” Scraton said.
This propaganda did not convince the original inquiry, which ruled as quickly as August 1989 that the police stories of fan drunkenness and misbehaviour were false, and criticized the police for making the claims. The report revealed that Sheffield Wednesday’s football ground was unsafe in crucial respects, that the Football Association had selected it as the venue for the match without even checking if Hillsborough had a valid safety certificate, which it did not.
In that landscape of neglect, it was the mismanagement of the crowd by the police, commanded by an inexperienced Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield, that was “the prime cause” of the disaster. The police lost control outside the ground, where 24,000 Liverpool fans had to be funnelled 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 “blunder of the first magnitude ”, according to the inquiry, was the failure to close off the tunnel that led to the already overcrowded central section of the Leppings Lane terrace.
The inquiry report established this but the police, undaunted, repeated their claims to the subsequent inquest. Its procedure was marked by the coroner’s decision not to take evidence of what happened after 3.15pm on the day of the disaster, thereby excluding an emergency response the panel found to have been chaotic. The finding that 41 of the 96 who died could possibly have been saved had the police and ambulance service done their jobs decently is damning of those bodies and, Aspinall said, difficult for the families to contemplate.
In the light of the panel’s report, the Attorney General will now consider whether to apply to the High Court for the inquest verdict of accidental death to be quashed and a new inquest held. 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 the safety of the football ground. Trevor Hicks, the President of the HFSG, both of whose teenage daughters, Sarah and Victoria, died in the crush, said: “The truth is out today. Tomorrow is for justice.” | 2adv
|
Crunchy, full of protein and to be found under a rock near you. Insects have long been overlooked as food in all but a handful of places around the world – but now they are crawling closer and closer to our plates. Spring 2013 will see a drive towards removing the yuck factor and putting insects not just on experimental gastronomic menus but also on supermarket shelves.
In April, there will be a festival in London, Pestival 2013 – a Wellcome Trust-backed insect appreciation event where the consumption of creepy-crawlies comes high on the agenda. It will feature a two-day “pop-up ” restaurant by the Nordic Food Lab, the Scandinavian team behind the Danish restaurant Noma, which brought ants to the table for a sellout ten-day run at Claridge’s hotel in Mayfair in 2012.
Noma has been named the world’s best restaurant by Restaurant magazine for three years running. Its chef, René Redzepi, says that ants taste like lemon, and a purée of fermented grasshoppers and moth larvae tastes like a strong fish sauce. Bee larvae make a sweet mayonnaise used in place of eggs and scientists are constantly coming up with new ways to use little creatures.
In March, a BBC documentary will feature food writer Stefan Gates searching out and eating deep-fried locusts and barbecued tarantulas. But, behind all the gimmicks and jokes about flies in the soup there is a deeply serious message. Many experts believe there is a clear environmental benefit to humans eating creepy-crawlies.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has been funding projects since 2011 aimed at promoting the eating and farming of insects in south-east Asia and Africa, where an estimated two billion people already eat insects and caterpillar larvae as a regular part of their diet. In 2012, the FAO published a list of 1,909 edible species of insect and, with sponsorship from the Dutch government plans a major international conference on “this valuable food source” in 2013.
Insects are plentiful – globally, for every human there are 40 tonnes of insects – so there is not too much chance of them being endangered, and they are unlikely to have been dosed with chemicals. “I know it’s taboo to eat bugs in the western world, but why not?”, Redzepi has said. “You go to south-east Asia and this is a common thing. You read about it from all over the world, that people are eating bugs. If you like mushrooms, you’ve eaten so many worms you cannot imagine. But also we eat honey, and honey is the vomit of a bee. Think of that next time you pour it into your tea.”
He said that the basic premise behind Nordic Food Lab was: “Nothing is not edible.” Insects are critical to life on Earth and, with more than a million species, are the most diverse group of creatures on the planet, yet they are misunderstood, hated and often put to death by humans just because they are there.
Over the next 30 years, the planet’s human population will increase to nine billion. Already one billion people do not get enough food. The increase will mean more pressure on agricultural land, water, forests, fisheries and biodiversity resources, as well as nutrients and energy supplies.
The cost of meat is rising, not just in terms of hard cash but also in terms of the amount of rainforest that is destroyed for grazing or to grow feedstuff for cattle. There is also the issue of methane excreted by cows. The livestock farming contribution, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, is enormous – 35% of the planet’s methane, 65% of its nitrous oxide and 9% of the carbon dioxide.
Edible insects emit fewer gases, contain high-quality protein, vitamins and amino acids, and have a high food-conversion rate, needing a quarter of the food intake of sheep, and half of pigs and chickens, to produce the same amount of protein. They emit fewer greenhouse gases and less ammonia than cows and can be grown on organic waste. China is already successfully setting up huge maggot farms. Zimbabwe has a thriving mapone caterpillar industry and Laos was given nearly $500,000 by the FAO to develop an insect-harvesting project. It’s already big business in the UK, though not always official: a man was recently detained by Gatwick customs as he stepped off a flight from Burkina Faso with 94 kilos of mapone, worth nearly £40,000, in his luggage.
A study by FoodServiceWarehouse.com suggested that swapping pork and beef for crickets and locusts could help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 95%. But perhaps the fairest thing about eating worms and insects comes when we are dead – then they get a chance to nibble their own back. | 2adv
|
It began with a bogus scallop, but a menu scandal that has engulfed some of Japan’s most prestigious hotels and department stores now threatens to undermine the international reputation of the country’s vaunted cuisine.
Since one luxury hotel chain admitted lying about the provenance of ingredients on its menus, Japanese media have served up almost daily revelations of similar transgressions by restaurants run by well-known hotels and department stores.
The frenzy began when the Hankyu-Hanshin hotel chain, based in Osaka, admitted it had given false descriptions of dozens of menu items at some of its restaurants between 2006 and October 2013, affecting an estimated 78,000 diners.
Among the chief menu misdemeanours was a red salmon 'caviar' dish that turned out to be the less sumptuous eggs of the flying fish.
A televised attempt by the hotel group’s president, Hiroshi Desaki, to limit the damage by announcing a 20% pay cut for himself and 10% for other executives, failed to mollify angry consumers.
Days later, Desaki resigned, conceding that the hotel group had “betrayed our customers”, although he added: “We never had the intention to deceive them.” One of the hotel’s head chefs later declined a medal of honour he was due to receive from the government.
The company has so far refunded more than 10,000 consumers to the tune of 20m yen; the eventual bill is expected to reach 110m yen.
Japan’s version of the UK horsemeat scandal has since spread to several household names in catering. While, as in the UK, no one has fallen ill from eating mislabelled produce, the outbreak of anger shows no sign of abating. Consumers who believed they had eaten prized kuruma shrimps, for example, were told they had in fact dined on the much cheaper black tiger version.
The first incident went almost unnoticed. The Prince Hotel in Tokyo was forced to come clean after a diner complained in a blogpost that a 'scallop' dish he had ordered contained a similar, but cheaper, type of shellfish.
The hotel launched an investigation and went on to correct more than 50 menu items at dozens of its restaurants. Its report scared Hankyu-Hanshin and other hoteliers into admitting that they, too, had hoodwinked diners who believed they were paying high prices for premium ingredients.
The Hotel Okura chain – whose guests have included Barack Obama – confessed myriad sins, including injecting beef with fat to make it juicier and incorrectly describing tomatoes as organic.
“We deeply apologize for betraying the expectations and confidence of our clients,” it said in a statement.
The list of fraudulent ingredients continues to grow: orange juice from cartons sold as freshly squeezed; Mont Blanc desserts topped with Korean chestnuts instead of the promised French ones; bought-in chocolate cream masquerading as home-made; imported beef sold as high-end wagyu.
Even the government’s top spokesman, Yoshihide Suga, was moved to comment on the scandal. “These incidents have surfaced one after the other and this inappropriate labelling has resulted in the loss of trust among consumers,” he told reporters. “These are clearly cover-ups.”
The fraudulent menu scandal has exploded at just the wrong time. Japan is trying to persuade South Korea and other countries to lift bans on food imports imposed in response to the Fukushima nuclear accident, while UNESCO is considering a request to add Japanese cuisine to its intangible cultural heritage list.
One local newspaper ran the headline, “Japan’s proud food culture in tears,” while the mass circulation Yomiuri Shimbun said it was “astonished by the industry’s lack of morals.”
The newspaper voiced concerns that the scandal could “harm the credibility of brand Japan, products and services, which are praised by foreign countries and tourists for their safety and security.”
Industry experts said the global financial crisis in 2008 had forced luxury hotels to cut costs while attempting to woo diners with detailed menu descriptions.
“Menu descriptions were created to meet consumers’ preference for brand products, and, when they couldn’t obtain the ingredients stated on the menu, hotels just used food from different places of origin,” Hiroshi Tomozawa, a hotel and restaurant consultant, told Kyodo News.
While they count the cost to their reputations, the hotels and restaurants involved are unlikely to face legal action. Menus are not covered by the agricultural standards law or by a new food labelling law due to go into effect in 2015. The authorities’ only legal weapon is a law banning misleading representations of goods and services.
The industry’s biggest nemesis will be Japan’s discerning and demanding consumers. In a 2009 poll conducted by an online restaurant guide, 72% of respondents said provenance was the most important factor in selecting dishes from a menu, followed by calorific and nutritional details. | 2adv
|
The problem with Google Glasses, says Takahito Iguchi, is that they’re not cool. He has a point. There’s already a website dedicated to people wearing them looking either ridiculous or smug or, more often, both. It possibly wasn’t Google’s smartest move to release the first 10,000 pairs to software developers rather than, say, supermodels or Scarlett Johansson. Search Google Images and one of the first hits is a picture of a large, naked man wearing them in the shower. And it’s this that Iguchi, a Japanese entrepreneur, hopes may be Google’s Achilles’ heel. He is launching a competitor that is a bit more stylized. A bit more Blade Runner. A bit more Japanese.
Iguchi’s augmented reality glasses, which aren’t really glasses so much as a single piece of metal with a camera and a micro-projector, are called Telepathy One, and, after unveiling them at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, they have attracted $5m of venture capital. Like Glass, Telepathy One is due to launch in 2014.
It’s a stripped-down, simplified version of Google Glass. Whereas Glass is, he says, “an egotistical device” with a range of uses – you can surf the net, read emails, take photographs, do unspecified things with as yet unspecified apps – Telepathy will be “more of a communication device”. Connected via Bluetooth to your phone, it will focus on real- time visual and audio sharing. You’ll be able to post photos and videos from your line of vision on Facebook or send them as an email. Or see and speak to a floating video image of a friend.
“It will help bring you close to your friends and family. We are very focused on the communication and sharing possibilities,” says Iguchi, who has worked in the Japanese tech industry for 20 years, most recently developing a location-based phone app called Sekai Camera.
Of course, not everyone wants to get closer to the man in the futuristic headset, I point out. Iguchi shakes his head. “I’m a visionary. I have a dream that people will understand other people. When I go to London, I am a stranger. Sometimes I feel fear. But I believe that everyone wants to be understood and to understand each other. And, with this device, you can know more information about people before you even speak to them.”
Compared to the likes of Google, of course, Telepathy is a minnow. Not that this seems to daunt Takahito Iguchi. In his shared office space in San Francisco – a cool, converted warehouse in the heart of startup land, filled with twentysomethings – he quotes Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and points out that even tiny armies can sometimes beat mighty forces. When he was growing up, Japanese technology ruled the world: the Sony Walkman was the iPhone of its day. Now, to compete, he’s had to quit Tokyo for Silicon Valley.
“Tokyo is very rich in fashion and culture but it’s still an island. It’s isolated. There is not any way to expand. Whereas, in Silicon Valley, everyone is from everywhere. It’s where you come to connect globally.” The hardware will be made in Japan, while he is putting together a team of software engineers in the US to develop its applications. On the day I meet him, he’s being shadowed by a news crew from Japan who are interested in the new wave of Japanese entrepreneurs being forced to leave their homeland.
“We are losing our confidence,” the correspondent, Takashi Yanagisawa, tells me. “And we need to find a way to regain our power. Iguchi is kind of like the new frontier. We hope he might be a new solution.” Building the prototype of Telepathy One was easy, Iguchi says. “We have every sort of technology in Tokyo. It is presenting it to the world that is the challenge.” The leading manufacturers are lining up to work with him, he says, because they have the technology, they just struggle to sell it. “There needs to be a story to the product. Like Apple did with the iPod – 1,000 songs in your pocket. And the way they positioned themselves against Microsoft and IBM, it was like the story of David and Goliath. And Steve Jobs was inspired by Akio Morita, the co-founder of Sony, and he inspired me, so maybe it will come in a circle.”
Maybe. He certainly has the confidence of Jobs, although, with a thick Japanese accent, he sometimes struggles to make himself understood, a fact that may have contributed to Telepathy One’s conception. When he went to London to present the headset at the prestigious Founders Forum, he stayed in an Airbnb. “The house owner was not my friend but I talked with him for three hours, and now he is my friend. That is how long it takes to understand each other, to share our feelings, and background, and career. Maybe Telepathy makes that shorter. If you are getting info from the cloud and social networks, that will happen more easily. And this man is involved in getting investment from UK to Africa, and he was very excited about Telepathy, that it would be a way of educating people about Africa, of showing them other people’s point of view.”
This is Iguchi’s fondest hope – that seeing somebody else’s literal point of view will help you to see their metaphorical point of view. As a student, he explains, he studied philosophy by day and taught himself how to code by night. “And, one day, I opened the door of my apartment and I suddenly realized that everything is code. That was my enlightenment. Everything is coded and is shareable between humans. And everything can be encoded and decoded. And, if code is exchangeable between humans, that will end all war against each other.” | 2adv
|
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.” | 2adv
|
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge won the first round in their battle for privacy on Tuesday when a French magazine was banned from selling or reusing images taken of the couple at a private chateau in Provence.
But the war is far from over as French prosecutors must now decide if criminal proceedings are to be brought against the magazine editor and the photographer or photographers responsible for taking pictures of the duchess sunbathing topless while on holiday in the south of France.
The Tribunal de Grande Instance in Nanterre, Paris granted an injunction ordering the gossip magazine Closer to hand over digital files of the pictures within 24 hours and preventing it disseminating them any further, including on its website and tablet app.
The four-page ruling, which only affects Mondadori Magazines France, Closer’s publisher, also ordered it to pay €2,000 in legal costs. The magazine faces a €10,000 fine for every day it fails to comply with the order. No damages were sought by the couple.
“These snapshots, which showed the intimacy of a couple, partially naked on the terrace of a private home, surrounded by a park several hundred metres from a public road, and being able to legitimately assume that they are protected from passersby, are by nature particularly intrusive,” it said.
The magistrates ruled that every photograph published in France by Mondadori, the publishing company owned by former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, in future would carry a fine, also of €10,000 per breach.
But the ruling refers only to the 14 pictures that have already been published. Closer’s editor has hinted she has other, more intimate pictures.
St James’s Palace said the couple “welcome the judge’s ruling”. A source said: “They always believed the law was broken and that they were entitled to their privacy.” Maud Sobel, a lawyer for the royal couple in Paris, described it as “a wonderful decision,” adding: “We’ve been vindicated.”
Though pleased their civil action has succeeded, the couple have taken the rare step of seeking to have a much more public criminal prosecution for breach of privacy brought against the magazine and photographer or photographers responsible.
The prosecutor will have to decide the targets for any criminal proceedings and the complaint cites “persons unknown”. But it is understood the couple want proceedings brought against the editor of Closer, which published the photos on Friday, and whoever took the images of the couple sunbathing at the chateau, which belongs to Lord Linley, son of the late Princess Margaret.
A preliminary investigation was launched on Tuesday by the Paris police. Under French law breach of privacy carries a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a fine of €45,000.
This is the legal action that will truly lay down a marker, and by pursuing it the couple indicate a determination to convey a wider message to the world and, they hope, deter paparazzi in the future.
Their lawyers had not asked for copies of Closer magazine to be removed from shelves.
On Saturday the Irish Daily Star published the photos, leading to the editor being suspended on Monday night pending the outcome of an internal investigation. Also on Monday, the Mondadori-owned Italian celebrity magazine Chi rushed out a special edition with 26 pages devoted to the candid photos of the future queen.
The couple’s lawyer, Aurélien Hamelle, had told the Paris court it was necessary to block the “highly intimate” images of the duchess without her bikini top as she was a “young woman, not an object”.
But Delphine Pando, defending Closer, said the action was a “disproportionate response” to publication of the photographs. She added that the magazine could not control their resale as it did not own the original images.
Copies of Closer magazine were doing brisk business on online auction site eBay, with one selling for £31.01, until the site removed all listings following “strong feedback” from its community. | 2adv
|
The government is bracing itself for thousands of legal claims from people who were imprisoned and allegedly mistreated during the final days of the British Empire after the High Court in London ruled that three elderly Kenyans detained and tortured during the Mau Mau rebellion have the right to sue for damages.
The court on Friday rejected claims from the government’s lawyers that too much time had elapsed since the seven-year insurgency in the 1950s, and it was no longer possible to hold a fair trial. In 2011 the same High Court judge, Mr Justice McCombe, rejected the government’s claim that the three claimants should be suing the Kenyan government as it had inherited Britain’s legal responsibilities on independence in 1963.
Human rights activists in Kenya estimate more than 5,000 of the 70,000-plus people detained by the British colonial authorities are still alive. Many may bring claims against the British government. The ruling may also make it possible for victims of colonial atrocities in other parts of the world to sue.
But many more men and women around the world who were imprisoned and allegedly mistreated during the conflicts that often accompanied the British retreat from empire may also be considering claims: cases that could bring to light evidence of brutal mistreatment of colonial subjects and result in a new and uncomfortable understanding of recent British history.
The Foreign Office acknowledged that the ruling had “potentially significant and far-reaching legal implications ”, and said it was planning to appeal. “The normal time limit for bringing a civil action is three to six years,” a spokesman said. “In this case, that period has been extended to over 50 years despite the fact that the key decision makers are dead and unable to give their account of what happened.”
Friday’s historic victory for Paulo Muoka Nzili, 85, Wambugu Wa Nyingi, 84, and Jane Muthoni Mara, 73, was the result of a three-year battle through the courts. They had suffered what their lawyers describe as “unspeakable acts of brutality” including castration, beatings and severe sexual assaults. A fourth claimant dropped out while a fifth, Susan Ciong’ombe Ngondi, died two years ago, aged 71.
In the Kenyan capital Nairobi, the news from London was relayed to two of the complainants, Nyingi and Mara, by mobile phone. They had been sitting silently with their supporters in a sun-scorched garden and reacted with joy when the word came, hugging, dancing and eventually raising their hands to the sky to pray.
Nyingi, who was detained for about nine years, beaten unconscious and bears the marks from leg manacles, whipping and caning, said: “For me … I just wanted the truth to be out. Even the children of my children should know what happened. What should happen is that people should be compensated so they can begin to forgive the British government.” Mara said: “I’m very happy and my heart is clean.” Asked what she would tell her four children, she said simply: “I will tell them I won.”
McCombe said in 2011 that there was “ample evidence … that there may have been systematic torture of detainees ”. On Friday he ruled that a fair trial was possible, and highlighted the fact that thousands of documents came to light in 2011 after the Foreign Office admitted to a secret archive of colonial-era files.
During the course of their attempts to have the claims struck out – efforts that the claimants’ lawyer, Martyn Day, described as “morally repugnant” – the British government’s lawyers accepted that all three of the elderly Kenyans were tortured by the colonial authorities.
Day said: “The British government has admitted that these three Kenyans were brutally tortured by the British colony and yet they have been hiding behind technical legal defences for three years in order to avoid any legal responsibility. There will undoubtedly be victims of colonial torture from Malaya to the Yemen, from Cyprus to Palestine, who will be reading this judgment with great care.”
Among those who are known to have been watching the case closely are a number of veterans of the Eoka insurgency in Cyprus in the 1950s. One has already met the Mau Mau claimants’ lawyers. Any Cypriot claimants would be able to rely not only on British documentation, but upon the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva. Those files are kept secret for 40 years, and then opened to public scrutiny. The Red Cross documented hundreds of torture cases in Cyprus, where reporters covering the conflict referred to British interrogators as HMTs – Her Majesty’s Torturers.
There may also be claims from Malaysia, where large numbers of people were detained during the 12-year war with communist insurgents and their supporters that began in 1948. Relatives of 24 unarmed rubber plantation workers massacred by British troops are currently fighting through the British courts for a public inquiry. Many former prisoners of the British in Aden may also have claims against the British government, although, as Aden is now part of Yemen, British lawyers may have difficulty making contact with potential clients there. | 2adv
|
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.” | 2adv
|
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. | 2adv
|
A girl born today in the UK can expect to live nearly to the age of 82 on average, while her brother will live to 78. They would have a longer life in Andorra (85 and 79 respectively) but are marginally better off than in the US (81 and 76), while if they lived in the Central African Republic, they would barely make it out of middle age (49 and 44). Nonetheless, almost everywhere in the world, with the exception of countries such as Lesotho, which have been hit by HIV and violence, lifespans are lengthening and the best news is that small children are substantially less likely to die than they were four decades ago. There has been a drop in deaths among under-fives of nearly 60%, from 16.4 million in 1970 to 6.8 million in 2010.
That in itself is justification for the enormous project that the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in Seattle has led over the past five years, involving nearly 500 researchers, to assess the global burden of disease. Knowing how many children die and from what cause enables the world to focus its efforts and resources on keeping them alive. There are many lessons to be gleaned from the vast database they have put together, which will help global organizations and individual governments to better care for us all – from a renewed focus on diet to tackling alcohol to keeping up the efforts against HIV in Africa.
The seven papers published by The Lancet represent a big undertaking and are not without controversy. IHME has been ambitiously radical in some of its methods. In the absence of death registries or medical records, they have been willing, for instance, to take evidence from verbal autopsies – deciding the cause of death by an interview with the family. The most startling result has been the malaria figure, released earlier in 2012. IHME said 1.2 million die of the disease every year – twice as many as previously thought. The big increase is in adult deaths. Conventional wisdom has it that malaria kills mostly children under five.
“The way I was taught as a doctor and everybody else is taught is that, in malarial areas, you become semi-immune as an adult,” said Dr Christopher Murray, IHME Director and one of the founders of the Global Burden of Disease project. “We originally went with the prevailing opinion but there has been a shift as we have become more empirical. African doctors write on hospital records that adults are dying of malaria a lot.” But, he adds, their fever could be something else. The findings have prompted further studies.
Although Margaret Chan, Director General of the World Health Organization, gave the IHME study a warm official welcome, some of the staff are cautious. “We need to be very careful in assessing the validity [of the figures],” said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist in the Evidence for Information and Policy Cluster. “We need to wait to be persuaded by evidence.” His colleague Dr Tiers Boerma, Director of the WHO Department of Health Statistics and Informatics, added: “People should understand that some of the numbers are very different and the WHO can’t jump with any academic publication that states a different number.” However, said Mathers, “the fact that IHME has pushed the envelope with some of these analyses is stimulating”. One of the main themes, said Murray, was “incredibly rapid change in the leading causes of death and the pace of that change is a lot faster than we expected it to be”.
Reduced fertility and longer life expectancies have meant a rise in the mean age of the world’s population in a decade, from 26 years old to almost 30. It has been dramatic in Latin America, for instance, where countries like Brazil and Paraguay had life expectancy of below 30 in 1970 and almost 64 in 2010. That is a 35-year increase in the mean age of death over four decades. “In a place like Brazil, the speed of change is so fast that most institutions are ill-equipped to deal with it,” Murray said.
The second theme, entwined with it, is the shift outside Africa from communicable diseases and the common causes of mother and baby deaths to what are sometimes termed “lifestyle” diseases, such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer – some of which have significant genetic triggers. That shift has been particularly marked in Latin America, the Middle East and south-east and even south Asia, he said.
The third big finding was, Murray said, “a surprise to us”. That was the sheer extent of disability and the toll it took on people who were living longer but not healthier lives. “The main causes of disability are different from the ones that kill you,” he said. They were mental health problems such as anxiety and depression, musculoskeletal disorders such as arthritis and lower back pain – complained of in every country in the world – anaemia, sight and hearing loss and skin disease. In addition, there was substance abuse. “The rates for these are not going down over time,” he said. “We are making no progress in reducing these conditions.” | 2adv
|
A few months before he died, Carl Sagan recorded a message of hope to would-be Mars explorers, telling them: “Whatever the reason you’re on Mars is, I’m glad you’re there. And I wish I was with you.”
Seventeen years after the pioneering astronomer set out his hopeful vision of the future in 1996, a company from the Netherlands is proposing to turn Sagan’s dreams of reaching Mars into reality. The company, Mars One, plans to send four astronauts on a trip to the Red Planet to set up a human colony in 2023. But there are a couple of serious snags.
Firstly, when on Mars their bodies will have to adapt to surface gravity that is 38% of that on Earth. It is thought that this would cause such a total physiological change in their bone density, muscle strength and circulation that voyagers would no longer be able to survive in Earth’s conditions. Secondly, and directly related to the first, they will have to say goodbye to all their family and friends, as the deal doesn’t include a return ticket.
The Mars One website states that a return “cannot be anticipated nor expected”. To return, they would need a fully assembled and fuelled rocket capable of escaping the gravitational field of Mars, on-board life support systems capable of up to a seven-month voyage and the capacity either to dock with a space station orbiting Earth or perform a safe re-entry and landing. “Not one of these is a small endeavour,” the site notes, requiring “substantial technical capacity, weight and cost”.
Nevertheless, the project has already had 10,000 applicants, according to the company’s Medical Director, Norbert Kraft. He told The Guardian that the applicants so far ranged in age from 18 to at least 62 and, though they include women, they tended to be men.
The reasons they gave for wanting to go were varied, he said. An American woman called Cynthia, who gave her age as 32, told the company that it was a “childhood imagining” of hers to go to Mars. She described a trip her mother had taken her on in the early 1990s to a lecture at the University of Wisconsin.
She said the lecturer had been Sagan and she had asked him if he thought humans would land on Mars in her lifetime. Cynthia said: “He in turn asked me if I wanted to be trapped in a ’tin can spacecraft’ for the two years it would take to get there. I told him 'yes', he smiled, and told me in all seriousness, that yes, he absolutely believed that humans would reach Mars in my lifetime.”
She told the project: “When I first heard about the Mars One project I thought, this is my chance – that childhood dream could become a reality. I could be one of the pioneers, building the first settlement on Mars and teaching people back home that there are still uncharted territories that humans can reach for.”
The prime attributes Mars One is looking for in astronaut-settlers are resilience, adaptability, curiosity, ability to trust and resourcefulness, according to Kraft. They must also be over 18.
Founded in 2010 by Bas Lansdorp, an engineer, Mars One says it has developed a realistic road map and financing plan for the project based on existing technologies and that the mission is perfectly feasible. The website states that the basic elements required for life are already present on the planet. For instance, water can be extracted from ice in the soil and Mars has sources of nitrogen, the primary element in the air we breathe. The colony will be powered by specially adapted solar panels, it says.
Mars One said it had signed a contract with the American firm Paragon Space Development Corporation to take the first steps in developing the life support system and spacesuits fit for the mission.
The project will cost a reported $6bn, a sum Lansdorp has said he hopes will be met partly by selling broadcasting rights. “The broadcasting revenue from the London Olympics was almost enough to finance a mission to Mars,” Lansdorp said, in an interview with ABC News.
Another ambassador to the project is Paul Römer, the co-creator of Big Brother, one of the first, and most successful, reality TV shows.
On the website, Römer gave an indication of how the broadcasting of the project might proceed: “This mission to Mars could be the biggest media event in the world,” said Römer. “Reality meets talent show with no ending and the whole world watching.”
The aim is to establish a permanent human colony, according to the company’s website. The first team would land on the surface of Mars in 2023 to begin constructing the colony, with a team of four astronauts every two years after that.
The project is not without its sceptics, however, and concerns have been raised about how astronauts might get to the planet and establish a colony with all the life support and other requirements needed.
Professor Gerard’t Hooft, winner of the Nobel Prize for theoretical physics in 1999, is an ambassador for the project.’ T Hooft admits there are unknown health risks. The radiation is “of quite a different nature” from anything that has been tested on Earth, he said.
The mission hopes to inspire generations to “believe that all things are possible, that anything can be achieved,” much like the Apollo Moon landings.
“Mars One believes it is not only possible, but imperative that we establish a permanent settlement on Mars in order to accelerate our understanding of the formation of the solar system, the origins of life and, of equal importance, our place in the universe,” it says. | 2adv
|
The balls have dropped down the chute and all six numbers match, so it’s time to buy that Audi, book the holiday in the US and phone the estate agent. At least, that’s what most lottery millionaires do, according to an analysis of spending and investment by jackpot winners.
Since its launch in 1994, the lottery has created 3,000 millionaires who have won more than £8.5bn in total, at an average of £2.8m each. The trickle-down effect means that between them they have created a further 3,780 millionaires among their children, family and friends, according to the authors of the study, Oxford Economics.
Most winners (59%) give up work straight away, but 19% carry on doing the day job and 31% do unpaid voluntary work. The good news for the economy is that 98% of winners’ spending remained in the UK. Through their spending on property, vehicles and holidays, it is estimated that each winner keeps six people in a full-time job for a year.
Winners have contributed almost £750m to gross domestic product (GDP), and generated more than £500m in tax receipts for the Exchequer. The bulk of the money went on property, with £2.72bn spent on winners’ main properties, and £170m in paying off existing debt and mortgages.
Maintaining income was a priority, with £2.125bn spent on investments. Gifts to family and friends accounted for £1.17bn, and £680m was spent on cars and holidays.
The study, commissioned by Camelot, the operators of the UK National Lottery, to mark the 3,000-winners milestone, was based on research from 100 £1m-plus winners. It found that in total the 3,000 winners have purchased 7,958 houses or flats in the UK, or 2.7 each, spending £3.3bn. Most winners (82%) changed their main residence, spending an average £900,000.
The new home is likely to come with a hot tub, with almost a third (29%) putting that on their shopping list. A walk-in wardrobe was a must for 28%, almost a quarter (24%) opted for a property behind electric gates, and 22% had a games room, with 7% installing a snooker table.
Larger properties need maintaining, and 30% of winners employed a cleaner and 24% a gardener. A small proportion (5%) employed a beautician.
Audis were the favourite cars of 16% of winners, with Range Rovers and BMWs also popular purchases (11% each), as well as Mercedes (10%) and Land Rovers (5%). Winners spent £463m on 17,190 cars, with the average price of their favourite being £46,116.
Holidays were also a priority. The majority (68%) choose five-star hotels overseas. The US was the favoured destination for 27%, followed by the Caribbean (9%). Closer to home, however, UK caravan sales have benefited. Over the past 18 years, 10% of millionaires have bought a caravan, generating sales worth about £7.4m.
Some winners (15%) have started their own businesses, 9% have helped others to do so, and 6% have invested in or bought other people’s businesses. Businesses started or supported by lottery winners employ 3,195 people, according to the study.
Andy Logan, author of the report, said: “The effect of a win spreads much further and wider than we anticipated. Not only does it transform the lives of friends and family, but each win has a measurable effect on the UK economy, especially with so much of it being spent in the UK. The use of each win creates a ripple effect across this generation and very often the next.” | 2adv
|
When the Taliban sent a gunman to shoot Malala Yousafzai in October 2012 as she rode home on a bus after school, they made clear their intention: to silence the teenager and kill off her campaign for girls’ education.
Nine months and countless surgical operations later, she stood up at the United Nations on her 16th birthday on Friday to deliver a defiant riposte. “They thought that the bullet would silence us. But they failed,” she said.
As 16th birthdays go, it was among the more unusual. Instead of blowing out candles on a cake, Malala sat in one of the main council chambers at the United Nations in the central seat usually reserved for world leaders.
She listened quietly as Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, described her as “our hero, our champion”; and as the former British prime minister and now UN education envoy, Gordon Brown, uttered what he called “the words the Taliban never wanted her to hear: happy 16th birthday, Malala ”.
The event, dubbed Malala Day, was the culmination of an extraordinary four years for the girl from Mingora, in the troubled Swat valley of Pakistan. She was thrust into the public glare after she wrote a blog for the BBC Urdu service describing her experiences struggling to get an education under the rising power of Taliban militants.
By 11, she was showing exceptional determination, calling personally on the US special representative to Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, to use his influence to combat the Taliban’s drive against education for girls. By 14, she was on the radar of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who put her forward for the International Children’s Peace Prize, and, by 15, she became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize nominee in history.
But such dizzying global attention came at a price. Death threats followed her growing recognition, and, on 9 October 2012, following a meeting of Pakistani Taliban leaders, the gunman was dispatched to remove what they called the “symbol of infidels and obscenity ”.
Multiple operations in Pakistan and the UK followed the attack on the bus, including the fitting of a titanium plate on her left forehead and a cochlear implant to restore her hearing. She now lives with her family in Birmingham and does what the Taliban tried to stop her doing: goes to school every day. “I am not against anyone,” she said in the UN chamber, having taken this day out from the classroom. “Neither am I here to speak in terms of personal revenge against the Taliban or any other terrorist group.”
Malala responded to the violence of the Taliban with her own countervailing force: words against bullets. “I do not even hate the Talib who shot me. Even if there is a gun in my hand and he stands in front of me, I would not shoot him.”
She spoke confidently, with only an injured eye and a slightly drooping left side of her face to hint at such fresh traumas. There was one other unstated allusion to the horror of her past: she wore a white shawl belonging to a woman who was also targeted by extremists but who, unlike Malala, did not survive to tell the tale: Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan.
“The extremists are afraid of books and pens,” the teenager continued. “The power of education frightens them. They are afraid of women. The power of the voice of women frightens them.”
She cited the attack in June on a hospital in Quetta, capital of Baluchistan, and killings of female teachers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. “That is why they are blasting schools every day – because they were and they are afraid of change, afraid of the equality that we will bring to our society.”
And she gave her own opposing interpretation of Islam to the Taliban’s. “They think that God is a tiny, little conservative being who would send girls to hell just because of going to school. The terrorists are misusing the name of Islam and Pashtun society for their own personal benefits. Islam is a religion of peace, humanity and brotherhood. Islam says that it is not only each child’s right to get education, rather it is their duty and responsibility.”
Such ability to articulate what normally remains unarticulated – to give voice to young people normally silenced – has generated its own response. The “Stand with Malala” petition, calling for education for the 57 million children around the world who do not go to school, has attracted more than four million signatures – more than a million having been added shortly after Malala’s speech.
At the start of her speech, Malala said: “I don’t know where to begin my speech. I don’t know what people would be expecting me to say.” She need not have worried. | 2adv
|
Galina Zaglumyonova was woken in her flat in central Chelyabinsk by an enormous explosion that blew in the balcony windows and shattered clay pots containing her few houseplants. When she jumped out of bed she could see a huge vapour trail hanging in the morning sky and hear the wail of car alarms from the street below. “I didn’t understand what was going on,” said Zaglumyonova. “There was a big explosion and then a series of little explosions. My first thought was that it was a plane crash.”
What she had actually witnessed were the death throes of a ten-tonne meteorite that plunged to Earth in a series of fireballs just after sunrise. Officials put the number of people injured at almost 1,200, with more than 40 taken to hospital – most as a result of flying glass shattered by the sonic boom created by the meteorite’s descent. There were no reported deaths.
The meteorite entered the atmosphere travelling at a speed of at least 33,000mph and broke up into chunks between 18 and 32 miles above the ground, according to a statement from the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The event caused panic in Chelyabinsk, a city of more than one million people to the south of Russia’s Ural mountains, as mobile phone networks swiftly became jammed by the volume of calls. Amateur video footage from the area, often peppered with the obscene language of frightened observers, showed the chunks of meteorite glowing more brightly as they approached the moment of impact.
The vapour trail was visible for hundreds of miles around, including in neighbouring Kazakhstan. Tatyana Bets was at work in the reception area of a hospital clinic in the centre of the city when the meteorite struck. “First we noticed the wind, and then the room was filled with a very bright light and we could see a cloud of some unspecified smoke in the sky,” she said. Then, after a few minutes, came the explosions. At least three craters were subsequently discovered, according to the Ministry of the Interior, and were being monitored by the military. One crater was more than six metres wide, while another lump of meteorite was reported to have slammed through the thick ice of a nearby lake. Radiation levels at the impact sites were normal, according to local military officials.
In Chelyabinsk itself, schools and universities were closed and many other staff told to go home early. About 200 children were among the injured.
A steady stream of lightly injured people, most suffering cuts from flying glass, came into the clinic where Bets works. She said a nearby dormitory building for college students was particularly badly affected and many of the students were brought in suffering from fright. “There were a lot of girls in shock. Some were very pale and many of them fainted,” she said.
Early estimates suggested more than 100,000 square metres of glass had been broken and 3,000 buildings hit. The total cost of the damage in the city was being valued at in excess of one billion roubles (£20m).
The meteorite over Chelyabinsk arrived less than a day before asteroid 2012 DA14 was expected to make the closest pass to Earth (about 17,510 miles) of any recorded cosmic body. But experts said the two events were linked by nothing more than coincidence.
Rumours and conspiracy theories, however, swirled in the first few hours after the incident. Reports on Russian state television and in local media suggested that the meteorite was engaged by local air defence units and blown apart at an altitude of more than 15 miles.
The ultranationalist leader of Russia’s Liberal Democrat party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, said it was not a meteorite but military action by the United States, echoing much of the speculation voiced on amateur film footage. “It’s not a meteorite falling – it’s a test of new American weapons,” Zhirinovsky said.
Some were quick to take advantage of the confusion. Enterprising people were offering lumps of meteorite for sale through internet sites within a few hours of the impact.
President Vladimir Putin and the Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, were informed about the incident, and Putin convened a meeting with the head of the Emergency Situations Ministry. “It’s proof that not only are economies vulnerable but the whole planet,” Medvedev said at an economic forum in Siberia.
Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister and former Ambassador to NATO, took to Twitter to call for an international push to create a warning system for all “objects of an alien origin”. Neither the US nor Russia had the capability to bring down such objects, he added. | 2adv
|
There comes a time in some men’s lives when the days seem darker, mortality more certain, and the only sensible response is to blow the life savings on a sportscar.
Radical and often ill-advised changes in lifestyle have become the calling cards of the midlife crisis but, if it is more than a myth, then humans may not be the only animals to experience it.
Now an international team of scientists claims to have found evidence for a slump in well- being among middle-aged chimpanzees and orangutans. The lull in happiness in the middle years, they say, is the ape equivalent of the midlife crisis.
The study, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has raised eyebrows among some scientists but, according to the authors, the findings suggest that the midlife crisis may have its roots in the biology humans share with our closest evolutionary cousins.
“There’s a common understanding that there’s a dip in well-being in middle age,” Alex Weiss, a psychologist at Edinburgh University, told the Guardian.
“We took a step back and asked whether it’s possible that instead of the midlife crisis being human-specific, and driven only by social factors, it reflects some evolved tendency for middle-aged individuals to have lower well-being,” he said.
The team from the US, Japan, Germany and the UK asked zookeepers, carers and others who worked with male and female apes of various ages to complete questionnaires on the animals.
The forms included questions about each ape’s mood, the enjoyment they gained from socializing, and their success at achieving certain goals. The final question asked how carers would feel about being the ape for a week. They scored their answers from one to seven.
More than 500 apes were included in the study in three separate groups. The first two groups were chimpanzees, with the third made up of orangutans from Sumatra or Borneo. The animals came from zoos, sanctuaries and research centres in the US, Australia, Japan, Canada and Singapore.
When the researchers analyzed the questionnaires, they found that well-being in the apes fell in middle age and climbed again as the animals moved into old age. In captivity, great apes often live to 50 or more. The nadir in the animals’ well-being occurred, on average, at 28.3 and 27.2 years old for the chimpanzees, and 35.4 years old for the orangutans.
“In all three groups we find evidence that well-being is lowest in chimpanzees and orangutans at an age that roughly corresponds to midlife in humans,” Weiss said. “On average, well-being scores are lowest when animals are around 30 years old.”
The team explains that the temporary fall in ape well-being may result from watching depressed apes dying younger, or through age-related changes in the brain that are mirrored in humans. Weiss conceded that, unlike men, apes are not known to pursue radical and often disastrous lifestyle changes in middle age.
Robin Dunbar, Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at Oxford University, was dubious about the findings. “What can produce a sense of well-being or contentedness that varies across the lifespan like this? It’s hard to see anything in an ape’s life that would have that sort of pattern, that they would think about. They’re not particularly good at seeing far ahead into the future; that’s one of the big differences between them and us.” Alexandra Freund, Professor of Psychology at the University of Zurich, was also sceptical. She said the concept of a midlife crisis was shaky even in humans. “In my reading of the literature, there is no evidence for the midlife crisis. If there’s any indication of decline in emotional or subjective well-being it is very small and, in many studies, it’s not there at all.”
But Weiss believes the findings could point to a deeper understanding of the emotional crisis some men may experience. “If we want to find the answer as to what’s going on with the midlife crisis, we should look at what is similar in middle-aged humans, chimps and orangutans,” he said. | 2adv
|
The inventor of a state-of-the-art computer-assisted autopsy system that is increasingly being used in European hospitals has claimed the technique could eventually mean there is no such thing as a 'perfect murder'.
The method, called 'Virtopsy', is now being used at selected forensic medical institutes in Europe, having been pioneered by a group of scientists at the University of Zurich. Instead of reaching for the scalpel and making the Y-shaped incision in the chest with which a traditional autopsy begins, pathologists are now able to examine the corpse in 3-D via computer screens.
Michael Thali, the Director of Zurich’s Institute for Forensic Medicine in Europe, and one of the inventors of Virtopsy, said it had the potential to revolutionize criminal investigations. “Basically there will be no such thing as the perfect murder any more as a virtual autopsy allows you to find every piece of evidence,” he said.
Virtopsies combine the images from high-powered magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT) and surface scans of dead bodies. Combined, the devices are referred to as a 'Virtobot'. The technique allows the detection of injuries such as lesions and blows often undetectable during a traditional autopsy, as well as air pockets, heart attacks and even cancer.
“The Virtopsy has the potential to replace the autopsy one day,” Richard Dirndorfer, one of the pioneers of DNA analysis in criminology, and a founder developer of Virtopsy, told the German science magazine PM . “I think we’ll see it happen gradually, just like DNA analysis gradually replaced blood group analysis,” he said.
The computer imaging techniques allow doctors to gain in-depth insights into the deepest interiors of dead bodies. The method has already allowed the discovery of haemorrhages and fractures that were not picked up during conventional autopsies. The initial aim is to use the new method to complement the traditional autopsy.
“It will enable forensic scientists to plan their autopsies far more efficiently,” Dominic Wichmann, an internal medicine specialist at Hamburg’s University Hospital, told Spiegel. Criminologists from around the world have been travelling to Switzerland over the past few years to see the development of the new method for themselves.
The US forensic medical drama CSI has already twice featured Virtopsies. In one, the system was able to prove that a murder victim was killed by a bullet through the cheek; in another, a Virtopsy on a murdered man meant his wish to be cryogenically frozen could still go ahead as his body remained intact.
The method has been under development for decades, with the scientists behind it first housed in an unheated laboratory on a university campus where they were considered a bit of a laughing stock. Later, a donation from a rich ophthalmologist enabled the project to take off. Even then it was initially rejected for its potential to undermine the traditional skills of forensic scientists and pathologists. But a new generation appears to be seeing it as less of a threat and rather as something that will complement and substantiate conventional methods and possibly even one day replace them, though probably not entirely.
“In order to analyze the colour of the blood, the consistencies (of body fluids) or smells, we’ll need to keep on with the conventional cut,” said Lars Oesterhelweg, Deputy Director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the Charité Hospital in Berlin, which is using a version of the Virtopsy.
He added that the new method was particularly helpful in re-examining cases where the cause of death was unclear. “It means that third opinions can be gathered, investigations can be re-examined and cases can be reopened,” he said.
Scientists using the new method said that relatives of the dead, who are often reluctant for autopsies to be carried out because of the disfigurement they cause, were much keener on the non-invasive method. | 2adv
|
The Senate Intelligence Committee has approved a bill that would provide for increased transparency of the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of US phone records but allow the controversial practice to continue. Sponsored by Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, the bill lets the NSA continue to collect phone metadata of millions of Americans for renewable 90-day periods and allows the government to retain it. Some legislators have alternatively proposed letting phone companies hold the metadata. It passed the committee by an 11-4 vote, paving the way for a full Senate vote.
The bill allows analysts to search through the data if they suspect there is a 'reasonable suspicion' that a suspect is associated with international terrorism. Additionally, the bill allows the NSA to continue surveillance begun on foreigners outside the US if they enter the country 'for a transitory period not to exceed 72 hours'.
The bill is a direct challenge to one introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy that would end domestic phone-records collection. It was also opposed by leading Intelligence Committee member Mark Udall, who said it did not go far enough. “The NSA’s invasive surveillance of Americans’ private information does not respect our constitutional values and needs fundamental reform, not incidental changes. Unfortunately, the bill passed by the Senate Intelligence Committee does not go far enough to address the NSA’s overreaching domestic surveillance programmes,” Udall said.
Another Democratic member of the committee, Ron Wyden, said the bill maintains “business as usual” and “remains far from anything that could be considered meaningful reform”. Feinstein defended the NSA bulk collection programme, but said there was a need to rebuild public trust. “The NSA call-records programme is legal and subject to extensive congressional and judicial oversight, and I believe it contributes to our national security,” she said in a statement. “But more can, and should, be done to increase transparency and build public support for privacy protections in place.”
In her statement, Feinstein said the bill would also make a number of improvements to transparency and oversight on the NSA, including: requiring an annual public report of the total number of queries of NSA’s telephone metadata database and the number of times the programme leads to an FBI investigation or probable cause order; requiring that the foreign intelligence surveillance court impose limits on the number of people at NSA who may authorize or query the call-records database; establishing criminal penalties of up to ten years in prison for intentional unauthorized access to data acquired under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by the United States; mandating the FISA court impose a limit on the number of contacts an analyst can receive in response to a query of bulk communication records.
After the committee’s hearing had ended, Feinstein strongly endorsed the NSA’s main domestic programme. “I think there’s huge misunderstanding about this NSA database programme, and how vital it is to protecting this country,” she told reporters.
Concern over the Intelligence Committee’s bill was expressed by independent legal experts, who said the stage was now set for a showdown with the USA Freedom Act, a bill introduced by Leahy and Jim Sensenbrenner that would prohibit bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records.
Elizabeth Goitein of the Brennan Center for Justice said: “The Intelligence Committee bill and the USA Freedom Act present two opposing visions of the relationship between law-abiding Americans and the national security state. The fundamental question is: should the government have some reason to suspect wrongdoing before sweeping up Americans’ most personal information to feed into its databases? Leahy and Sensenbrenner say yes; Feinstein says no.” Wyden suggested that recent concern about NSA spying on foreign leaders had distracted from the real focus on mass domestic surveillance in the US. “The statements that American intelligence officials have made about collecting on the intentions of foreign leadership, that’s consistent with the understanding I’ve had for years, as a member of the Intelligence Committee,” he said. “That has implications for foreign policy. My top priority is ending the mass surveillance, digital surveillance, of millions and millions of law- abiding Americans.”
Feinstein unexpectedly announced that she was “totally opposed” to the foreign leader spying of the sort the NSA conducts of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Feinstein has been a staunch supporter of the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records.
“Americans are making it clear, that they never – repeat, never – agreed to give up their constitutional liberties for the appearance of security,” Wyden said. “We’re just going to keep fighting this battle. It’s going to be a long one.”
Separately, Feinstein said that James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, had agreed to provide her in writing with a statement about a Washington Post story that alleged the NSA had intercepted data in transmission between Google and Yahoo data centres. She said she was withholding judgement on the story until she saw Clapper’s rebuttal. Her strong endorsement of the domestic phone records collection indicates that the powerful Senate Democrat is not yet prepared to expand the criticism of the NSA that she has launched, “totally opposing” its surveillance of foreign allied leaders – a more traditional intelligence activity than bulk phone metadata surveillance.
Wyden would not comment on the Washington Post report on the Google and Yahoo intercepts. But the senators suggested it had implications for the privacy of Americans’ communication. “Decades ago, countries had their own kinds of communication systems. Now that you’ve had the merger of global communications, I think you’re going to have a lot more challenges spying on foreigners with implications for US citizens,” Wyden said. | 2adv
|
The National Security Agency (NSA) has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top-secret document. The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.
The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims “collection directly from the servers” of major US service providers. Although the presentation claims the program is run with the assistance of the companies, all those who responded to a request for comment denied knowledge of any such program.
In a statement, Google said: “Google cares deeply about the security of our users’ data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data.”
Several senior tech executives insisted that they had no knowledge of PRISM or of any similar scheme. They said they would never have been involved in such a program. “If they are doing this, they are doing it without our knowledge,” one said. An Apple spokesman said he had “never heard” of PRISM.
The NSA access was enabled by changes to US surveillance law, introduced under President Bush and renewed under Obama in December 2012. The program facilitates extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information. The law allows for the targeting of any customers of participating firms who live outside the US, or those Americans whose communications include people outside the US. It also opens the possibility of communications made entirely within the US being collected without warrants.
Disclosure of the PRISM program follows a leak to the Guardian on Wednesday of a top-secret court order compelling telecoms provider Verizon to turn over the telephone records of millions of US customers. The participation of the internet companies in PRISM will add to the debate about the scale of surveillance by the intelligence services. Unlike the collection of those call records, this surveillance can include the content of communications and not just the metadata. Some of the world’s largest internet brands are claimed to be part of the information-sharing program since its introduction in 2007. Microsoft – which is currently running an advertising campaign with the slogan “Your privacy is our priority” – was the first, with collection beginning in December 2007. It was followed by Yahoo in 2008; Google, Facebook and PalTalk in 2009; YouTube in 2010; Skype and AOL in 2011; and finally Apple, which joined the program in 2012. The program is continuing to expand, with other providers due to come online. Collectively, the companies cover the vast majority of online email, search, video and communications networks. The extent and nature of the data collected from each company varies. Companies are legally obliged to comply with requests for users’ communications under US law, but the PRISM program allows the intelligence services direct access to the companies’ servers. The NSA document notes the operations have the “assistance of communications providers in the US ”. The revelation also supports concerns raised by several US senators during the renewal of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) in December 2012, who warned about the scale of surveillance the law might enable and shortcomings in the safeguards it introduces. When the FAA was first enacted, defenders of the statute argued that a significant check on abuse would be the NSA’s inability to obtain electronic communications without the consent of the telecom and internet companies that control the data.
But the PRISM program renders that consent unnecessary, as it allows the agency to directly and unilaterally seize the communications off the companies’ servers.
A chart prepared by the NSA, contained within the top-secret document, highlights the breadth of the data it is able to obtain: email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice-over-IP (Skype, for example) chats, file transfers, social networking details and more. The document is recent, dating to April 2013. Such a leak is extremely rare in the history of the NSA, which prides itself on maintaining a high level of secrecy.
The PRISM program allows the NSA, the world’s largest surveillance organization, to obtain targeted communications without having to request them from the service providers and without having to obtain individual court orders. With this program, the NSA is able to reach directly into the servers of the participating companies and obtain both stored communications and perform real-time collection on targeted users.
A senior administration official said in a statement: “The Guardian and Washington Post articles refer to collection of communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). This law does not allow the targeting of any US citizen or of any person located within the United States. The program is subject to oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Executive Branch and Congress. It involves extensive procedures, specifically approved by the court, to ensure that only non-US persons outside the US are targeted and that minimize the acquisition, retention and dissemination of incidentally acquired information about US persons.
“This program was recently reauthorized by Congress after extensive hearings and debate. Information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable intelligence information we collect and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats.” | 2adv
|
Nelson Mandela, the towering figure of Africa’s struggle for freedom and a hero to millions around the world, has died at the age of 95.
South Africa’s first black president died in the company of his family at home in Johannesburg after years of declining health, which had caused him to withdraw from public life.
The news was announced to the country by the current president, Jacob Zuma, who, in a sombre televised address, said Mandela had “departed” around 8.50pm local time and was at peace.
“This is the moment of our deepest sorrow,” Zuma said. “Our nation has lost its greatest son. What made Nelson Mandela great was precisely what made him human. We saw in him what we seek in ourselves.
“Fellow South Africans, Nelson Mandela brought us together and it is together that we will bid him farewell.”
Zuma announced that Mandela would receive a state funeral and ordered that flags fly at half-mast.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu led a memorial service in Cape Town, where he called for South Africa to become as a nation what Mandela had been as a man.
Barack Obama led tributes from world leaders, referring to Mandela by his clan name – Madiba. The US president said: “Through his fierce dignity and unbending will to sacrifice his own freedom for the freedom of others, Madiba transformed South Africa – and moved all of us.
“His journey from a prisoner to a president embodied the promise that human beings – and countries – can change for the better. His commitment to transfer power and reconcile with those who jailed him set an example that all humanity should aspire to, whether in the lives of nations or our own personal lives.”
UK prime minister David Cameron said, “A great light has gone out in the world,” and described Mandela as “a hero of our time”.
FW de Klerk – the South African president who freed Mandela, shared the Nobel Peace Prize with him in 1993 and paved the way for him to become South Africa’s first post-apartheid head of state – said the news was deeply saddening for South Africa and the world.
“He lived reconciliation. He was a great unifier,” de Klerk said.
People gathered in the streets of South Africa to celebrate Mandela’s life.
In Soweto, people gathered to sing and dance near the house where he once lived. They formed a circle in the middle of Vilakazi Street and sang songs from the anti-apartheid struggle. Some people were draped in South African flags and the green, yellow and black colours of Mandela’s party, the African National Congress (ANC). Mandela’s death sends South Africa deep into mourning and self-reflection, nearly 20 years after he led the country from racial apartheid to inclusive democracy.
But his passing will also be keenly felt by people around the world, who revered Mandela as one of history’s last great statesmen, and a moral paragon comparable with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Martin Luther King. It was his act of forgiveness, after spending 27 years in prison, 18 of them on Robben Island, that will assure his place in history. With South Africa facing possible civil war, Mandela sought reconciliation with the white minority to build a new democracy.
He led the ANC to victory in the country’s first multiracial election in 1994. He then voluntarily stepped down after one term.
Born Rolihlahla Dalibhunga in a small village in the Eastern Cape on 18 July, 1918, Mandela was given his English name, Nelson, by a teacher at his school.
He joined the ANC in 1943 and became a co-founder of its youth league. In 1952, he started South Africa’s first black law firm with his partner, Oliver Tambo.
Mandela was a charming, charismatic figure with a passion for boxing and an eye for women. He once said: “I can’t help it if the ladies take note of me. I am not going to protest.”
When the ANC was banned in 1960, Mandela went underground. After the Sharpeville massacre, in which 69 black protesters were shot dead by police, he took the difficult decision to launch an armed struggle. He was arrested and eventually charged with sabotage and attempting to overthrow the government.
Conducting his own defence in the Rivonia trial in 1964, he said: “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.
“It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
He escaped the death penalty but was sentenced to life in prison, a huge blow to the ANC, which had to regroup to continue the struggle. But unrest grew in townships and international pressure on the apartheid regime slowly tightened.
Finally, in 1990, FW de Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC and Mandela was released from prison amid scenes of jubilation witnessed around the world.
His presidency rode a wave of tremendous global goodwill but was not without its difficulties. After leaving frontline politics in 1999, he admitted he should have moved sooner against the spread of HIV and Aids in South Africa.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who headed the truth and reconciliation committee after the fall of apartheid, said: “He transcended race and class in his personal actions, through his warmth and through his willingness to listen and to empathize with others. And he restored others’ faith in Africa and Africans.”
Mandela continued to make occasional appearances at ANC events and attended the inauguration of the current president, Jacob Zuma. His 91st birthday was marked by the first annual “Mandela Day” in his honour.
Married three times, he had six children, 17 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. | 2adv
|
Tigers are more numerous in Nepal than at any time since the 1970s, a new census has revealed, giving conservationists hope that the big cats, whose numbers have been dropping across south Asia for 100 years, can be saved.
The number of wild royal bengal tigers in Nepal has increased to 198 – a 63.6% rise in five years – the government survey showed.” This is very encouraging,” said Maheshwar Dhakal, an ecologist with Nepal’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation.
The census is based on the examination of pictures from more than 500 cameras placed in five protected areas and three wildlife corridors. More than 250 conservationists and wildlife experts worked on the survey, which cost about £250,000.
Dhakal said that a parallel survey was conducted in India and the results from both countries will be published later in 2013.” It will take a few more months for India, which now has 1,300 big cats in several huge protected areas, to finalize the data,” he added.
Nepal has pledged to double the population of tigers by the year 2022 from 121 in 2009 when the last systematic tiger count took place. Increasing prosperity in Asia has pushed up prices for tiger skins and the body parts used in traditional Chinese medicines. International gangs pay poor local Nepali significant sums to kill the cats. The skin and bones are handed to middlemen, who pass easily through the porous border to India, where the major dealers are based.
One major problem is complicity between senior officials and mafia networks involved in the trade. Conservation experts credit the increase in numbers to the effective policing of national parks, stronger anti-poaching drives and better management of tiger habitats in Nepal, where forests cover 29% of the land. But they say Nepal needs to do more to protect the habitat and animals on which tigers prey so the big cats have enough space to roam and food to eat.
As the number of tigers has increased over the years, so have incidents of conflict with villagers. Seven people were killed in attacks by tigers around national parks in 2012 compared to four in 2011, park officials said. Villagers are also seeking better protection.” The government is making conservation plans for tigers. But it should also come up with plans to protect people from tigers,” Krishna Bhurtel, a local village headman in Chitwan, told Nepali newspaper Nagarik.
Wildlife authorities captured a tiger in Chitwan after it killed two people, including a villager who was pulled from his bed in May. Thousands of tigers once roamed the forests in Bangladesh, India and Nepal. But their numbers have dropped to about 3,000, a 95% drop over a century. Chitwan National Park in central Nepal has the highest number of adult tigers, with 120, followed by Bardiya National Park (50) and Shukla Phanta Wildlife Reserve (17).
Diwakar Chapagain, who heads a World Wildlife Fund Nepal unit that monitors wildlife trade, said tiger skins were in demand in Tibet, where well-heeled people use them as festival costumes.
In Nepal, kings used to stand on tiger skins in front of stuffed tigers for special occasions. Some affluent Nepali have mounted tiger heads on the walls of their living rooms. Tiger bones are in high demand for use in traditional Chinese medicines.” The trade in tiger parts is lucrative and fetches thousands of dollars in illegal markets,” Chapagain said, highlighting the threat tigers face. | 2adv
|
On the market square in Rjukan stands a statue of the town’s founder, a noted Norwegian engineer and industrialist called Sam Eyde. The great man stares northwards across the square at an almost sheer mountainside in front of him.
Behind him, to the south, rises the equally sheer 1,800-metre peak known as Gaustatoppen. Between the mountains, along the narrow Vestfjord valley, lies the small, but once mighty, town that Eyde built in the early years of the last century, to house the workers for his factories.
Eyde harnessed the power of the 100-metre Rjukanfossen waterfall to generate hydroelectricity in what was, at the time, the world’s biggest power plant.
But one thing he couldn’t do was change the elevation of the sun. Deep in its east –west valley, surrounded by high mountains, Rjukan and its 3,400 inhabitants are in shadow for half the year. During the day, from late September to mid-March, the town, three hours north-west of Oslo, is not completely dark, but it’s certainly not bright, either.
Recently, however, Eyde’s statue has gazed out upon a sight that even he might have found startling. High on the mountain opposite, 450 metres above the town, three large, solar-powered, computer-controlled mirrors steadily track the movement of the sun across the sky, reflecting its rays down on to the square and bathing it in bright sunlight.
“It’s the sun!” grins Ingrid Sparbo, disbelievingly, lifting her face to the light and closing her eyes. A retired secretary, Sparbo has lived all her life in Rjukan and says people “do sort of get used to the shade. You end up not thinking about it, really. But this ... this is so warming. Not just physically, but mentally. It’s mentally warming.”
Two young mothers wheel their children into the square and stand in the sun. On a freezing day, an elderly couple sit on one of the new benches, smiling at the warmth on their faces. Children beam. Lots of people take photographs. A shop assistant, Silje Johansen, says it’s “awesome. Just awesome.”
Pushing his child’s buggy, electrical engineer Eivind Toreid is more cautious. “It’s a funny thing,” he says. “Not real sunlight, but very like it. Like a spotlight.”
Heidi Fieldheim says she heard all about it on the radio. “But it’s far more than I expected,” she says. “This will bring much happiness.”
Across the road, in the Nye Tider café, sits the man responsible for this unexpected access to happiness. Martin Andersen is a 40-year-old artist who moved to Rjukan in the summer of 2001.
The first inkling of an artwork Andersen called the Solspeil , or Sun mirror , came to him as the month of September began to fade: “Every day, we would take our young child for a walk in the buggy,” he says, “and, every day, I realized we were having to go a little further down the valley to find the sun.” By 28 September, the sun completely disappears from Rjukan’s market square. It doesn’t reappear until 12 March.
Throughout the seemingly endless intervening months, Andersen says, “We’d look up and see blue sky above, and the sun high on the mountain slopes, but the only way we could get to it was to go out of town. It’s sad, a town that people have to leave in order to feel the sun.”
Twelve years after he first dreamed of his Solspeil, a German company specializing in so-called CSP – concentrated solar power – helicoptered in the three 17-sq-m glass mirrors that now stand high above the market square in Rjukan. “It took,” he says, “a bit longer than we’d imagined.”
It really works. There were objectors – and plenty of them – petitions and letter-writing campaigns and a Facebook page organized against what a large number of locals saw initially as a vanity project and, above all, a waste of money. But even they now seem largely won over.
“I was strongly against it,” admits Nils Eggerud. Like many others, he felt the money could have been better spent elsewhere – on a couple of extra carers to look after Rjukan’s old people, perhaps, or improved school facilities, cycle paths, a bit of rural road resurfacing.
“And I still have my doubts about the ongoing maintenance costs,” he says. “What will they be, who will pay them? But ... well, it does feel nice, standing here. And, really, you just have to look at the people’s faces.”
In his office overlooking the square, Rjukan’s energetic young mayor, Steinar Bergsland, is interested not so much in the cost but in the benefits the mirrors might bring to the town.
Already, Bergsland says, visitor numbers are up for the time of year and Rjukan’s shopkeepers have reported their takings following suit. A hi-tech company is interested in relocating to Rjukan, attracted by the cutting-edge technology on view at the top of the mountain and the publicity it has attracted.
“This is a powerful symbol for Rjukan,” Bergsland says, and, helped by assorted government grants and a donation from a local business, the town needed to find just 1m krone – £100,000 – of the mirrors’ total 5m-krone cost.
And, seen against the town’s 650m krone annual budget, he points out, 1m krone really wasn’t very much to pay for something that “gives us a far, far better chance of raising the money we need for better schools and more nursing care. And just look out of the window. Look at those happy faces. Now it’s actually here, people love it.” | 2adv
|
Barack Obama flew back to Washington and his desk in the Oval Office on Wednesday, hours after delivering an election victory speech in Chicago in which he called for the country to unite behind him.
“You voted for action, not politics as usual,” Obama said in his address, but there was little sign that his call would be answered, with the President facing the prospect of doing business with a hostile Republican-led House of Representatives for at least another two years and a looming showdown over spending and debt – the so-called “fiscal cliff”.
Unlike after his election in 2008, the President is unlikely to be given a honeymoon period.
Both the Republican House Speaker, John Boehner, and the Democratic Leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, spoke about a need to work together to resolve the crisis, but it could turn into one of the biggest clashes yet between the White House and Congress under Obama’s presidency.
While Obama easily beat off the challenge from his Republican opponent Mitt Romney, holding swing state after swing state, the election provided yet another reminder of just how divided America remains.
While the inauguration is not until January, in effect Obama embarked on his second term on Wednesday. Having disappointed many supporters in his first term, he is looking now to establish a legacy that will transform him from a middling president into a great one.
As well as overseeing what he hopes will be continued economic recovery, he hopes to address issues ranging from immigration reform to investment in education and climate change, and, in foreign policy, from Iran to Israel-Palestine.
As well as comfortably winning more than the required 270 electoral college votes, he also secured a higher share of the popular vote.
Boehner, in a statement, sounded conciliatory. He cited “the need for both parties to find common ground and take steps together to help our economy grow and create jobs, which is critical to solving our debt”. Obama is reported to have phoned Boehner to begin negotiation.
Reid, so often at odds with Boehner, also sounded conciliatory, saying: “I look at the challenges that we have ahead of us and I reach out to my Republican colleagues in the Senate and the House. Let’s come together. We know what the issues are; let’s solve them.”
Obama, in an initially off-the-record interview during the campaign, expressed optimism of a “grand bargain” with the Republicans, one that eluded him in 2011. The trouble will come when talks move to detail, with the Republicans wanting to protect military spending while the Democrats seek cuts. Obama has called for tax increases on households earning more than $250,000; Boehner has rejected any tax increases.
Shares dropped on the Dow in anticipation of continued gridlock. By lunchtime, all the major US markets were down over 300 points.
The new House, which will be formed in January, will look much like the existing one, which has a huge Republican majority. The Senate too remained little changed, with the Democrats retaining their slim majority, gaining three and losing one.
In the presidential race, Romney won only one of the swing states, North Carolina, while Obama held New Hampshire, Virginia, Ohio, Wisconsin, Nevada, Iowa and Colorado.
In his victory speech in Chicago, Obama referred to the long queues to vote and said there was a need for electoral reform.
He returned to the soaring rhetoric that was his trademark during the 2008 election but which he dispensed with in 2012. Amid the disillusionment with his presidency and the tough economic conditions, his campaign team decided it was inappropriate.
But having won, he returned to famous lines from earlier speeches, reprising once again his 2008 slogan about “hope”.
Stepping up to the lectern to the upbeat sounds of Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours,” Obama told the ecstatic crowd of supporters: “Tonight in this election, you, the American people, reminded us that while our road has been hard, while our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back. And we know in our hearts that for the United States of America the best is yet to come.” In a speech that lasted more than 25 minutes, after paying emotional tribute to his wife, Michelle, and his daughters, Malia and Sasha – as well as to his Vice-President, Joe Biden – Obama returned to the message that first brought him to national attention.
“We are not as divided as our politics suggests,” he said. “We’re not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are, and forever will be, the United States of America.”
Obama made clear he had an agenda in mind for his second term, citing changes in the tax code, immigration reform and, as he put it, an America “that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet”.
Shortly beforehand, Romney had phoned the President to concede. In a gracious concession speech in Boston, Romney told his supporters: “The nation, as you know, is at a critical point. At a time like this, we can’t risk partisan bickering and political posturing. Our leaders have to reach across the aisle to do the people’s work.”
He continued: “This is a time for great challenges for America and I pray the President will be successful in guiding our nation.”
The campaign almost throughout has been a referendum on Obama. Although there was widespread disillusionment with the slow pace of economy recovery and a high unemployment level, Americans decided to stick with him.
Historically, it would have been a disappointment for African Americans and many white liberals if the first black presidency had ended in failure, halted prematurely. | 2adv
|
Sweden is the best country for older people, Afghanistan the worst – but general affluence does not necessarily mean better conditions for the over-60s, according to the first global index on ageing. While Sweden’s top ranking – followed by Norway, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada – may be predictable, the Global AgeWatch index throws up some surprising results.
The US, the world’s richest country, is down in eighth place, while the UK fails to make the top ten at number 13. Sri Lanka ranks 36, well above Pakistan at 89, despite similar levels of gross domestic product (GDP). Bolivia and Mauritius score higher than the size of their economies may suggest, while the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China are a mixed bag. Brazil and China rank relatively high on the index; India and Russia are much lower.
“This survey shows that history counts,” said Mark Gorman, director of the HelpAge International advocacy group. “The top-ranked countries are what you would expect, but Scandinavian countries were not wealthy when they introduced universal pensions. The older population in Sri Lanka today is benefiting from good basic education and health care – those countries made certain policy choices. Everybody faces scarce resources, but they should not forget that, when they make investment decisions, they should also address issues of old age.”
The index, developed with the UN Fund for Population and Development, spans 91 countries and 89% of the world’s older people. The survey comes amid a major demographic shift: by 2050, there are expected to be two billion people aged 60 and over, who will comprise more than a fifth of the world’s population.
Population ageing – when older people account for an increasingly large proportion of people – is happening fastest in developing countries.
More than two-thirds of older people live in poor countries; by 2050, this proportion is expected to be about four-fifths. While it took 115 years for the older population of France to double from 7% to 14% between 1865 and 1980, Brazil is likely to make the same shift between 2011 and 2032 – in just 21 years.
The index shows that the fastest ageing countries – Jordan, Laos, Mongolia, Nicaragua and Vietnam, where the number of older people is predicted to more than triple by 2050 – fall into the lower half of the ranking, suggesting that policymakers need to tackle ageing head-on if they are to adequately support their populations.
There are gender differences among ageing populations, with women generally outliving men. In 2012, for every 84 men aged 60 and over, there were 100 women. Lack of paid work (hence savings), less decision-making power in the family and vulnerability to violence contribute towards the disadvantage many women face in old age.
However, if appropriate measures are implemented, population ageing does not inevitably lead to significantly higher health care spending, according to the report, which highlights the importance of long-term investments in education and health care for older people. Bolivia, ranked 46, despite being one of the poorest countries, has introduced progressive policies for older people, with a national plan on ageing, free health care and a non-contributory universal pension. Nepal, ranked 77, introduced a basic pension in 1995 for people over the age of 70 without other pension income. Though limited in value and eligibility and with uneven coverage, it is an example of how a poor country has chosen to make a start in addressing poverty in old age.
Good basic health care introduced decades ago in Chile and Costa Rica has served the ageing populations of those countries. A good education system – basic literacy is crucial for older people as they deal with the pensions bureaucracy – is of great benefit later in life. In the Philippines, older people have benefited from the educational reforms introduced after independence in 1946, which made elementary and high school education compulsory. The same is true for Armenia, which, like other countries of the former Soviet Union, benefited from a robust education system. South Korea, a surprisingly low 67 on the ageing index, performed worse than similar countries on a GDP-per-head basis, partly because it introduced a pension only recently.
The ageing index is calculated using 13 indicators under four headings: income security, health care, employment and education, and an enabling environment. All indicators have equal weight, except for pension income coverage, life expectancy at 60, healthy life expectancy at 60 and psychological well-being. These categories were given increased weighting because of better data quality and countries were included only if there was sufficient data.
Professor Sir Richard Jolly, creator of the human development index, said: “This groundbreaking index broadens the way we understand the needs and opportunities of older people through its pioneering application of human development methodology. It challenges countries in every part of the world to raise their sights as to what is possible.” | 2adv
|
Wales will become the first country in the UK where people will be presumed to have consented for their organs to be donated 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 final stage of a bill to adopt a system of presumed consent was passed by 43 votes to eight, with two abstentions, in spite of objections from religious groups on moral grounds and concerns that the scheme could add to the distress of grieving families.
“This is a huge day for Wales, for devolution 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 one’s wishes.
“The family of the potential donor has a major role to play in organ donation. The aim of the bill has always been to respect the wishes of the deceased; however, relatives or friends may object to consent being deemed based on what they know about the views of the deceased.
“When family members know that organ donation is what the deceased would have wanted, they usually agree to participate in the donation process. The new law will work by clarifying people’s wishes around the issue of organ donation and, in turn, increase the rate of consent to donation.
“Today is a landmark day for Wales and I expect the rest of the UK to be watching with great interest when the legislation is implemented in 2015.”
The issue is controversial, with opponents worried that the pressing need for more kidneys and hearts will lead to the wishes of those who have died and their family being overruled. But ministers insist there will be safeguards.
Inevitably, some people will not get around to registering their opposition. In response to concerns, the government recently announced that families would play a bigger role.
Relatives are to 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 enduring 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. We have been working to improve the rate of organ donation and have had some success, but we’re looking to take the next step forward.
“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 don’t get round to putting their names down. We’re hoping to make inroads into that.”
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 move. The British Medical Association has long campaigned for an opt-out system because of its concern over the growing number of people needing transplants – a result of medical progress in transplantation.
The number of young donors dropped substantially when seatbelt legislation came in. 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 brought in improved systems for coordinating transplants, including the crucial discussions with relatives when there is no indication of the wishes of the deceased. But the increase in numbers of organs harvested is still not enough.
Some religious groups, on the other hand, strongly oppose the scheme, arguing that it would cause further distress to bereaved relatives. Members of the Muslim Council of Wales and the South Wales Jewish Representative Council have expressed reservations, 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, that’s not an expression of love. It’s more a medical use of a body.” | 2adv
|
He arrived – in his own words, in 2005 – as “a simple, humble worker in God’s vineyard”. And on a grey, cold, blustery Monday in February, Pope Benedict XVI signed off in the same fashion: like an elderly labourer who can no longer ignore the pains in his back; who can no more count on the strength of his arms. Characteristically for this most traditionally minded of pontiffs, he made his excuses in Latin. The first German pope in modern times timed his departure to the minute. “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 a conclave to elect the new supreme pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is.”
Among those present was a Mexican prelate, Monsignor Oscar Sanchéz Barba, from Guadalajara. He was in Rome to be told the date for a canonization in which he has played a leading role. “We were all in the Sala del Concistoro in the third loggia of the Apostolic Palace,” he said. “After giving the date for the canonization, the twelfth of May, the Pope took a sheet of paper and read from it.
“We were all left …” – Sanchéz Barba looked around him in the Bernini colonnade that embraces St Peter’s Square, grasping for the word, as speechless as the “princes of the church” who had just heard the man they believe to be God’s representative on earth give up on the job. “The cardinals were just looking at one another,” Sanchéz Barba said.
Angelo Sodano, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, who must have been forewarned, delivered a brief and perhaps hurriedly composed speech. Before going on to assure the Pope of the cardinals’ loyalty and devotion, he said he and the others present had “listened to you with a sense of bewilderment, almost completely incredulous ”. At the end of his address, the Pope blessed those present, and left. “It was so simple; the simplest thing imaginable,” said Sanchéz Barba. “Then we all left in silence. There was absolute silence … and sadness.”
John Thavis, who spent 30 years reporting on the Holy See and whose book, The Vatican Diaries, is soon to be published, said he had had an intuition the Pope might be about to resign and timed his return to Rome from the US accordingly. A fellow-Vatican watcher confirmed this to be the case. Thavis noted that in the book-length interview Benedict gave to a German journalist, published as Light of the World in 2010, he had made it clear he considered it would be right to go if he felt he were no longer up to 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 are off the ground. What is more, there were no dates in his calendar of events he personally had to attend. I thought the most likely date was 22 February, which is the Feast of the Chair of St Peter. So I got it wrong.”
The line emerging from the Vatican within hours of the announcement was that the Pope’s decision was a brave one. By this account, Benedict – never one to shrink from utterances and decisions that shocked – had taken it upon himself to bring his church face to face with reality: the reality that contemporary medicine can keep men alive far beyond the age at which they are up to grappling with the demands of running a vast global organization. Thavis agreed: “What I find particularly courageous is that he is prepared to say now, when he is not sick, that he is going; and that he’s doing it because he’s tired and not because he’s particularly ill.” But is that the whole story? Does he know more about his state of health than the Vatican has so far made public?
Benedict’s own account of his reasons makes it clear that he took into account not only his physical, but also his psychological condition: “In order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfil the ministry entrusted to me.” Other theories will no doubt swirl around the Vatican in the days and weeks ahead, just as they did following the death of Pope John Paul I in 1978, 33 days after his election. Already there is speculation that something was about to come out about Benedict’s past. The Vatican will just as predictably dismiss such notions with contempt. But they are understandable all the same, for the transcendental importance of what Benedict has done cannot be overstated.
Emerging from St Peter’s Basilica, Julia Rochester, from London, who described herself as a lapsed Catholic, was still turning over the implications of the Pope’s resignation. “If you’re God’s chosen one, how do you choose not be chosen?” she mused. It is a question many practising Catholics will be asking of their priests in the weeks ahead. In his first speech as Pope – humbly disclaiming his fitness for the task – Benedict said: “I am consoled by the fact that the Lord knows how to work and how to act, even with insufficient tools.” At some point in the last eight years, it would seem, he ceased to believe that was true. | 2adv
|
Prince Harry has flown out of Afghanistan at the end of a four-month tour, during which he admitted killing insurgents while piloting his Apache helicopter and spoke in rare depth about the tensions and frustrations of being a royal who craved life out of the spotlight.
He also revealed his disdain for and distrust of some sections of the media and described how his father constantly reminded him to behave more like a member of the royal family.
A commander of the army’s most sophisticated attack helicopter, the prince said he had fired on the Taliban during operations to support ground troops and rescue injured Afghan and NATO personnel. His remarks may be seized upon by insurgents to stir anti-British sentiment, but the prince said he was only doing his job. Most of the time the helicopter acted more as a deterrent, he said.
In a series of interviews during his time based at Camp Bastion in Helmand Province, he hinted at the difficulty of reconciling the different roles in his life. The prince, known as Captain Wales in the army, explained his 'three mes'. “One in the army, one socially in my own private time and then one with the family and stuff like that. So there is a switch and I flick it when necessary.”
He admitted he sometimes 'let himself down' with his laddish behaviour, which he put down to “probably being too much army and not enough prince”, but he said he was entitled to privacy, too.
In another unusually frank exchange, he aimed biting criticism at the media, especially the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, three of the royal family’s most ardent supporters in Fleet Street. He said he was particularly annoyed by articles comparing his role as an Apache co-pilot gunner to Spitfire crews waiting to scramble during the second world war. “No, it’s not like that at all,” he said.
The prince said his suspicion of the media was rooted in the treatment of his family when “I was very small”, but that he couldn’t help monitoring the stories written about him. “Of course I read them,” the prince said. “If there’s a story and something’s been written about me, I want to know what’s being said. But all it does is just upset me and anger me that people can get away with writing the stuff they do; not just about me, but about everything and everybody. My father always says, 'Don’t read it'. Everyone says, 'Don’t read it, because it’s always rubbish'.”
The prince was posted to Afghanistan last September to command a £45m Apache helicopter – one of the military’s most sophisticated and well-armed aircraft. During his tour, the Apaches flew missions supporting NATO troops fighting the Taliban and accompanied British Chinook and US Black Hawk medical helicopters during casualty evacuations.
Four years ago, the prince had to be spirited out of Afghanistan during his first tour after a media embargo was broken by mistake by an Australian magazine. This time, the Ministry of Defence chose to publicize his deployment on the understanding that newspapers and broadcasters would not give a running commentary on his life out there to allow him to get on with his job. Two-man crews from the BBC, Sky and ITN were sent once each to report on his visit, while a photographer and a reporter from the Press Association were embedded on all three visits.
Asked whether he felt more comfortable being Captain Wales than Prince Harry, his reply was one of the most revealing he has given about his relationship with Prince Charles. “Definitely. I’ve always been like that. My father’s always trying to remind me about who I am and stuff like that. But it’s very easy to forget about who I am when I am in the army. Everyone’s wearing the same uniform and doing the same kind of thing. I get on well with the lads and I enjoy my job. It really is as simple as that.”
Shortly before he went to Afghanistan, the prince was caught in another media furore, when pictures emerged of him frolicking naked in Las Vegas during a private party. Harry said he had let himself down, but also blamed the media. “I probably let myself down, I let my family down, I let other people down. But, at the end of the day, I was in a private area and there should be a certain amount of privacy that one should expect. It was probably a classic example of me probably being too much army, and not enough prince. It’s a simple case of that.
“The papers knew that I was going out to Afghanistan anyway, so the way I was treated from them I don’t think is acceptable.” He added, “Certain people remind me, 'Remember who you are, so don’t always drop your guard'.”
Asked where he and his brother’s fascination with helicopters came from, he said, “Probably the fact that you can only fit a certain amount of people in a helicopter, therefore no one can follow us, like you guys.” | 2adv
|
Scientists have connected the brains of a pair of animals and allowed them to share sensory information in a major step towards what the researchers call the world’s first “organic computer”.
The US team fitted two rats with devices called brain-to-brain interfaces that let the animals collaborate on simple tasks to earn rewards, such as a drink of water. In one radical demonstration of the technology, the scientists used the internet to link the brains of two rats separated by thousands of miles, with one in the researchers’ lab at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and the other in Natal, Brazil.
Led by Miguel Nicolelis, a pioneer of devices that allow paralyzed people to control computers and robotic arms with their thoughts, the researchers say their latest work may enable multiple brains to be hooked up to share information. “These experiments showed that we have established a sophisticated, direct communication linkage between brains,” Nicolelis said in a statement. “Basically, we are creating what I call an organic computer.”
The scientists first demonstrated that rats can share, and act on, each other’s sensory information by electrically connecting their brains via tiny grids of electrodes that reach into the motor cortex, the brain region that processes movement.
The rats were trained to press a lever when a light went on above it. When they performed the task correctly, they got a drink of water. To test the animals’ ability to share brain information, they put the rats in two separate compartments. Only one compartment had a light that came on above the lever. When the rat pressed the lever, an electronic version of its brain activity was sent directly to the other rat’s brain. In trials, the second rat responded correctly to the imported brain signals 70% of the time by pressing the lever.
Remarkably, the communication between the rats was two-way. If the receiving rat failed at the task, the first rat was not rewarded with a drink, and appeared to change its behaviour to make the task easier for its partner. In further experiments, the rats collaborated on a task that required them to distinguish between narrow and wide openings using their whiskers.
In the final test, the scientists connected rats on different continents and beamed their brain activity back and forth over the internet. “Even though the animals were on different continents, with the resulting noisy transmission and signal delays, they could still communicate,” said Miguel Pais-Vieira, the first author of the study. “This tells us that we could create a workable network of animal brains distributed in many different locations.”
Nicolelis said the team is now working on ways to link several animals’ brains at once to solve more complex tasks. “We cannot even predict what kinds of emergent properties would appear when animals begin interacting as part of a 'brain-net',” he said. “In theory, you could imagine that a combination of brains could provide solutions that individual brains cannot achieve by themselves.” The research is published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Anders Sandberg, who studies the ethics of neurotechnologies at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, said the work was “very important” in helping to understand how brains encode information. But the implications of the technology and its potential future uses are far broader, said Sandberg. “The main reason we are running the planet is that we are amazingly good at communicating and coordinating. Without that, although we are very smart animals, we would not dominate the planet.”
“I don’t think there’s any risk of supersmart rats from this,” he added. “There’s a big difference between sharing sensory information and being able to plan. I’m not worried about an imminent invasion of 'rat multiborgs'.”
Very little is known about how thoughts are encoded and how they might be transmitted into another person’s brain, so that is not a realistic prospect any time soon. And much of what is in our minds is what Sandberg calls a “draft” of what we might do. “Often, we don’t want to reveal those drafts; that would be embarrassing and confusing. And a lot of those drafts are changed before we act. Most of the time I think we’d be very thankful not to be in someone else’s head.” | 2adv
|
Not just the identity of the man in the car park with the twisted spine, but the appalling last moments and humiliating treatment of the naked body of Richard III in the hours after his death have been revealed at an extraordinary press conference at Leicester University.
There were cheers when Richard Buckley, Lead Archaeologist on the hunt for the king’s body, finally announced that the university team was convinced “beyond reasonable doubt” that it had found the last Plantagenet king, bent by scoliosis of the spine, and twisted further to fit into a hastily dug hole in Grey Friars church, which was slightly too small to hold his body.
But, by then, it was clear the evidence was overwhelming, as the scientists who carried out the DNA tests, those who created the computer-imaging technology to peer onto and into the bones in extraordinary detail, the genealogists who found a distant descendant with matching DNA, and the academics who scoured contemporary texts for accounts of the king’s death and burial outlined their findings.
“What a morning. What a story,” said Philippa Langley, of the Richard III Society. She had been driving on the project for years, in the face of incredulity from many people, and finding funds from all over the world when it looked as if the money would run out before the excavation had even begun.
Work has started on designing a new tomb in Leicester Cathedral, only 100 yards from the excavation site, and a ceremony will be held to lay him into his new grave there, probably next year. Leicester’s Museums’ Service is working on plans for a new visitor centre in an old school building overlooking the site.
Richard died at Bosworth on 22 August 1485, the last English king to fall in battle, and the researchers revealed how for the first time. There was an audible intake of breath as a slide came up showing the base of his skull sliced off by one terrible blow, believed to be from a halberd, a fearsome medieval battle weapon with a razor-sharp iron axe blade weighing about two kilos, mounted on a wooden pole, which was swung at Richard at very close range. The blade probably penetrated several centimetres into his brain and, said the human bones expert Jo Appleby, he would have been unconscious at once and dead almost as soon.
The injury appears to confirm contemporary accounts that he died in close combat in the thick of the battle and unhorsed – as in the great despairing cry Shakespeare gives him: “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” Another sword slash, which also went through the bone and into the brain, would also have proved fatal. But many of the other injuries were after death, suggesting a gruesome ritual on the battlefield and as the king’s body was brought back to Leicester, as he was stripped, mocked and mutilated.
One terrible injury, a stab through the right buttock and into his pelvis, was certainly after death and could not have happened when his lower body was protected by armour. It suggests the story that his naked corpse was brought back slung over a horse, mocked and abused all the way, is true. Bob Savage, a medieval arms expert from the Royal Armouries who helped identify the wounds, said it was probably not a war weapon but the sort of sharp knife or dagger any workman might have carried.
Michael Ibsen, the Canadian-born furniture maker proved to be the descendant of Richard’s sister, heard the confirmation on Sunday and listened to the unfolding evidence in shocked silence. “My head is no clearer now than when I first heard the news,” he said. “Many, many hundreds of people died on that field that day. He was a king, but just one of the dead. He lived in very violent times and these deaths would not have been pretty or quick.”
It was Mathew Morris who first uncovered the body, in the first hour of the first day of the excavation. He did not believe he had found the king. The mechanical digger was still chewing the tarmac off the council car park, identified by years of research by local historians and the Richard III Society as the probable site of the lost church of Grey Friars, whose priests bravely claimed the body of the king and buried him in a hastily dug grave, probably still naked, but in a position of honour near the high altar of their church. The leg bones just showing through the soil were covered up again.
Ten days later, on 5 September, when further excavation proved Morris had hit the crucial spot, he returned with Lin Foxhall, head of the archaeology department, to excavate the body. “We did it the usual way, lifting the arms, legs and skull first, and proceeding gradually towards the torso – so it was only when we finally saw the twisted spine that I thought: 'My word, I think we’ve got him.'”
As far as Langley is concerned, Richard was the true king, the last king of the north, a worthy and brave leader who became a victim of some of the most brilliant propaganda in history, in the hands of the Tudors’ image- maker, Shakespeare. There remains the dark shadow of the little princes in the tower, an infamous story even in Richard’s day: the child Edward V and his brother Richard were declared illegitimate when Richard III claimed the throne, imprisoned in the Tower of London and never seen alive again. Although it is by no means certain that the bones found at the tower centuries later are theirs, there may be more DNA detective work to be done there. | 2adv
|
The Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to a son on Monday, 22 July. Third in line to the throne, the baby is destined to be the 43rd monarch since William the Conqueror obtained the English crown in 1066.
Kensington Palace announced at 8.30pm that the baby was born at 4.24pm in the exclusive Lindo Wing at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, West London. “We could not be happier,” the Duke of Cambridge said.
In a statement, Kensington Palace said: “Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge was safely delivered of a son at 4.24pm. The baby weighs 8lbs 6oz. The Duke of Cambridge was present for the birth.” The duchess experienced at least ten and a half hours’ labour, which Kensington Palace said had “progressed as normal”.
The Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Harry and members of both families were informed and were delighted with the news that Her Royal Highness and her child were both doing well.
It is understood that the couple delayed making the announcement immediately so that they could enjoy some private time with their newborn. William telephoned his family to tell them the good news, speaking to the Queen, his father, Charles and younger brother, Prince Harry.
The birth of the baby prince means the monarchy has three generations of heirs to the throne for the first time since 1894.
The baby is the first Prince of Cambridge to be born for more than 190 years since Prince George of Cambridge, a grandson of George III and the only son of Prince Adolphus Frederick, the 1st Duke of Cambridge.
In a statement, Prince Charles said: “Both my wife and I are overjoyed at the arrival of my first grandchild. It is an incredibly special moment for William and Catherine and we are so thrilled for them on the birth of their baby boy.
“Grandparenthood is a unique moment in anyone’s life, as countless kind people have told me in recent months, so I am enormously proud and happy to be a grandfather for the first time and we are eagerly looking forward to seeing the baby in the near future.”
The newest royal will be called HRH Prince George of Cambridge. When Kate was three months pregnant, a decree issued by the Queen said: “All the children of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales should have and enjoy the style, title and attribute of Royal Highness with the titular dignity of Prince or Princess prefixed to their Christian names or with such other titles of honour.”
Following tradition, a formal notice was posted on an ornate rococo-style easel – the same used to announce Prince William’s birth in 1982 – in the forecourt of Buckingham Palace shortly before 9pm. Within an hour, the numbers had swelled from hundreds to thousands outside the palace, with locals and tourists alike keen to share in the historic moment.
New Yorker, Sharon Surloff, was delighted with her phone picture of the royal bulletin, snapped after she and her niece and mother had squeezed through crowds to take a photograph of the easel.
“The police were just saying to everyone: 'OK, 20 seconds and then the next person'. It’s just great to be here, though. We arrived this morning, at nine in the morning, so it has all worked out beautifully.”
The palace announced the birth in a press release. Minutes later, as crowds of well- wishers outside cheered, “It’s a boy”, the formal medical bulletin was taken from the hospital to a waiting car by Ed Perkins, Prince William’s press secretary. He handed it to a soldier, who then took the notice, which was signed by Marcus Setchell, the Queen’s gynaecologist, to Buckingham Palace under police escort.
The prime minister was one of the first to offer his congratulations. Speaking outside 10 Downing Street, David Cameron said: “It is wonderful news from St Mary’s, Paddington, and I am sure that, right across the country, and, indeed, right across the Commonwealth, people will be celebrating and wishing the royal couple well.
“It is an important moment in the life of our nation but, I suppose, above all, it is a wonderful moment for a warm and loving couple who have got a brand new baby boy. It has been a remarkable few years for our royal family: a royal wedding that captured people’s hearts, that extraordinary and magnificent jubilee and now this royal birth – all from a family that has given this nation so much incredible service.”
Congratulations came from the White House, too, from Barack Obama and his wife. The president said: “Michelle and I are so pleased to congratulate the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on the joyous occasion of the birth of their first child. We wish them all the happiness and blessings parenthood brings.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, tweeted: “Delighted for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. May God bless them all with love, health and happiness.”
The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, said: “Many congratulations to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. I wish them and their son all happiness and good health.”
The campaign group, Republic, which launched its Born Equal initiative calling for every child to be born equal in political status and rights, said the royal birth raised questions about Britain and democratic values. Chief Executive Graham Smith said the baby should be able to grow up without “constant interference and intrusion”. He said: “Here is a new baby whose career, religion, even personal relationships have already been mapped out. Meanwhile, this is an opportunity for the rest of us to consider whether this circus is the best way to run things.” | 2adv
|
Standing at the edge of space above the deserts of New Mexico, Felix Baumgartner paused slightly. It was a small step away from the capsule, but a 24-mile drop back down to Earth. “Our guardian angel will take care of you,” said mission control, and the man known as Fearless Felix jumped.
Ten heart-stopping minutes later the Austrian landed back on Earth, after reaching speeds of up to 725mph, and breaking three world records, including becoming the world’s first supersonic skydiver by breaking the sound barrier at Mach 1.24. “We love you Felix,” cheered the control room as his mother, Ava Baumgartner, wept. Baumgartner, who claimed the records for the highest altitude manned balloon flight and the highest altitude skydive, raised his arms in a victory salute to thank his team.
He was wearing a specially designed survival suit that kept his body intact against the hugely varying pressures that marked his drop back to Earth. Without it, his blood would have boiled and his lungs might have exploded. Baumgartner later told a press conference: “When I was standing there on top of the world, you become so humble, you don’t think about breaking records.” He admitted all he could think about was getting back alive, but added: “Sometimes you have to go up really high to see how small you are.”
After two aborted attempts the week before, the mission was given the go-ahead on Sunday morning with the cooperation of the weather. Baumgartner was carried up into crystal clear skies by a gigantic balloon, which measured 30 million square cubic feet and whose skin was one-tenth the thickness of a sandwich bag. At the bottom of the balloon was a capsule, in which Baumgartner sat in his suit.
As he reached the desired height, Baumgartner went through a checklist of 40 items with his mentor Joe Kittinger, the previous holder of the highest altitude manned balloon flight.
There was some concern that a heater for his visor was not working, causing his visor to fog. “This is very serious, Joe,” he told Kitttinger. “Sometimes it’s getting foggy when I exhale. ... I do not feel heat.” But they decided to go ahead, watched by a record 8 million people as the jump was streamed live on YouTube.
The two-and-a-half-hour journey upwards, during which the curvature of the Earth became visible and the skies gradually turned black, was matched with a rather more rapid descent.
Three cameras attached to Baumgartner’s suit recorded his free-fall of just over four minutes – which failed to break the existing free-fall record for duration – and then the parachute opening.
The success of the mission, and of the suit, raises the prospect that astronauts might be able to survive a high altitude disaster of the type that struck the space shuttle Columbia in 2003 by actually bailing out of their craft. Baumgartner’s top medical man in the stunt was Dr Jonathan Clark, whose wife Laurel Clark died in the Columbia accident. Clark is now dedicated to improving astronauts’ chances of survival in a high-altitude disaster.
Baumgartner has made a name for himself with acts of daring. The former paratrooper has parachuted off buildings and mountains and once into a 600 foot deep cave. He had already done two practice free-falls in preparation for this attempt – one from 71,000 feet in March and a second from 97,000 feet in July 2012. But no feat can possibly have matched his jump above the town of Roswell, a suitably chosen place famed for its connections to UFO sightings.
He was chasing five different records: the first human to ever break the sound barrier in free- fall; the highest free-fall altitude jump; the highest manned balloon flight; the longest free-fall; and his jump platform is believed to be the largest manned balloon in history. The stunt, which was seven years in the planning and sponsored by Red Bull drinks, beat two of Kittinger’s records: the retired US air force colonel previously held the high altitude and speed records for parachuting. Kittinger jumped from a balloon 19 miles above the planet in 1960. Suitably, the only voice in Baumgartner’s radio earpiece guiding his ascent was that of Kittinger, now 84.
Asked after the jump what he wanted to do next, Baumgartner said: “I want to inspire a generation. I’d like to be sitting in the same spot in the next four years as Joe Kittinger. There is a young guy asking me for advice because he wants to break my record.” He said the most exciting moment for him had been when he was standing outside the capsule “on top of the world”. To laughter, he added: “The most beautiful moment was when I was standing on the landing area and Mike Todd [the life support engineer who dressed Baumgartner in his suit] showed up and he had a smile on his face like a little kid.”
Baumgartner said that he had come to feel like Todd’s son, adding: “He was so happy that I was alive.” Earlier, Todd had told the press conference: “The world needs a hero right now, and they got one in Felix Baumgartner.” To further laughter at the press conference, Kittinger said: “I would like to give a special one-fingered salute to all the folk who said that he [Baumgartner] was going to come apart when he went supersonic.”
This will be the last jump, Baumgartner said. He has promised to settle down and enjoy his post-jump years with his girlfriend, Nicole Oetl, flying helicopters on rescue missions in the US and Austria. | 2adv
|
Valdevaqueros is one of the last remaining unspoilt beaches in southern Spain, where the sky above the golden sands is filled with kites hauling surfers over the waves. Currently the beach has little more than an access road lined with camper vans from Germany, France, Italy and Britain, filled with windsurfers and kitesurfers lured by the area’s strong winds.
For decades it has been a world apart from the concrete-lined beaches of Torremolinos and Marbella along the coast, yet on 29 May the local council in Tarifa approved plans to build a tourist complex right next to the beach, with 1,400 hotel rooms and 350 flats. Environmental and conservation groups have protested that the project will harm the habitats of protected species, but for most councillors here the issue is simple: jobs. In this town of 18,000 inhabitants, 2,600 are out of work as Spain faces its worst economic crisis in at least half a century, one that has cast doubt on the future of the euro.
“Traditional sources of income such as fishing are dying out, now that fleets are being dismantled and fish stocks are depleted, so tourism is the only way out, as long as it is sustainable,” said Sebastián Galindo, a councillor from the Socialist Party, which is in opposition in Tarifa but voted with the governing People’s Party to give the project the green light.
Tarifa’s Mayor, Juan Andrés Gil, declined to comment on the project, but Galindo said it complies with environmental standards.
The complex would be 800 metres from the coast, comfortably beyond the minimum of 200 metres stipulated by a law designed to prevent more ugly developments like those that blighted much of Spain’s coastline when mass tourism first descended on its shores in the 1960s and 1970s.
Opponents of the complex say the last thing anyone needs is more housing in a country that already has a million empty homes, although the central government last week proposed a sell-off by granting non-Spaniards residency permits in return for buying property worth at least €160,000.
The Socialist opposition in Madrid attacked the proposal, and Galindo said it discriminated against migrant workers who flocked to Spain during the boom years, many of them from Morocco, whose coastline is just 14km away and can be seen from Tarifa. “It favours moneyed classes rather than those who came here to help Spain get ahead,” he said. Surfers fear that new buildings in Valdevaqueros would reduce the strength of the famous local Levant wind but fail to lure traditional package holidaymakers. “It’s not really a family spot. Just wait until they see what a Levant is like,” said Henning Mayer, who has regularly made the journey from Augsburg in Germany for 20 years. “Ten years ago they said they would build a new highway here. It didn’t happen, so I think it will be impossible to build new hotels.”
At the southernmost tip of Spain, Tarifa is the strategic crossroads between Africa and Europe, where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic. Campaigners say it also has a vital role in the animal world as a crossroads for migrating species.
The campaign to save the beach was launched hours after the Tarifa council voted for the project. The campaign has a Facebook page and is supported by groups including Greenpeace, the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Spanish branch of conservation network Birdlife. “It’s the environmental equivalent of putting a shopping centre right in the middle of the Alhambra,” said Noelia Jurado, who uses her multimedia expertise to campaign against the complex. She also noted that the resort would be near the ancient Roman town of Baelo Claudia. “They could be building on top of more Roman ruins here. Nobody knows.”
Also joining the opposition to the planned resort is the Andalusian College of Geographers, which, in a preliminary study charted on its website, concluded that “free areas ”, including car parks if not actual buildings, will overlap part of the Alcornocales National Park. The geographers also estimate that the site intrudes on two wildlife conservation areas. One of the areas in Valdevaqueros is home to two species of bat whose survival is threatened.
“Money is once again being put before urban laws and European environmental directives,” said Raúl Romeva, a member of the European Parliament who is Vice-President of the Greens group. In Romeva’s view, the project is also at fault because the proposed site has too little water in a town that already suffers from shortages in the summer weather that scorches the southern Spanish region of Andalusía. Lack of water recently led the Andalusía Supreme Court to uphold an appeal against plans to build a complex elsewhere in the region, which would have included golf courses, hotels and luxury homes.
Many locals are also wondering why a resort should be built 10km away, rather than on wasteland near Tarifa’s picturesque old centre, with its typically Andalusian whitewashed walls and winding streets, dominated by a 10th-century Moorish castle. “My opinion and that of catering workers is that we agree with the complex as long as it creates jobs in the town, which is what is needed, but we are against it being for the benefit of a few,” said Cristóbal Lobato, who has worked at the same beachside bar in Tarifa for 30 years. “If they put it in the centre of Tarifa, where there is space, then clients could visit shops, tapas bars and restaurants.”
Overlooking the green fields earmarked for building, biologist Aitor Galán, who conducts environmental impact studies for a living, pointed at one of only two seaside breeding grounds for vultures in Europe. “Anywhere else in Europe, this place would have the utmost protection, but here they want to get rid of it all and cover it with buildings,” he said. “What they want to do is turn this into Benidorm, but what draws people here is wildlife and the wind. But by taking advantage of the current crisis and unemployment, builders and mayors who agree with them can justify any amount of destruction.” | 2adv
|
On an average day its outlets are a hive of social activity, hosting everything from business meetings to reading groups looking for that all-important morning caffeine rush. But Starbucks should be careful what it wishes for.
The direct action group UK Uncut plans to turn dozens of the coffee empire’s UK branches into crèches, refuges and homeless shelters to highlight the chain’s tax avoidance tactics.
The announcement of the action comes on the day a Starbucks executive faces questions from the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee over why the company paid no corporation tax in the UK during the past three years, despite senior US management trumpeting the company’s profitable operations in Britain.
In his appearance before the committee, Starbucks’ Chief Financial Officer, Troy Alstead, will attempt to repair the company’s reputation, which continues to suffer because of the controversy.
MPs accused HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) officials of having cosy relationships with big businesses. Speaking about the arrangements with Starbucks, the Conservative MP Richard Bacon said: “It smells. And it doesn’t smell of coffee – it smells bad.”
The campaign group UK Uncut is attempting to draw a link between government cuts, in particular those that affect women, and tax avoidance by multinational businesses.
Sarah Greene, a UK Uncut activist, said funding for refuges and rape crisis centres faced cuts unless companies paid their fair share of tax. HMRC estimates around £32bn was lost to tax avoidance in 2011.
Greene said the government could easily bring in billions that could fund vital services by clamping down on tax avoidance.
The group, which rose to prominence after staging a sit-in at Vodafone stores, Topshop and Fortnum & Mason, turned its attentions to Starbucks last month after an investigation by Reuters discovered the company had paid only £8.6m in corporation tax since launching in the UK in 1998, despite cumulative sales of £3bn.
Longstanding Uncut campaigner Anna Walker said “We’ve chosen to really highlight the impact of the cuts on women. So there is going to be a real focus on transforming Starbucks into those services that are being cut by the government … [such as] refuges and crèches.
“Starbucks is a really great target because it is on every high street across the country and that’s what UK Uncut finds really important: people can take action in their local areas,” she said.
Several international organizations have faced criticism over their UK accounts, with Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google and Ikea all paying little or no corporation tax despite large British operations.
However, according to pollsters at YouGov’s BrandIndex, Starbucks has suffered the deepest damage to its image.
The coffee store chain insists it pays the correct level of taxes. The group Chief Executive, Howard Schultz, has said in a statement: “Starbucks has always paid taxes in the UK despite recent suggestions to the contrary.
“Over the last three years alone, our company has paid more than £160m in various taxes, including National Insurance contributions, VAT and business rates.”
Margaret Hodge, who chairs the Public Accounts Committee, told parliament last month that Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google and Starbucks had avoided nearly £900m of tax. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, responded to the claim by saying: “I’m not happy with the current situation. I think [HMRC] needs to look at it very carefully. We do need to make sure we are encouraging these businesses to invest in our country as they are, but they should be paying fair taxes as well.”
A spokeswoman for Starbucks said: “While the subject of tax law can be extremely complex, Starbucks respects and complies with tax laws and accounting rules in each of the 61 countries where we do business, including the UK – a market that we remain committed to for the long term. We’ve posted the facts about our tax practices in the UK on our website.
“Starbucks’ economic impact in the UK goes far beyond our stores and partners [employees]. We spend hundreds of millions of pounds with local suppliers on milk, cakes and sandwiches, and on store design and renovations. When you take into account the indirect employment created by Starbucks’ investments in the UK, the company’s extended economic impact to the UK economy exceeds £80m annually.
“We hope that UK Uncut will respect the wellbeing of our partners and customers, and recognize the value that we add to the economy, creating jobs and apprenticeships, as well as paying our fair share of taxes in the UK.” | 2adv
|
Dame Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer for England, has likened the problem of antibiotic resistance to the risks presented by international terrorism. While this might sound like an exaggeration, the threat was actually, if anything, understated. Each year, the global number of deaths to which bacterial resistance contributes far outstrips those caused by terrorist attacks.
While it is difficult to track the global impact of antibiotic resistance across all bacterial species, the World Health Organization estimates that for tuberculosis alone multi-drug resistance accounts for more than 150,000 deaths each year. Antibiotic resistance is no longer an abstract risk: this is now a war.
In the past hundred years, our expectations of life and survival have changed beyond all recognition. At the beginning of the twentieth century, life expectancy in the UK stood at around 47 years of age for a man and 50 for a woman, a number heavily affected by the very high rate of infant mortality in those days. Around a third of all deaths occurred in children under the age of five, largely because of infectious disease.
In contrast, a child born in Britain today has a better than one in four chance of reaching their 100th birthday. For this we have public health systems, vaccination and antibiotics to thank. It is by these means – the prevention and treatment of illnesses caused by microorganisms – that the real war against disease is principally won.
Elsewhere, we have pushed the limits of survival, notably in intensive care. This, the specialism in which I chose to train, is where antibiotic resistant organisms are most prevalent. Here, powerful antibiotics, essential in the treatment of life-threatening illness, are used routinely. These drugs decimate ordinary bacteria. But what they leave behind are hardy species that have begun to learn tricks that allow them to evade antibiotic drugs.
As a newly qualified doctor in the late 1990s, I learnt about Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus – the infamous MRSA – a bacterial species resistant to methicillin and all other penicillins. In the fight against it, there were a handful of exotic-sounding drugs – vancomycin and teicoplanin among them. These were supposed to be our last lines of defence, but antibiotic resistant bacteria became more and more common; as did species with new patterns of resistance. Drugs we had previously barely heard of became commonplace. New last-line drugs emerged to replace the old. We got used to this state of affairs; a steady escalation in the arms race between us and the bacteria.
But the balance has been shifting steadily. In our hospitals and our GP surgeries we have abused the drugs that gave us such a huge advantage over infectious disease, using them too often and too indiscriminately. And some of the worst abuses have occurred outside of healthcare, with antibiotics introduced into the food chain, through agriculture and the lacing of livestock feed with anti-bacterial drugs. We assumed that antibiotic therapy was an advantage we could enjoy forever. We became complacent that the pharmaceutical industry would continue to stay ahead of the game.
But this is no longer the case. New, more resistant species have been identified. The vancomycin that we used to rely on to treat MRSA infection was defeated. Vancomycin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (VRSA) emerged in our hospitals. And other bacterial species were learning the same trick. Enterobacteria, organisms usually found in the gut, had also acquired vancomycin resistance. Today, infections with formidable, highly resistant organisms are commonplace and the pharmaceutical industry is not keeping pace. Fewer and fewer new anti-microbial drugs are emerging from their production lines. It is becoming increasingly difficult to develop new drugs active against resistant strains. For every method of attack the pharmaceutical companies invent, bacteria rapidly evolve a defence. All of the simple approaches to the problem have been exhausted.
Antibiotics have become drugs that are expensive to develop, that are only used in short courses and that quickly become ineffective due to the evolution of bacterial resistance. Consequently, the pharmaceutical industry’s incentive to manufacture new drugs that can fight them is low.
Almost as soon as antibiotic use became widespread in the 1940s, the first evidence of bacteria resistance to antimicrobial therapy emerged. Initially, these were little more than curiosities. When they did infect patients, the numbers were so small that at first they were not enough to warrant much attention. But today, they have become a fact of medical life. Less than a century after the discovery of penicillin, we are beginning to lose the fight.
Since the first MRSA deaths in otherwise healthy children in the US in 1998, the number of deaths from MRSA infection in the US each year has risen to tens of thousands – outstripping the number of deaths caused by AIDS. Bacterial resistance in hospitals is everywhere you look. This is a war like no other. There needs to be cultural change in our prescribing behaviours and more restraint in the use of antibiotics in farming and agriculture. And somehow, the pharmaceutical companies have to be convinced to chase the development of these less profitable drugs.
Within my working lifetime, the pattern of antibiotic resistance in healthcare has transformed from a rare but notable event to a problem of epidemic proportion. If we are to avoid a return to the pre-antibiotic time with all its excess mortality, we must be bold. To squander the advantage we have so recently gained against microorganisms in the fight for life would be unthinkable. | 2adv
|
Swedish prisons have long had a reputation around the world for being progressive. But are the country’s prisons a soft option?
The head of Sweden’s prison and probation service, Nils Oberg, announced in November 2013 that four Swedish prisons are to be closed due to an “out of the ordinary” decline in prisoner numbers.
Although there has been no fall in crime rates, between 2011 and 2012 there was a 6% drop in Sweden’s prisoner population, now a little over 4,500. A similar decrease is expected in 2013 and 2014. Oberg admitted to being puzzled by the unexpected dip, but expressed optimism that the reason was to do with how his prisons are run. “We certainly hope that the efforts we invest in rehabilitation and preventing relapse of crime has had an impact,” he said.
“The modern prison service in Sweden is very different from when I joined as a young prison officer in 1978,” says Kenneth Gustafsson, governor of Kumla Prison, Sweden’s most secure jail, situated 130 miles west of Stockholm. However, he doesn’t think the system has gone soft. “When I joined, the focus was very much on humanity in prisons. Prisoners were treated well – maybe too well, some might say. But, after a number of high-profile escapes in 2004, we had to rebalance and place more emphasis on security.”
Despite the hardening of attitudes toward prison security following the escape scandals, the Swedes still managed to maintain a broadly humane approach to sentencing, even of the most serious offenders: jail terms rarely exceed ten years; those who receive life imprisonment can still apply to the courts after a decade to have the sentence commuted to a fixed term, usually in the region of 18 to 25 years. Sweden was the first country in Europe to introduce the electronic tagging of convicted criminals and continues to strive to minimize short-term prison sentences wherever possible by using community-based measures, which have been proven to be more effective at reducing reoffending.
The overall reoffending rate in Sweden stands at between 30 and 40% over three years – to compare that with another European country, the number is around half that of the UK. One likely reason for the relatively low reoffending rate and the low rate of incarceration in Sweden (below 70 per 100,000 head of population) is that the age of criminal responsibility is set at 15. In the UK, for example, children aged ten to 17 and young people under the age of 21 record the highest reoffending rates: almost three quarters and two thirds, respectively. A good proportion of these offenders go on to populate adult jails. In Sweden, no young person under the age of 21 can be sentenced to life – this is not the case in many other countries – and every effort is made to ensure that as few juvenile offenders as possible end up in prison.
One strong reason for the drop in prison numbers might be the amount of post-prison support available in Sweden. A confident probation service – a government agency – is tasked not only with supervising those on probation but is also guaranteed to provide treatment programmes for offenders with drug, alcohol or violence issues. The service is assisted by around 4,500 lay supervisors – members of the public who volunteer to befriend and support offenders under supervision.
Gustafsson talks about broader goals and objectives for the Swedish justice department: “In 2013 and 2014, the priority of our work will be with young offenders and men with convictions of violent behaviour. For many years, we have been running programmes to help those addicted to drugs. Now, we are also developing programmes to address behaviours such as aggression and violence. These are the important things for our society when these people are released.” I spoke to a former prisoner who now runs a social enterprise called X-Cons Sweden. Peter Soderlund served almost three years of a four-year sentence for drug and weapons offences before he was released in 1998. He was helped by a newly formed organization run by former prisoners called Kris (Criminals’ Return Into Society).
“The big difference between Kris and us is that we are happy to allow people who are still taking addiction medications to join us,” he says. Both organizations work with the same goal: helping prisoners successfully reintegrate into society after they have been released. And what is life like for the prisoner in Sweden? “When I was inside, I was lucky. In Osteraker Prison, where I served my sentence, the governor was enlightened. We were treated well. But I knew that not all Swedish prisons were like that. I met so many people in there who needed help – after I received help from Kris, I knew I wanted to help others. With X-Cons, we meet them at the gate and support them into accommodation and offer a network of support.”
“In Sweden, we believe very much in the concept of rehabilitation, without being naive of course,” says Gustafsson. “There are some people who will not or cannot change. But, in my experience, the majority of prisoners want to change, and we must do what we can to help to facilitate that. It is not always possible to achieve this in one prison sentence.
“Also, it is not just prison that can rehabilitate – it is often a combined process, involving probation and greater society. We can give education and training, but, when they leave prison, these people need housing and jobs.” | 2adv
|
It is hard to tell exactly where the noise is coming from, but impossible to miss it from anywhere in Damascus: all day and night you can hear the dull thud and boom of artillery, rockets or planes pounding rebel positions – the sound of war getting closer to Syria’s capital. But just over two years into the Syrian crisis – the longest and bloodiest of the Arab uprisings – ignoring the sound of death and destruction nearby has become the new normal for Damascenes.
Over the weekend, men could be seen puffing on water pipes in a palm-shaded park, children playing between the flowerbeds and couples chatting on benches as the unmistakable thunderclap of high explosive could be heard a few miles away – smoke rising between the minarets of a nearby Ottoman-era mosque. No one seemed to notice.
“Actually you do get used to it after a while,” said George, an IT technician from a village on the coast. “But you never know exactly what they are hitting.” That usually becomes clear later from video clips posted by opposition media outlets on YouTube.
The sinister background noise is doubly disturbing because the government tries so hard to preserve a jaunty air of business as usual. “As you can see, everything here is fine but we have to hit the terrorists, these extremists,” an army officer announced. An official, whose route home has come under attack from rebels in Daraya, 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?”
Ordinary citizens, in private conversation, are less defiant. In the centre of town, a shopkeeper complained sadly that his baby daughter cries at the sound of shelling. Zeina, a twenty-something student, fears becoming desensitized to suffering – and perhaps to danger too. “In the beginning, when there started to be explosions, I used to have nightmares,” she reflected. “Now I can sleep through anything.”
And, the risks are multiplying even closer to home. In Sabaa Bahrat Square, in what was supposed to be the safest part of Damascus, a car bomb detonated, leaving a blackened concrete facade, broken windows and mangled metal as well as blast damage to the imposing structure of the Syrian Central Bank next door. Mourning notices for two of the 15 victims – Muhammad al-Sufi and Manal al-Tahan – are stuck to the wall opposite. Scruffy, machine-gun toting militiamen mill around the square, often used for televised pro-regime rallies with civil servants bussed in en masse to chant slogans under giant banners of President Bashar al-Assad.
That bombing was not the worst Damascus has experienced as the situation has deteriorated. In February, 80 people, including schoolchildren, reportedly died near the ruling Ba’ath Party headquarters in Mazraa. The crater is still visible, marked by an enormous patch of fresh asphalt on the main road going north. “I live nearby but luckily I wasn’t there,” recalled Munir, a university lecturer.
Mortar bombs, fired from rebel-held areas now within easy range of the city, have become an ominous novelty. The bombs killed 15 students in a university cafeteria on 28 March. The intended target is thought to have been a government building.
Security measures have intensified since the devastating bombing of the national security crisis cell in July 2012, when four of Assad’s most senior aides were killed. Concrete blast barriers – often painted in the Syrian flag’s black, red and white – now protect official premises, not just the military or defence installations that are obvious targets. The Iranian Embassy in Mezze, its turquoise mosaic front giving an exotic glimpse of Isfahan or Shiraz, looks like a fortress. “The regime did manage to set up a ring of steel round Damascus,” a foreign diplomat said. “But for whatever reason the perimeter is starting to be punctured and that brings home the reality of the war.”
All this means that moving around has become difficult, unpredictable and time-consuming – another aspect of the new normal across an understandably nervous city. Checkpoints on main roads funnel traffic for ID checks and baggage searches with handheld explosive detectors – vital to stop future bombers. Only drivers with an official security clearance can use special fast lanes to avoid the wait.
It is hard, however, to avoid the question on everyone’s mind: will there be a battle for Damascus – the world’s oldest continually inhabited city, as the guidebooks say – like the one that has so damaged Aleppo? Parts of the city already feel like a war zone: its ritziest hotel is eerily deserted though many rooms are being used as offices by international agencies drawn by the deepening crisis – blue helmets and flak jackets piled up on Persian carpets in an ornate reception room, white UN vehicles parked behind the blast barriers outside. The streets empty soon after 9pm.
One view is that the fight for Syria’s capital is coming, but not quite yet – in the summer perhaps, some predict, when the rebels have consolidated their gains in the south. Others argue that outright victory by either side is unlikely and hope for a political solution imposed from abroad. But few here seem to expect things to get any better. | 2adv
|
At Addis Ababa airport, visitors are greeted by pictures of golden grains, minute ochre-red seeds and a group of men gathered around a giant pancake. Billboards boast: “Teff: the ultimate gluten-free crop!”
Ethiopia is one of the world’s poorest countries, well known for its precarious food security situation. But it is also the native home of teff, a highly nutritious ancient grain increasingly finding its way into health-food shops and supermarkets in Europe and America.
Teff’s tiny seeds – the size of poppy seeds – are high in calcium, iron and protein, and boast an impressive set of amino acids. Naturally gluten free, the grain can substitute for wheat flour in anything from bread and pasta to waffles and pizza bases. Like quinoa, the Andean grain, teff’s superb nutritional profile offers the promise of new and lucrative markets in the west.
In Ethiopia, teff is a national obsession. Grown by an estimated 6.3 million farmers, fields of the crop cover more than 20% of all land under cultivation. Ground into flour and used to make injera, the spongy fermented flatbread that is basic to Ethiopian cuisine, the grain is central to many religious and cultural ceremonies. Across the country, and in neighbouring Eritrea, diners gather around large pieces of injera, which doubles as cutlery, scooping up stews and feeding one another as a sign of loyalty or friendship – a tradition known as gursha.
Outside diaspora communities in the west, teff has flown under the radar for decades. But a growing appetite for traditional crops and booming health-food and gluten-free markets are breathing new life into the grain, increasingly touted as Ethiopia’s “second gift to the world”, after coffee.
Sophie Kebede, a London-based entrepreneur who owns a UK company specializing in the grain, says she was “flabbergasted” when she discovered its nutritional value. “I didn’t know it was so sought after. I am of Ethiopian origin; I’ve been eating injera all my life.”
Growing demand for so-called ancient grains has not always been a straightforward win for poor communities. In Bolivia and Peru, reports of rising incomes owing to the now-global quinoa trade have come alongside those of malnutrition and conflicts over land, as farmers sell their entire crop to meet western demand.
Ethiopia’s growing middle class is also pushing up demand for teff and rising domestic prices have put the grain out of reach of the poorest. Today, most small farmers sell the bulk of what they grow to consumers in the city.
This may have helped boost incomes in some rural areas but it has had nutritional consequences, says the government, as teff is the most nutritionally valuable grain in the country. Estimates suggest that, while those in urban areas eat up to 61kg of teff a year, in rural areas, the figure is 20kg. The type consumed differs, too: the wealthy almost exclusively eat the more expensive magna and white teff varieties; less well-off consumers tend to eat less-valuable red and mixed teff, and more than half combine it with cheaper cereals such as sorghum and maize.
The Ethiopian government wants to double teff production by 2015. Its strategy, published in 2013, argues that the grain could play an important role in school meals and emergency aid programmes, and help reduce malnutrition – particularly among children and adolescents.
Though Ethiopia has a fast-growing economy, it remains on the UN’s list of least-developed countries. An estimated 20% of under-fives are malnourished or suffer stunted growth.
The government’s Agricultural Transformation Agency aims to boost yields by developing improved varieties of the grain, along with new planting techniques and tools to reduce post-harvest losses.
Government restrictions, instituted in 2006, forbid the export of raw teff grain, only allowing shipments of injera and other processed products. But this could change: the goal is to produce enough teff for domestic consumption and a strong export market, according to the government’s strategy.
Mama Fresh is a family firm that has been selling injera to top restaurants and hotels in the Ethiopian capital for years. It also ships the flatbread to Finland, Germany, Sweden and the US, primarily for consumption by diaspora communities. But, the company has its eye on the gluten-free market. It aims to double exports to America in 2014 and will soon start producing teff-based pizzas, bread and cookies.
“Typically, these products are going to go through many hands before they reach the shelves of Sainsbury’s or wherever. There are profit margins at every step and small farmers are not necessarily well placed to bargain with the bigger traders,” says David Hallam, trade and markets director at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. He sees quinoa’s popularity as a cautionary tale of how export opportunities can be a mixed blessing for poor countries.
Regassa Feyissa, an Ethiopian agricultural scientist and former head of the National Institute for Biodiversity, warns that, without careful planning, increased teff production for export may displace other important crops for farmers. And, efforts to boost production could benefit business interests at the expense of small farmers.
With little Ethiopian teff on the international market, farmers in the US have started planting the crop. Farmers in Europe, Israel and Australia have also experimented with it.
Kebede says she gets her grain from farms in southern Europe, though she would prefer to source it from Ethiopia. “Teff is second nature to an Ethiopian, so who better to supply it? We have this sought-after grain being grown in the country, so why can’t an Ethiopian farmer benefit from this?” | 2adv
|
Margaret Thatcher, the most dominant British prime minister since Winston Churchill in 1940 and a global champion of the late 20th-century free market economic revival, has died. The British government announced that she would receive a ceremonial funeral with military honours at St Paul’s Cathedral.
The British prime minister, David Cameron, who is cutting short his trip to Europe to return to London following the news, said: “It was with great sadness that l learned of Lady Thatcher’s death. We’ve lost a great leader, a great prime minister and a great Briton.” He added: “As our first woman prime minister, Margaret Thatcher succeeded against all the odds, and the real thing about Margaret Thatcher is that she didn’t just lead our country, she saved our country, and I believe she will go down as the greatest British peacetime prime minister.”
In a statement, President Barack Obama said, “Here in America, many of us will never forget her standing shoulder to shoulder with President Reagan, reminding the world that we are not simply carried along by the currents of history – we can shape them with moral conviction, unyielding courage and iron will.”
The first woman elected to lead a major western state, Lady Thatcher, as she became after the longest premiership since 1827, served 11 unbroken years at No 10 Downing Street.
Thatcher, who was 87, had been in declining health for some years, suffering from dementia. After a series of mini-strokes in 2002, Thatcher withdrew from public life, no longer able to make the kind of waspish pronouncements that had been her forte in office – and beyond.
Her death was greeted with tributes from across the political spectrum.
As Labour sources announced the party would suspend campaigning in local elections as a mark of respect, its leader, Ed Miliband, said: “She will be remembered as a unique figure. She reshaped the politics of a whole generation. She was Britain’s first woman prime minister. She moved the centre ground of British politics and was a huge figure on the world stage. The Labour Party disagreed with much of what she did and she will always remain a controversial figure. But we can disagree and also greatly respect her political achievements and her personal strength.”
The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, said: “Margaret Thatcher was one of the defining figures in modern British politics. Whatever side of the political debate you stand on, no one can deny that as prime minister she left a unique and lasting imprint on the country she served.”
Describing her as a political phenomenon, the former Tory prime minister Sir John Major said: “Her outstanding characteristics will always be remembered by those who worked closely with her: courage and determination in politics, and humanity and generosity of spirit in private.”
The “Iron Lady” proved a significant cold war ally of the US president Ronald Reagan in the final showdown with the Soviet Union, which broke up under reformist pressures led by Mikhail Gorbachev, a Kremlin leader with whom Thatcher famously declared she could “do business ”. As a result, many ordinary voters in ex-Soviet bloc states saw her as a bold champion of their liberty, a view widely shared across the spectrum of mainstream US opinion – though not at home or among key EU partners.
Thatcher was an unremarkable mid-ranking Conservative until she unexpectedly became party leader in 1975. Within a decade, she had become known around the world – both admired and detested – for her pro-market domestic reforms and her implacable attitudes in foreign policy, including her long-running battle with the IRA, which almost managed to murder her when it placed a bomb in the Grand Hotel, Brighton, in 1984.
At home, the emerging doctrine of Thatcherism meant denationalization of state-owned industry – the new word “privatization” came into widespread use in many countries – and defeat of militant trade unionists, notably the National Union of Miners, whose year-long strike (1984 – 85) was bitter and traumatic.
Boosted by the newly arrived revenues from Britain’s North Sea oil fields, Thatcher had room to manoeuvre and change the ageing industrial economy and she used the opportunity to defeat her enemies – including moderate members of her own party.
But she also deployed her notorious “handbaggings”, or verbal attacks, in the European Union to obtain a British rebate – “my money” as she called it. She was less successful in fending off the centralizing ambitions of the “Belgian Empire”, her description of the European Commission, especially in the years when it was headed by the French socialist Jacques Delors.
Her allies in the tabloid press egged her on. And, as the British economy recovered from the severe recession that her monetarist medicine had inflicted on it – to tame the unions and cure inflation – she briefly seemed invincible.
But untrammelled power, with the defeat or retirement of allies who had kept her in check, led to mistakes and growing unpopularity. When Sir Geoffrey Howe, nominally her deputy, finally fell out with Thatcher – chiefly over Europe – his devastating resignation speech triggered a leadership challenge. Thatcher made way for John Major rather than risk losing to him in a ballot.
In retirement, she wrote highly successful memoirs in two volumes and campaigned energetically on behalf of the Thatcher Foundation, which sought to promote her values around the world. | 2adv
|
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has appealed to Washington to sort out its finances after the US pulled back from the brink of a debt default and hundreds of thousands of federal employees returned to work after a 16-day government shutdown.
As the US President, Barack Obama, warned “We’ve got to get out of the habit of governing by crisis,” the IMF’s managing director, Christine Lagarde, appealed for more stability.
“It will be essential to reduce uncertainty surrounding the conduct of fiscal policy by raising the debt limit in a more durable manner,” she said.
“We also continue to encourage the US to approve a budget for 2014 and replace the sequester with gradually phased-in measures that would not harm the recovery, and to adopt a balanced and comprehensive medium-term fiscal plan.”
A Senate-drafted peace deal that contained almost no concessions to the conservatives who had driven the country to the precipice of a new financial crisis was passed by the Republican-dominated House of Representatives just hours before a deadline to extend the US debt limit was to pass.
The World Bank, too, expressed its relief that the global economy had “dodged a potential catastrophe ”, with its president, Jim Yong Kim, urging policymakers in all countries to “continue to focus on crafting and implementing policies that promote economic growth and boost jobs and opportunity for all ”.
Stock markets in Japan, China, Hong Kong and South Korea initially reflected relief after the Republicans finally capitulated in their failed attempt to undermine Obama’s healthcare reforms. But, in Asia and Europe, stock markets overall displayed a muted reaction, with traders apparently expecting another battle in Washington early in 2014.
The shutdown is estimated to have cost the US $24bn, according to the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s. China’s official Xinhua News Agency had accused Washington of jeopardizing other countries’ dollar assets. China is the US government’s largest creditor.
Obama signed the necessary legislation to fend off a default shortly after midnight on Thursday after a Republican split in the House of Representatives. The bill had passed easily with broad bipartisan support in the Senate, where Democratic and Republican leaders forged the agreement. It offers a temporary fix, funding the government until 15 January and raising the debt ceiling until 7 February.
But the president made clear he did not expect another bitter budget fight and shutdown in 2014.
In brief remarks at the White House shortly before the House vote, Obama said he hoped the deal would “lift the cloud of uncertainty” that had hung over the country in recent weeks.
“Once this agreement arrives on my desk, I will sign it immediately,” he said, in a statement delivered at the White House. “Hopefully, next time it won’t be in the eleventh hour. We’ve got to get out of the habit of governing by crisis.”
As he left the lectern after his Wednesday night press briefing, the president was asked by a journalist whether the crisis would happen all over again in a few months. Speaking over his shoulder, Obama replied, “No.”
Earlier, the Republican senator Mike Lee had struck a defiant tone, perhaps indicating more trouble ahead: “The media keeps asking: 'Was it worth it?' My answer is, it is always worth it to do the right thing.” He added: “This is not over.”
However, the political deal was one of the worst of all possible outcomes for Republicans. None of their stated goals was achieved and polls showed that voters overwhelmingly blamed them for the crisis. | 2adv
|
More than a third of all women worldwide – 35.6% – will experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, usually from a male partner, according to the first comprehensive study of its kind from the World Health Organization (WHO). The report reveals the shocking extent of attacks on women from the men with whom they share their lives, with 30% of women being attacked by partners. It also finds that a large proportion of murders of women – 38% – are carried out by intimate partners.
“These findings send a powerful message that violence against women is a global health problem of epidemic proportions,” said Dr Margaret Chan, director general of the WHO. “We also see that the world’s health systems can and must do more for women who experience violence.”
The highest levels of violence against women are in Africa, where nearly half of all women – 45.6% – will suffer physical or sexual violence. In low- and middle-income Europe, the proportion is 27.2%. Yet, wealthier nations are not necessarily always safer for women – a third of women in high-income countries (32.7%) will experience violence at some stage in their lives. Of the women who suffer violence, 42% sustain injuries, which can bring them to the attention of healthcare staff. That, says the report, is often the first opportunity for violence in the home to be detected and for the woman to be offered help. Violence has a profound effect on women’s health. Some arrive at hospital with broken bones, while others suffer pregnancy-related complications and mental illness.
The two reports from the WHO – one on the prevalence of violence, the other offering guidelines to healthcare staff on helping women – are the work of Dr Claudia Garcia-Moreno, lead specialist in gender, reproductive rights, sexual health and adolescence at WHO, and Professor Charlotte Watts, an epidemiologist who specializes in gender, violence and health, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
“For the first time, we have compared data from all over the world on the magnitude of partner violence and sexual violence by non-partners and the impact of these sorts of violence on health,” said Garcia-Moreno. These included HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, depression, women turning to alcohol, unwanted pregnancies and low-birthweight babies.
There were variations in the rates of violence against women in different regions of the world but, said Garcia-Moreno, “in whatever region we looked at, it is unacceptably high”. Even in high-income countries, 23.2% of women will suffer physical and/or sexual violence from a partner in their lives, their data from 81 countries shows. The global figure for women attacked by partners was 30%.
More sexual assaults and rapes by acquaintances or strangers are reported in high-income countries than elsewhere – the report says that 12.6% of women in wealthy countries will be sexually attacked by a non-partner in their lives, which is higher than the African rate of 11.9%. But, the data on such crimes is not well collected in all regions.
The authors say that their previous research shows that better-educated women are less likely to suffer violence, as are those who have jobs, although not in all regions. There is a need to tackle social norms, said Watts. “What is society’s attitude concerning the acceptability of certain forms of violence against women?” she asked. “In some societies, it is not OK – but not all.”
“I think the numbers are a wake-up call for all of us to pay more attention to this issue,” said Garcia-Moreno. Over the past decade, there has been increasing recognition of the problem, she said, but “one has to recognize that it is a complex problem. We don’t have a vaccine or a pill ”.
The new WHO clinical and policy guidelines recommend training for healthcare staff in recognizing the signs of domestic violence and sexual assault, but they rule out general screening – there is not a case for asking every woman who arrives in a clinic whether she has been subjected to violence.
“But, if you see a woman coming back several times with undisclosed injuries, you should be asking about domestic violence,” said Garcia-Moreno. “When I was training in medical school, it wasn’t something you learned or knew about. Years later, I was sometimes in a situation where I could tell there was something else going on in the woman I was interviewing, but didn’t have any sense that domestic violence was the issue. Now, I think I would handle the interview very differently.” | 2adv
|
Angela Erdmann never knew her grandfather. He died in 1946, six years before she was born. But, on Tuesday 8th April, 2014, she described the extraordinary moment when she received a message in a bottle, 101 years after he had lobbed it into the Baltic Sea. Thought to be the world’s oldest message in a bottle, it was presented to Erdmann by the museum that is now exhibiting it in Germany.
“It was very surprising,” Erdmann, 62, said, recalling how she found out about the bottle. “A man stood at my door and told me he had post from my grandfather. He then told me that a message in a bottle had been found and that the name that was on the card was that of my grandfather.” Her visitor was a genealogical researcher who had managed to track her down in Berlin after the letter was given to the International Maritime Museum in the northern port city of Hamburg.
The brown beer bottle, which had been in the water for 101 years, was found in the catch of Konrad Fischer, a fisherman, who had been out in the Baltic Sea off the northern city of Kiel. Holger von Neuhoff, curator for ocean and science at the museum, said this bottled message was the oldest he had come across. “There are documents that have been found without the bottle that are older and are in the museum,” he said. “But, with the bottle and the document, this is certainly the oldest at the moment. It is in extremely good condition.”
Researchers believe Erdmann’s grandfather, Richard Platz, threw the bottle in the sea while on a hike with a nature appreciation group in 1913. He was 20 years old at the time.
Much of the postcard was indecipherable, although the address in Berlin on the front of the card was legible, as was the author’s polite request that the note be sent by the finder to his home address.
“He also included two stamps from that time that were also in the bottle, so the finder would not incur a cost,” Erdmann said. “But he did not think it would take 101 years.”
She said she was moved by the arrival of the message, although she had not known her grandfather because he died, at the age of 54, six years before she was born.
“I knew very little about my grandfather, but I found out that he was a writer who was very open-minded, and believed in freedom and that everyone should respect each other,” she said. “He did a lot for the young and later travelled with his wife and two daughters. It was wonderful because I could see where my roots came from.”
Like her grandfather, Erdmann said, she also liked culture and travelling around the world. She described herself as open-minded, too. “What he taught his two daughters, my mother taught me and I have then given to my sons,” she said. Despite her joy at receiving the bottled message, she said that she hoped others would not repeat what her grandfather had done and throw bottles with messages into the sea. “Today, the sea is so full of so many bottles and rubbish that more shouldn’t be thrown in there,” she said.
The message and the bottle will be on display at Hamburg’s Maritime Museum until the beginning of May 2014, after which experts will attempt to decipher the rest of the text. It is not clear what will then happen to the bottle, but Erdmann hopes it will stay at the museum.
“We want to make a few photos available to put with the bottle and give it a face, so visitors can see the young man who threw the bottle into the water,” she said. | 2adv
|
Sleep deprivation used to be a badge of honour: a sign you were busy and important and very much in demand. Snoozing was losing and sleep was for wimps. Now, however, Arianna Huffington’s The Sleep Revolution, a 'call to bed' that promises to transform your life “one night at a time”, is a New York Times best-seller and Huffington is urging people to “sleep their way to the top”. Meanwhile, the sleep industry has woken up big time and a whole range of start-ups are reinventing where, when and how we sleep, as well as how much we’re prepared to pay for it. For the more upmarket snoozer, luxury hotels are offering “sleep retreats”; more than $1,000 gets you dinner and a movie about sleep. And, if you’re staying home, you can upgrade your bedroom with everything from a mattress cover with a sensor that tracks your sleep ($249) to a brainwave-monitoring sleeping mask that lets you nap more efficiently ($299).
Sleep hasn’t just been corporatized – it has infiltrated corporations. A number of companies already have nap pods and Huffington predicts that nap rooms in offices are going to become “as common as conference rooms“ in the next two years. So, how did this happen? How did sleep, something humans have done since long before Huffington awoke to it, suddenly become so fashionable?
Getting enough sleep is a natural fit for the sort of lifestyle in which paying $10 for green juice and $34 for a SoulCycle class is the norm. Then, there’s the rise of the quantified self through wearable technology. Our bodies have become input/output devices that we monitor and optimize for greater efficiency and sleep has become another data set to be tracked. What Huffington emphasizes about sleep, after all, is not that it rests you but that it restores you. Sleep, she says, is the ultimate performance enhancer and getting eight hours of rest has become the ultimate status symbol.
You know how Arianna Huffington gets her eight hours? Well, for one thing, she has “nine or so” assistants, according to a recent New York Times profile. Huffington calls them her “A-Team”; they do everything from running her errands to planning her travel to loading The Huffington Post on her computer in the morning. According to the Times, most of the A-Team can only endure about 12 months of the work because it’s so taxing. The low pay also means many of them take second jobs. Basically, they don’t sleep so that Huffington can … and can sell books about it.
Getting enough sleep isn’t just a question of valuing sleep enough to go to bed at the right time; it’s a question of going to bed in the right neighbourhood and in the right body. Numerous studies show that you’re more likely to sleep poorly if you’re poor. It’s hard to sleep if you’re worried about your safety or haven’t had enough to eat. It’s hard to sleep if you’re one of the 15 million American shift workers who work irregular hours. Research has also found that there’s a black/white sleep gap. One study shows that, while white people sleep an average of 6.85 hours, African Americans sleep an average of 6.05 hours. They also have a lower quality of sleep. Researchers have attributed this, in part, to the stress of discrimination.
Want to know who gets the most sleep and the best quality of sleep in America? Wealthy white women. Which, if I’d hazard a guess, is probably the same demographic Huffington is targeting her book at. Huffington describes her promotion of sleep as a “revolution” but, really, it’s a rebranding. The very real sleep crisis we face isn’t down to a few rich people thinking it’s a waste of time; it’s down to the 99% not being able to afford to spend time sleeping.
While sleep is currently enjoying a moment, it will probably be short-lived. Sleep may be a performance enhancer but it’s an inefficient one. The real prize is finding a way to negate sleep deprivation so humans can function on less sleep. Unsurprisingly, the military is at the forefront of this research. In 2008, the Pentagon published a report called “Human Performance” which examined the possibility of a future in which soldiers could perform at their peak with only a couple of hours’ sleep. “Suppose a human could be engineered who slept for the same amount of time as a giraffe (1.9 hours per night).
This would lead to an approximately twofold decrease in the casualty rate. An adversary would need an approximately 40% increase in the troop level to compensate for this advantage.” The report goes on to look at the effects of ampakines, a class of drugs that modulate neurotransmitters in the brain, to remove the effects of sleep deprivation.
Eventually, humans will figure out a way to get rid of sleep. Spending a third of your life unconscious won’t be a luxury anymore; it’ll be something only the poor will be forced to do. At which point, we may need a whole new sort of sleep revolution. | 2adv
|
The brand and logo of Apple have been named the most valuable in the world – worth nearly $119bn, or more than the entire gross domestic product of Morocco, Ecuador or Oman.
The Silicon Valley firm, already the world’s biggest company – with a stock market valuation of $591bn – has seen its brand value increase by 21% in 12 months, according to the closely followed Interbrand Best Global Brands annual report.
Apple, which is recognized the world over by its simple “Apple with a bite missing” emblem, led a surge of technology companies in the 2014 report, which has pushed more traditionally valuable brands – such as Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Gillette – down the table.
Google’s brand value rose by 15% to $107bn to take second place, followed by Coca-Cola, up 3% to $81.5bn, IBM ($72.2bn) and Microsoft ($45.5bn).
Facebook is the biggest riser in the chart, increasing its brand value by 86% to $14.3bn and taking 29th place in the table, ahead of longstanding global corporate names such as Volkswagen, Kellogg’s and Ford.
Jez Frampton, chief executive of Interbrand, which is part of global advertising group Omnicom, said: “Benefitting immensely from the rise of digital and, later, mobile technology, savvy brands like Apple grew stronger. New category- killers like Google, Amazon and Facebook have reset customer expectations and significantly raised the bar for brand experiences.”
Apple, which former Chief Executive Steve Jobs founded in his Los Altos garage in 1976, only appeared in the top ten of the Interbrand annual study in 2011.
Its logo, created by advertising executive Rob Janoff in 1977, was designed with a bite taken out of it to avoid confusion with a cherry. “One of the deep mysteries to me is our logo, the symbol of lust and knowledge, bitten into, all crossed with the colours of the rainbow in the wrong order. You couldn’t dream of a more appropriate logo: lust, knowledge, hope and anarchy,” Janoff said.
Graham Hayles, Interbrand’s chief marketing officer, said it was “not out of kilter” that Apple’s brand could account for a fifth of the company’s entire market value. “Apple makes a lot of money because it has a very strong brand,” he said. “There is a very strong correlation between branding and profitability.”
Hayles said Interbrand, which has been carrying out the annual study since 2000, calculates brand value by examining companies’ financial performance, consumers’ “brand allegiance” and “brand-strength analysis ”.
While many technology companies rose up the chart, there were big fallers, too. Finnish mobile- phone company Nokia dropped 41 places to 98th at $4.1bn, just ahead of Nintendo in 100th place (down 33). “They’re both only just in the chart now,” Hayles said. “It shows the importance of getting innovation right. If you don’t keep pace, it is very penalizing.”
A Chinese company has made it into the top 100 for the first time, with mobile-phone and broadband firm Huawei entering the rankings in 94th place with a brand value of $4.3bn. Huawei has been partly banned by the US and Australian governments due to fears that its equipment could be used by the Chinese for cyber-espionage.
Most of the brands in the top 100 are US-owned, the highest-placed non-US brands being South Korea’s Samsung (6th), Japan’s Toyota (8th) and Germany’s Mercedes-Benz (10th). The highest- placed British brands are HSBC (33rd), Shell (65th) and Burberry (73rd).
Other fashion brands in the top 100 include Boss, Prada and Ralph Lauren. Designer label Louis Vuitton is the top-ranked fashion name, in 19th position, with a value of $23bn, just ahead of high-street clothing chain H&M, with a brand value of $21bn and ranked 21.
Sports brand Nike, ranked 22 with a brand valued at nearly $20bn, is rated way ahead of rival Adidas, at 59 in the top 100 with a value of $7bn.
Frampton said consumers’ ability to interact with and criticize brands on Twitter and other social media means companies must react faster to retain and improve their brands’ reputations.
“The customer, empowered by social media in the 'age of experience', now has more control than ever,” he said. “In this world of two-way conversations, advocacy, influence and engagement are the new rules for brand-building.
“Customers expect seamless interactions, responsiveness, 24/7 accessibility, customization options and high levels of personalization,” he said. “In a sense, they increasingly expect brands to know them.” | 2adv
|
In Canada’s Arctic, summers are marked by a bright light that bathes the treeless tundra for more than 20 hours a day. For some, it’s a welcome change from the unrelenting darkness of winter. But, for the small but growing Muslim community of Iqaluit, Nunavut, life in the land of the midnight sun poses a real challenge during the month of Ramadan, during which Muslims typically fast from sunrise to sunset.
“I haven’t fainted once,” said 29-year-old Abdul Karim, one of the few in the city who has carefully timed his Ramadan fast to the Arctic sun since moving from Ottawa in 2011. This year, that means eating at about 1.30am before the sun rises and breaking his fast at about 11pm when the sun sets. “The only reason to stop would be if it hurts my health,” Karim said. Pointing to his sizable frame, he laughed as he added: “But, looking at my condition, I don’t think fasting will hurt me.”
As the end of Ramadan draws near for Muslims around the world, much of the holy month’s focus on community work, prayer and reflection has been a constant in communities around the world. But in Iqaluit and the other Muslim communities in the Arctic, the long days have forced a shift in how the element of fasting is approached.
Most in Iqaluit adhere to the timetable followed by Muslims in Ottawa, some 1,300 miles south of the city – following the advice of Muslim scholars who have said Muslims in the far north should observe Ramadan using the timetable of Mecca or the nearest Muslim city. It still means fasting for some 18 hours a day, said Atif Jilani, who moved to Iqaluit from Toronto in 2015. “It’s long days, but more manageable.”
Many in the 100-strong community break their fast together, gathering in the city’s brand new mosque – completed in February amid temperatures that dropped as low as -50C with wind chill – for nightly suppers. As they tuck into traditional foods such as dates and goat or lamb curries, the sun shines brightly through the windows.
It’s a scene that plays out across Canada’s northernmost mosques during Ramadan, as Muslim communities wrestle with the country’s unique geography. The 300 or so Muslims in Yellowknife, in the Northwest Territories, have several options when it comes to fasting during Ramadan, said Nazim Awan, president of the Yellowknife Islamic Centre, with exceptions made for those who are pregnant or ill. “There might be some superhumans who want to fast for 23 hours, but the other option is to follow the intent and spirit of fasting by following nearby cities or they can follow the times of Mecca and Medina.” In recent years, much of the community has opted to follow the Ramadan timetable of Edmonton, in Alberta. Some, such as Awan – a father of two young children, including a 12-year-old who recently started fasting – follow the timings of Mecca. He hopes to encourage his son with the more manageable timetable of about 15 hours of fasting as compared with about 18 hours in Edmonton.
“If I fast Yellowknife or Edmonton times, my son might say, 'Papa, you are really insane. What are you doing?'” he said. Faced with the impossibility of following the local movements of the sun, the 100 or so Muslims in Inuvik, a small town that sits 125 miles north of the Arctic Circle, have also been following Edmonton’s timetable. “We currently have 24 hours a day of sun,” said Ahmad Alkhalaf. “There’s no sunrise or sunset.”
The adherence to Edmonton’s schedule was already in place in 2001 when he moved from Toronto to the small northern community of 3,500 people. “My first Ramadan here was in December. There’s no sun at that time; it’s dark all day and night. So we used Edmonton time.” At times, it can be psychologically challenging to follow the clock rather than what is happening outside, Alkhalaf said. “You’re supposed to break your fast when it’s dusk and we eat when the sun is out. It’s not usual to have iftar [the meal breaking the fast] when the sun is up,” he said. In Inuvik, where much of the population is Inuit, the Muslim community has sought to strike a balance between Ramadan and the local culture and traditions. The iftar meal includes dates and rich curries – as well as local game such as reindeer, prepared in accordance with Islamic law. “We make a soup or curry … but instead of using beef, we use reindeer.”
In Iqaluit, as the Muslim community prepares to mark the end of Ramadan, some reflect that 2016’s timing – stretching across some of the longest days of the year – has made it one of the more challenging of recent years. It’s particularly true for those like Karim who have determinedly followed the local sunrise and sunset. But, his efforts will be rewarded years from now, said Karim, thanks to the lunar calendar. Ramadan will eventually fall during winter, which, in Iqaluit, sees the sun rise and set within a few hours each day. “I’ll follow those hours, too,” he said with a laugh. “Oh yes, definitely.” | 2adv
|
“There are certainly MOOC junkies, who take them for no other reason than they’re free and they like hanging out,” grins Dr Ben Brabon of Edgehill University, whose massive open online course in vampire fiction is one of only two accredited MOOCs currently on offer in the UK. Brabon isn’t denigrating people who enrol on MOOC courses: he’s simply pointing out the motivation that prompts certain individuals to sign up. When a course is open entry – MOOCs have no enrolment criteria and no fees to pay – then participants are going to behave very differently from students in a traditional higher education setting.
MOOCs are the newest big thing in the quest to enable higher education for all. A great deal of venture capital money is being invested in the emerging online platforms, which enable the delivery of increasingly sophisticated and interactive course content to participants who can number in the hundreds to the tens of thousands. For these investors, the Holy Grail is to find a business model for MOOCs that will make them profitable – so far, courses have depended on universities being prepared to bankroll their star lecturers’ curriculum design and online teaching time. Mining the data captured about how, why and when millions of participants opt to sign up, interact with their material, submit their assignments, message each other and drop out of the course may be one way of getting a return on the investment.
Part of the dilemma around which future direction MOOCs will take, however, is that nobody can yet define whom exactly they are meant to benefit. Universities keen to entice fee- paying international students onto postgraduate courses by showing off their best programmes online? Students in developing countries hungry for access to first-world universities? Employees wishing to develop their professional knowledge? People lacking qualifications who want to use MOOCs as a bridge to higher education? Or hobby learners, who are keen to learn about a subject area in which they have an interest?
Though they may be popular to start off with, MOOCs have dire completion rates, observes Brabon. For his vampire fiction course, that meant 1,000 enrolments and 31 completions. “And almost all of those had a first degree or had been educated to degree level,” he says. “So the MOOCs trend may not be opening up HE to sectors of the population it hasn’t reached to date.”
“Learning online is a different thing, needs quite advanced learning skills,” confirms David Kernohan, progamme manager for eLearning Innovation at Jisc, a charity that champions the use of digital technologies in UK education and research. “With MOOCs, there’s very little support available: the student is dropped in and tends not to get any individual attention. This is, instead, approximated by peer support such as online discussion forums.” While this may mean that online study is unattractive or difficult for someone without high-level qualifications, it does, he says, suggest that MOOCs could be “a really good tool for continuing education.”
At a time when the number of part-time students has fallen sharply as the price of a degree rises, could this type of open and free-to-access course provide a new path to university-level education? Could an entire degree be taught via MOOCs? “I don’t think that’s how MOOCs work,” says Brabon. Instead, he suggests “a blended approach that combines a campus experience with a MOOC; also, perhaps, using MOOCs to create a global degree, with students taking courses from across the world, might be possible.”
But that’s a little way into the future: for now, no prospective employer will care much if you come waving your MOOC completion certificate, without any quality assurance on either the course content or its assessment standards. Accreditation is therefore now the central challenge that MOOCs must grapple with to gain credibility with academics and employers, says Brabon, who is on a Quality Assurance Agency working group, aiming to develop an agreed approach to standards and marking.
There is idealism around the concept of MOOCs bringing the best of first-world teaching to students in less developed countries. But there’s cynicism, too, with the suggestion that universities could use MOOCs to advertise their on-campus wares to greater numbers of lucrative – though certainly not always wealthy – students from outside the EU.
Mike Sharples, chair of Educational Technology, doesn’t buy into that cynicism. MOOCs are viewed primarily as a way to showcase and share universities’ best teaching talent, as well as encouraging interaction and soliciting feedback from students around the world, he says. He believes that recruiting international students onto university courses is only a secondary objective of running MOOCs – though they could certainly be a very canny marketing move, as he observes that “if 20,000 people sign up to a MOOC – well, you only need 20 of those to enrol afterwards to run a master’s.”
Meanwhile, any politically correct qualms about whether UK academic institutions are patronizing developing countries by exporting small snippets of elitist education may soon be entirely irrelevant, warns Matthew Poyiadgi, managing director at Pearson VUE. “I believe we may get to a situation in the future where universities maybe won’t have a choice, and where British universities are saying, 'if we don’t have a presence in China, then we’ll get left behind,'” he says.
“In South America, China, countries in Africa, there is a huge appetite for learning and some of the world’s best courses are being offered online,” adds Sharples. “If people are genuinely fascinated by learning, then why not? The real challenge is to allow those countries not just to consume and study MOOCs, but also to create them.” | 2adv
|
An international agreement to improve safety in Bangladesh’s clothing factories is facing the threat of legal action as factory owners demand compensation for the cost of closures and repair work. With some repair programmes expected to take months, factory owners say they cannot shoulder the costs of paying staff while factories are closed, alongside the expense of some major works needed to ensure buildings are safe. The building overhauls are being carried out in the wake of the collapse of the Rana Plaza complex in the capital of Bangladesh, Dhaka, in 2013, in which 1,138 people were killed.
The problems come as hundreds of Bangladeshi clothing factories per month are inspected for fire- safety and structural problems under the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, which is backed by over 170 international brands, including Primark and Marks & Spencer, and international trade unions, including IndustriALL.
The owner of one Dhaka-based factory, Softex Cotton, has threatened legal action against the Accord after his factory was closed down due to structural problems, prompting a demand for a reported $100m in compensation.
Another factory owner, who declined to be named, said that once a factory closed its doors, even for a few months, it would lose orders and close permanently: “There is no such thing as temporary closure,” he said. The factory owner said that the Accord agreement had “pussyfooted” around the issue of who paid for factory closures amid efforts to get as many brands as possible to sign up to a deal in the wake of the Rana Plaza disaster. He said there was no clear process in place to handle the costs involved.
Jenny Holdcroft, policy director for IndustriALL, which has been closely involved in the Accord, said that the agreement ensured that factories would not lose orders during closure because brands had committed to maintain orders with suppliers for two years.
While 12 factories have been identified so far by the Accord as needing significant work, Holdcroft said many of those only needed partial closure in order to reduce stress on the building so production could continue on other floors. The Accord also legally binds brands to ensure that workers are paid during factory closures. She said the detail on who would make payments had been left open in order to ensure that all those factory owners who could afford to pay for repairs and compensation for workers made the necessary contribution.
“This was always going to be a topic of negotiation. Brands don’t want to commit to paying so that rich factory owners who have just pocketed the profits and not been spending on their factories for years continue to do so. There was obviously going to be disruption. If there was no disruption, there would be no change,” she said. A spokesman for the Accord said negotiations over payments and even legal action would not hold up its work to improve safety in factories.
However, pressure on the Accord to contribute to the payment of displaced workers has ratcheted up after a rival factory-safety group backed by US retailers including Walmart and Gap, the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, set aside $5m to help pay factory workers for up to two months while work is carried out on the buildings it has identified as needing improvement. It has, so far, identified five factories in four buildings where production needed to be suspended.
“The Alliance is sharing the workers’ salary along with entrepreneurs so now there is a big confusion. We had a big meeting with the Accord to make them understand they have to come forward or how will we help our workers?” said Shaidullah Azim, a director of the Bangladeshi Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association. | 2adv
|
The small space is set up to look like a classroom. Its corrugated iron walls are hung with educational charts – illustrated letters of the alphabet and a map of Bangladesh.
But, the constant sound of hammering and the chemicals in the air that catch in the back of the throat and irritate the eyes make it hard to concentrate. The children who learn in this three-square-metre room are the lucky ones, however. They have escaped working in the factories opposite.
For 14 years, SOHAY, a grassroots non- governmental organization (NGO) funded by the Global Fund for Children and Comic Relief, has been working in slum areas of Dhaka to get child labourers into school. It focuses on children working in hazardous conditions – in aluminium and plastic factories, and tanneries.
The classroom is one of 23 urban development centres that SOHAY has set up across the capital. The centres prepare children for primary school with classes that help them catch up on their education. Once they are in primary school, the children can do homework at the centres, with help from their peers.
Alamin, ten, who used to work in a plastic factory, attends one of the centres. His father is a street seller and his mother a part-time domestic worker. They are all happy that he’s now in school and away from hazardous work. His friend Rabi says he wants to forget his past in the factory. “I like school,” he says.
“The urban development centres aim to create an education-friendly environment in the communities and change their cultural mindset towards the children,” says SOHAY’s programme manager, Mohammed Abdullah al-Mamun. SOHAY also runs sessions for parents and employers to discourage child labour and offers skills training to increase family income.
“Getting working children into formal education is really very challenging,” says Mamun. “Their psychological and physical condition is not like other children in society. After they leave work, they sometimes find it difficult to make friends and adapt to school. It is also very challenging to ensure they stay in school – the dropout rate is very high for these children. In this context, it’s important to work with schools so they have more sensitivity and care about them.”
Seven-year-old Zhorna Akter Sumayya has two older brothers, both of whom are in work (one at a restaurant, one at a local club). But, after being introduced to education at one of SOHAY’s centres, she now goes to a state primary school. Her family live in the slum and her parents can’t survive without the income their sons bring home. Her father works in a rickshaw garage and her mother is a domestic worker, but they were keen for their daughter to go to school.
In 2015, SOHAY helped 1,540 children to leave hazardous work and 2,125 vulnerable children – those in danger of entering work – into school. About 780 more children are preparing to enter school in 2017. The organization is also helping 635 children who are working in hazardous conditions to know their rights under Bangladesh’s 2010 child labour elimination code of conduct. The policy aimed to eradicate all forms of child labour by 2015 but that target was missed.
The Labour Law of Bangladesh 2006 bans children under the age of 14 from working but, according to the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, 4.7 million children under that age are employed in the informal sector and 1.3 million aged five to 17 work in hazardous industries.
“It was difficult to get them into school without any compensation for their time,” says Sadia Nasrin, who runs Sonjag, another Dhaka grassroots NGO. “To overcome this challenge, Sonjag started working closely with the community in the slums where the children live.”
The organization talked to community members about why it was important to get children into school. They selected community volunteers who were motivated to change children’s lives and formed groups with social workers, community leaders, mothers, young volunteers and the local government.
“The groups play a vital role in motivating employers to let children leave for two to three hours a day to attend school and to ensure a safe workplace for the children. The ultimate change-makers are the community people,” says Nasrin.
She adds that people living in slums face threats of eviction, police raids and displacement. “The national plan of action for children does not recognize the needs of street children,” says Nasrin. “Legislative measures are limited.”
When the children have missed starting school at five years old, it is a race against time to prevent them from growing up without an education. “After they cross their school age, it is really very difficult to admit them into school,” says Mamun. “Children are just passing their time without education and waiting to become involved in hazardous work. We are working to block the child labour flow.” | 2adv
|
Barack Obama has urged young people to reject pessimism and interact with those who have different beliefs if they want to make changes in the world.
On the final day of his last visit to Britain as US president, Obama told 500 youth leaders at a town hall meeting in London: “I’m here to ask you to reject the notion there are forces we can’t control. As JFK said, our problems are manmade and can be solved by man.”
“You’ve never had better tools to make a difference,” he told the A-level and UK –US exchange students at the Q&A session. “Reject pessimism, cynicism and know that progress is possible. Progress is not inevitable; it requires struggle, discipline and faith.”
But Obama acknowledged the challenges faced by young people: “Not to say your generation has had it easy, in a time of breathtaking change, from 9/11, 7/7 … and during an age of information and Twitter where there’s a steady stream of bad news.”
The audience cheered as the president was introduced and went on to speak about his policies, including healthcare and education.
He urged the audience to interact with people with different political beliefs: “Seek out people who don’t agree with you and it will also help you to compromise.”
Obama also said: “You should feel encouraged social attitudes are changing. That doesn’t mean it’s fast enough but you should keep pushing and it’s in part due to the courageous acts of young people like yourself.”
When asked about his presidential legacy, Obama said he was proud of the healthcare reforms, which received huge cheers from the audience, and said of the US response to the 2008 financial crisis: “Saving the world from great depression – that was quite good.”
He also listed diplomatic deals with Iran and the response to the Ebola crisis as highlights of his presidency. “I’m proud; I think I’ve been true to myself during this process.”
But he added: “Don’t give up and succumb to cynics if, after five years, poverty hasn’t been eradicated … It’s OK. Dr Martin Luther King says the arc of the moral universe is long but bends towards justice.”
Questioned on the controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), he said: “The answer to globalization is not to pull up the drawbridge and shut off,” though it was crucial to pay attention to workers’ rights.
Before Obama arrived, Tanya Williams, a community engagement officer, told the Guardian: “I love Michelle but I like Obama and it’s exciting to have the chance to hear someone who has changed so much and galvanized so many people who didn’t vote before.”
Oliver Sidorczuk, 26, said: “Everyone is extremely excited to listen to what he has to say. I’m going to ask him about electoral rights and try to ask him if he would join our campaign to ask David Cameron for automatic registration.”
Obama ended the session by taking a question from a young Sikh Londoner, who asked about the issue of racial profiling at airports and being mistaken for a Muslim.
Obama said that, although there were people with “crazy ideology”, pluralism was important. “I visited a mosque a few months ago and said our greatest allies are American Muslims who are most integrated and economically well off,” he said.
Furqan Naeem, a campaigner from Manchester, said: “I recently visited the States through the US embassy on the community leaders programme and saw first hand some really important work the president did in celebrating America’s diversity and bringing communities together.”
Kenny Imafidon, the managing director of the youth organization ClearView Research, said afterwards: “It was a great opportunity and what will stick with me is what he said about meeting with people who have different politics from you and having to make compromises. Also, the thing he said about being a good leader and finding great talent.”
Later, Obama met Jeremy Corbyn, who said they had an “excellent” 90-minute discussion.
The Labour leader said they talked about “the challenges facing postindustrial societies and the power of global corporations, and the increasing use of technology around the world and the effect that it has.”
Asked if they talked about the president’s intervention in the debate on Britain’s membership of the EU, Corbyn said it was discussed briefly.
After the meeting, Obama joined Cameron to play golf at the Grove in Chandlers Cross, Hertfordshire. Obama ended the day at a dinner with the prime minister and the US ambassador, Matthew Barzun, at the ambassador’s residence, before travelling on to Germany. | 2adv
|
The mass collection of telephone records by government surveillance programmes poses a clear threat to the personal privacy of ordinary citizens, according to US researchers who used basic phone logs to identify people and uncover confidential information about their lives.
Armed with anonymous “metadata” on people’s calls and texts, but not the content of the communications, two scientists at Stanford University worked out individuals’ names, where they lived and the names of their partners. But that was not all.
The same data led them to uncover potentially sensitive information about some individuals. One man was found to own a rifle, while another had recently been diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat. Other data pointed to a new pregnancy and a person with multiple sclerosis.
The results highlight the extraordinary power of telephone metadata – the number called, when and for how long – particularly when it is paired with public information available from services such as Google, Yelp and Facebook. The value of the data, which is not subject to the same legal protections as the content of people’s communications, has long been recognized by the security services. As Stewart Baker, the former general counsel at the US National Security Agency (NSA), put it in the aftermath of Edward Snowden’s revelations: “Metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life.”
Patrick Mutchler, a computer security researcher at Stanford, said that while the power of metadata was understood by those gathering the information, the public was largely in the dark because so few published studies have revealed how rich the data is. “That makes it difficult for people with strong opinions about these programmes to fight them. Now, we have hard evidence we can point to that didn’t exist in the past,” he said.
For the study, the researchers signed up 823 people who agreed to have metadata collected from their phones through an Android app. The app also received information from their Facebook accounts, which the scientists used to check the accuracy of their results. In all, the researchers gathered metadata on more than 250,000 calls and over 1.2m texts.
Analysts who logged into the NSA’s metadata-gathering system were initially allowed to examine data up to three hops away from an individual. A call from the target individual’s phone to another number was one hop. From that phone to another was two hops. And so on. The records available to analysts stretched back for five years. The collection window has now been restricted to two hops and 18 months at most.
Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Mutchler describes how, on a shoestring budget, he and fellow graduate student, Jonathan Mayer, uncovered a wealth of personal information, some of it sensitive, about people who took part in the study. Through automatic and manual searches, they identified 82% of people’s names. The same technique gave them the names of businesses the people had called. When these were plotted on a map, they revealed clusters of local businesses, which the scientists speculated surrounded the person’s home address. In this way, they named the city people lived in 57% of the time, and were nearly 90% accurate in placing people within 50 miles of their home. Mutchler believes some of the misses came from people not updating their Facebook page when they moved out of their parents’ home, for example, to go to college.
The scientists next delved into more personal territory. Using a simple computer program to analyse people’s call patterns, they inferred who among the study volunteers was in a relationship. Once they knew the owner of a particular number had a partner, identifying the significant other was easy, they report.
For the final part of the study, the researchers delved even deeper, to see what sensitive information they could glean from telephone metadata. They gathered details on calls made to and from a list of organizations, including hospitals, pharmacies, religious groups, legal services, firearms retailers and repair firms. From these, they pieced together some extraordinary vignettes from people’s lives.
The metadata from one person in the study showed they had a long call from a cardiology centre, spoke briefly with a medical laboratory, answered a number of short calls from a local pharmacy and then made calls to a hotline for abnormal heart-rate monitoring devices. Another participant made frequent calls to a local gun supplier that specialized in semi- automatic rifles and later placed a number of long calls to the customer support hotline run by a major gun manufacturer that produced the rifles. The metadata from two others suggested one had multiple sclerosis and the other had just become pregnant.
“All of this should be taken as an indication of what is possible with two graduate students and limited resources,” said Mutchler, who argues that the findings should make policymakers think twice before authorizing mass surveillance programmes. “Large-scale metadata surveillance programmes, like the NSA’s, will necessarily expose highly confidential information about ordinary citizens,” the scientists write, adding: “To strike an appropriate balance between national security and civil liberties, future policymaking must be informed by input from relevant sciences.”
Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University, said the study provided numbers that discussions can now be based on. “With the right analytics running over nation- scale communications data, you can infer huge amounts of sensitive information on everyone. We always suspected that, of course, but here’s the data.” | 2adv
|
A thick crust of bird droppings is piled on the gilded balustrade of one of Britain’s most expensive properties. Pigeon skeletons lie among shattered mirrors and water streams through broken cornicing. This is The Towers, a £30m palace in “Billionaires’ Row” in north London, whose spectacular ruin has been kept secret until now.
It is one of ten mansions in the middle of The Bishops Avenue – the heart of London’s spiralling property market – that have stood almost entirely vacant since they were bought a quarter of a century ago, it is believed on behalf of members of the Saudi Arabian royal family. Their Grecian columns are cracking into pieces and mosaic-tiled swimming pools are filled with rubble. Nature has taken over to the extent that owls have moved in.
It is a desolate scene repeated up and down the supposedly prestigious avenue that Lloyds Bank has calculated is the second most expensive street in Britain. While more and more people struggle to get on to London’s property ladder as house prices rise at 11.2% a year, 16 mansions on the most expensive stretch of The Bishops Avenue are sitting empty, many behind padlocked gates, with their windows shuttered with steel grilles and overgrown grounds patrolled by guard dogs.
Across the street stands another derelict mansion, worth £18m, with smashed windows and walls coated in anti-climb paint. Metal grilles block the windows of another, which has been sold for £20m.
But that doesn’t stop the prices going up. Dryades, a mansion until recently owned by a Pakistani politician, sold for £12m in 2007 and is believed to be worth about £30m today. Heath Lodge, the scene of the 1984 murder, by silver bullet, of fashion tycoon Aristos Constantinou, is worth £13m today, after having been sold in the late 1970s for £400,000.
The dereliction can be agonizing for people struggling to keep a roof above their heads in one of the world’s most expensive cities. One security guard working on the avenue said it was exasperating to see so many tens of thousands of square feet of property – enough to house dozens of people – falling apart.
Royals flushed with oil wealth from Nigeria and Saudi Arabia were among the first to come to this curving road near Hampstead Heath. Iranians fled here after the fall of the shah. Now, Chinese house hunters are following Russians and Kazakhs who have spent millions securing an address estate agents tell them is as world famous as the Champs Elysées and Rodeo Drive. Recently, two mansions have been on sale for £65m and £38m, promising endless Italian marble, leather-padded lifts and luxury panic rooms.
However, in the grounds of the empty mansions, stone fountains crumble and lawns have become bogs. Inside one, water drips through a huge crystal chandelier onto a thick carpet rotting under sections of collapsed ceiling. Moss grows through shattered bricks and mirrored tiles are scattered across a bathroom. The swimming pool is filled with a foot of brackish water and has flowers growing through its tiles. Wooden slats bulge away from the sauna.
But it is the wreck of The Towers, a grand mansion set among acres of hornbeams, oaks and limes, that is most dramatic, with its huge, high-ceiling halls occupied by pigeons and its walls turned bright green by algae as water pours through three storeys and plinks into a vast, empty, basement swimming pool. Unopened wooden crates marked “bullet- proof glass” reveal the security fears of the previous owners.
Today, very few people live on The Bishops Avenue full time. A security guard patrolling the pavement outside one mansion said that the owners were not there. Another, outside Royal Mansion, declined to say if anyone was home, while a member of staff at another mansion simply warned the Guardian about the guard dogs. Magdy Adib Ishak-Hannah, an Egyptian-born private healthcare mogul, whose personal wealth is £45m, said he was in the minority of permanent residents.
“It’s not a neighbourly place, where you can chat over the fence,” he said. “To be honest, I have never seen what my neighbours look like. Next door, a Saudi princess spent £35m on a new house and I’ve never seen her. There are about three houses that are lived in 24/7 and half of the properties are occupied three to six months a year. The other half, who knows if they come or not?”
The multimillion-pound wrecks are evidence of a property culture in which the world’s richest people see British property as investments. One Hyde Park, a block of apartments in Knightsbridge, is another example where more than half the flats are registered with the council as empty or second homes.
Nevertheless, the talk on the avenue is about building £5m apartments, instead of £50m mansions, in an effort to draw people back.
Anil Varma, a local property developer, has decided to rebuild one of the most valuable sites on the avenue as a collection of 20 apartments with a concierge, maid service, 25-metre pool, spa and cinema.
“If you build a big house and try and sell for £30m to £40m, it won’t sell,” he said. “Locals won’t buy and so you have to bring in overseas buyers.”
But the prospect of the avenue’s empty property being used to help solve the housing crisis remains distant. Andrew Harper, a local Conservative councillor, laughed when asked whether some of the derelict housing could become affordable homes. He said the land price would be prohibitive.
“Very wealthy people own property there,” he said. “Sometimes they live in them and sometimes they don’t.” | 2adv
|
“I got a Dyson vacuum cleaner but I don’t even know if I want it. I just picked it up,” Louise Haggerty, a 56-year-old hairdresser and waitress, said of her 1am trip to the Black Friday sales. “It was mental in there. It was crazy. It was absolutely disgusting, disgusting.”
Haggerty had ventured out to the 24-hour Sainsbury’s supermarket in Harringay, north-east London with a friend in the hope of snapping up a bargain flat-screen TV. “But so many people pushed in the queue we didn’t have a chance,” she said. “The poor woman who was second in the queue was pushed out by a crowd of youths. She didn’t get anything. People were behaving like animals – it was horrible,” she said. “I only saw two security guards.”
Frustrated with not being able to buy a Blaupunkt 40” TV reduced from £299.99 to £149.99, Haggerty rushed to pick up a Dyson Animal Vac, down from £319.99 to £159.99. “I don’t even know how much it costs; I don’t know even know if I’m going to buy it. I just wanted something,” she said. “There are lads in there with three, four, five tellies. It’s not fair.”
One of those lads was Andy Blackett, 30, an estate agent, who had two trolleys full of bargains. “I got two coffee makers, two tablets, two TVs and a stereo,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you the prices but I know they’re bargains.” But his mate Henry Fischer, a 19-year-old student, wasn’t as successful. “Someone snatched my telly from me – it’s cos I’m the smaller one.”
Blackett, Fischer and some mates had driven to Sainsbury’s at 12.45am after retreating from the “bedlam” of Tesco’s 24-hour Lea Valley supermarket, where the Black Friday sale started at midnight. “Tesco was scary so we came here instead,” Blackett said.
More than a dozen police officers attended the Tesco store on Glover Drive, Upper Edmonton, as scuffles broke out between eager and frustrated shoppers. Customers were seen tearing down cardboard hoardings put in place to hold back sale items until the stroke of midnight. Tesco delayed the sale of its most popular sale items – TVs – for almost an hour until police brought the situation under control. One officer was overheard criticizing the manager for failing to ensure adequate security and suggested the sale should be suspended altogether. The Tesco store is across the road from an IKEA furniture store that was the scene of riots when it opened with a midnight sale in 2005.
Police intervened at other stores, including Tesco in Willesden and Surrey Quays, just before the doors opened at midnight. Greater Manchester Police said at least two people had been arrested at Black Friday sales events already that morning. The force said on its Twitter feed: “Keep calm, people!” South Wales Police also reported receiving a number of calls from staff at Tesco stores after they became “concerned due to the volume of people who had turned up to sale events”.
One of the first purchasers of a flat-screen TV, when TV sales began just before 1am, was James Alled, 30, a businessman, who bought two and was already negotiating to sell one of them to someone further down the queue. “I bought them for £250. I’ll sell it to you for £350, £300 cash,” he said. Further back in the queue, Christine Ball, 62, wasn’t impressed. “I got here at 10.15pm and I’m further back now than when I got here,” she said. “None of that lot know what a queue is.”
Ball, who, like most of the shoppers, had not heard of the US-inspired Black Friday sales until now, said she had come out especially to buy her grandson a TV for Christmas. “Not one of those massive ones; just a normal one at £100 or so,” she said. In her basket was a pint of semi-skimmed and a loaf of bread. “Telly, milk and bread – the necessities,” she said.
Mel Mehmet, 23, had been to Black Friday sales in 2013 and had expected queues but said the atmosphere in Tesco scared her this time. “It’s crazy, really, having it at midnight – the police must have more important things to do at night than be called to sales. We’re going to PC World first thing – their sale starts at 8am.” | 2adv
|
Bogus allergy tests are convincing thousands of people to take unnecessary treatments and put themselves or their children on inadequate diets, sometimes resulting in malnutrition, a group of experts and charities has said. Allergies and food intolerances are soaring but confusion between the two, as well as the many misdiagnoses, are causing real harm, said the information organization Sense About Science, which has produced a guide in collaboration with allergy specialists and charities.
“It’s probably the biggest mess for science communication, where myths, misinterpreted studies and quackery collide with under- and over-diagnosis,” said Tracey Brown, director of Sense About Science. “The costs are huge – unnecessary actions for some and not enough action for those whose lives depend on it.”
Experts fear that restaurants and caterers are seeing so many people claiming they have allergies (which can be dangerous for the individual), when in fact they have a food intolerance (which is not), that they may not take all the precautions they should when serving a person who has a genuine allergy.
“It matters very much,” said Moira Austin of the Anaphylaxis Campaign. “If a caterer thinks somebody is just avoiding a food because they don’t want to get bloated, they may be less careful. There have been a number of fatalities where people have gone to a restaurant and alerted staff that they have an allergy to a particular food and the meal has been served up containing that allergen.”
The guide says most internet and shop-bought allergy tests have no scientific basis. They include a home-testing kit that looks for specific IgG (immunoglobulin G) antibodies against food stuffs in the blood. While these antibodies are part of the immune system’s response to infections, “the best medical evidence has shown elevated IgG levels do not suggest an allergy”, the guide says. “Results are frequently positive in individuals who do not have an allergy or a food intolerance.”
Also debunked is a test, a mixture of acupuncture and homeopathy, which attempts to measure electronic resistance across the skin while the child or adult holds the suspect food in their hand. Hair follicle testing is also pointless, the guide says. “Hair is not involved in allergic reactions so testing hair samples cannot provide any useful information on allergic status.” Nor should people be deceived into thinking allergies are caused by an “energy blockage” that can be diagnosed by muscle testing and cured by acupuncture.
“I commonly see children who’ve been put on to unnecessarily restricted diets because their parents assume, in good faith, that they have allergies to multiple foods on the basis of 'allergy tests' that have no scientific basis,” said Paul Seddon, a consultant paediatric allergist, on behalf of the UK Cochrane Centre, an independent organization that assesses medical evidence. “This needs to stop, which can only happen if we debunk these 'tests'.”
Another consultant paediatric allergist, Adam Fox from Guys and St Thomas’ Hospital in London, said: “I get a number of patients, and my colleagues likewise, who will come in having sent their hair off for analysis or having excluded a whole range of foods for their children. It is very difficult to untangle that. There are two challenges. Children need to be given proper diets but more of it is the unnecessary avoidance of things that aren’t harmful, which has a huge impact on the quality of life. A child who can’t eat wheat or drink milk can’t go to parties.”
The conviction that a child’s chronic lethargy or headaches or eczema are caused by an allergy takes a long time and many tests to prove or disprove. It is tempting to go to an alternative therapist who will do a single test and provide a quick, but inaccurate, answer.
Allergies are on the rise across developed countries. The percentages of children diagnosed with allergic rhinitis and eczema have both trebled in the last 30 years. While there is now better diagnosis, the rise in incidence is real, leading many more people to suspect allergies are the reason for their own or their children’s health issues. The guide lists a number of myths about the sources of allergies, from the suggestion that they are caused by E numbers in food colourings to “toxic overload” and fast food. | 2adv
|
They are the darkness seekers – and they are growing in number. On Black Fell, looking down on Northumberland’s beautiful Kielder Water reservoir, a group of people wait in a car park next to a strange wooden building with a minimalist design beamed down from the future. This is Kielder Observatory, the centre of Britain’s nascent astrotourism industry. And those waiting outside were the lucky ones. Many more had applied for a night of stargazing at the observatory but numbers are strictly limited.
Inside, next to a woodburner and under dimmed lights, the observatory’s founder and lead astronomer, Gary Fildes, a former bricklayer with Tarzan hair, delivers a pep talk to his colleagues and volunteers. The team discusses the prospect of seeing the northern lights but Fildes is doubtful. Instead, they decide to train their powerful telescopes on Jupiter and Venus and later to pick out stars such as Capella and Betelgeuse. An additional attraction is the appearance of the International Space Station.
“Remember,” Fildes tells his team, “it’s about interaction, it’s about entertainment, it’s about inspiring people.” He puts on some music. Pink Floyd, the Jam, the Pogues. “By 9.30, the sky is going to be sexy,” Fildes says. “It’s going to be epic.”
Fildes, 49, is at the forefront of the UK’s burgeoning astrotourism industry. The pivotal moment for Northumberland came in 2013 when the entire national park housing Hadrian’s Wall, along with Kielder Water and Forest Park, some 1,500 sq km, was awarded Dark Sky Park status, the only one in England. Dark Sky Parks are rare. The 2013 Star Count revealed that only 5% of the UK population can see more than 31 stars on a good night.
The Tucson, Arizona-based International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) confers the status only on places that take major steps to avoid light pollution. Recipients must also prove their night skies are sufficiently dark. In Northumberland Dark Sky Park, as the area was rebadged, it is so dark that Venus casts a shadow on the Earth.
Duncan Wise, visitor development officer for the Northumberland National Park Authority, helped to spearhead the campaign for dark-sky status after the Council for the Protection of Rural England found it was one of Britain’s most tranquil places. “We tend to look at landscape as everything up to the horizon,” Wise said. “But what about what’s above it?” Wise and others spent years drawing up their submission to the IDA, collecting reams of light readings and forming an alliance of local councils, parks’ bodies and community groups to produce an exterior lighting master plan that influences the construction of new developments in the area.
Their efforts have been vindicated. Many of the 1.5 million who visit Northumberland each year are now aware of its Dark Sky status. “We get a lot of people coming here to see the sky now,” says the man at the car-hire firm in Newcastle. “They come in autumn and winter, when it’s darkest. Good for the B&Bs as they get business all year round now.” Local hoteliers now issue guests with night-vision torches and put out deckchairs at night. Those who have acquired some knowledge of astronomy can receive a badge confirming that their hotels are “Dark Sky Friendly”.
Wise acknowledges that Northumberland needs to do more to capitalize on its scarce resource and believes the region needs a couple more observatories to ensure that visitors will see what they came for. A £14m national landscape discovery centre, which he describes as the north’s answer to the Eden Project, will have an observatory when it is completed in a couple of years.
Fildes has grand designs. He is planning Britain’s first “astrovillage”, one that would house the largest public observatory in the world and boast a 100-seat auditorium, a 100-seat planetarium, a one-metre aperture telescope, and radiomagnetic and solar telescopes. The multimillion-pound project would feature a hotel and draw in 100,000 people a year, four times the number currently able to use the observatory. Fildes is cryptic about his backers but believes the astrovillage will be a reality by 2018.
However, Northumberland faces competition. Galloway Forest Park in Scotland also has Dark Sky Park status. Since Exmoor was designated Europe’s first International Dark Sky Reserve – one notch below Dark Sky Park – in 2011, a range of local businesses offering stargazing breaks and safaris has sprung up. The UK will have to go some way to eclipse northern Chile, which boasts more than a dozen tourist observatories and has some of the clearest skies in the world. The Teide National Park in Tenerife is also becoming a major astrotourism destination.
So, what is driving the desire to look upwards? The media have helped. TV presenters like Brian Cox have attracted a new generation of stargazers. “Brian Cox has made astronomy accessible,” says Wise. “It’s no longer seen as the province of professors in studies with brass telescopes.” Technology has also played a part. Apps such as Stellarium now turn smartphones into pocket-size planetariums. Ultimately, though, Fildes believes people are starting to appreciate what lies above. “If you had to build a visitor attraction from scratch, what could be better than the universe?” | 2adv
|
The forests – and suburbs – of Europe are echoing with the growls, howls and silent padding of large predators, according to a new study that shows that brown bears, wolves and lynx are thriving on a crowded continent. Despite fears that large carnivores are doomed to extinction because of rising human populations and overconsumption, a study published in Science has found that large-predator populations are stable or rising in Europe.
Brown bears, wolves, the Eurasian lynx and wolverines are found in nearly one-third of mainland Europe (excluding Belarus, Ukraine and Russia), with most individuals living outside nature reserves, indicating that changing attitudes and landscape-scale conservation measures are successfully protecting species that have suffered massive persecution throughout human history.
Bears are the most abundant large carnivore in Europe, with around 17,000 individuals, alongside 12,000 wolves, 9,000 Eurasian lynx and 1,250 wolverines, which are restricted to northern parts of Scandinavia and Finland. Only Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Luxembourg in mainland Europe – like Britain – have no breeding populations of at least one large carnivore species. But the paper’s lead author and other conservationists said these animals’ surprising distribution across well-populated regions of Europe showed that even the British countryside could support big predators.
Guillaume Chapron from Sweden’s University of Agricultural Sciences and researchers across Europe found wolves, in some cases, living in suburban areas alongside up to 3,050 people per square kilometre – higher than the population density of Cambridge or Newcastle. On average in Europe, wolves live on land with a population density of 37 people per sq km, lynx in areas with a population density of 21 people per sq km and bears among 19 people per sq km. The population density of the Scottish Highlands is nine people per sq km.
“In order to have wolves, we don’t need to remove people from the landscape,” said Chapron. According to Chapron and his colleagues, the big-carnivore revival shows the success of a “land-sharing” model of conservation – in stark contrast to keeping predators and people apart by fencing off “wilderness” areas, as occurs in North America and Africa.
“I’m not saying it’s a peace-and-love story – coexistence often means conflict – but it’s important to manage that conflict, keep it at a low level and resolve the problems it causes. Wolves can be difficult neighbours,” said Chapron. “We shouldn’t be talking about people-predator conflict; we have conflict between people about predators. These animals are symbolic of difficult questions about how we should use the land.”
According to the researchers, this “land-sharing” approach could be applied elsewhere in the world. The reasons for its success in Europe include political stability, burgeoning populations of prey species such as wild deer and financial support for non-lethal livestock protection such as electric fences, which mean that farmers do not resort to shooting wild predators. Most crucial, said Chapron, has been the EU Habitats Directive, which has compelled member states to protect and revive rare species.
“Without the Habitats Directive, I don’t think we would have had this recovery,” he said. “It shows, if people are willing to protect nature and if political will is translated into strong legislation like the Habitats Directive, it’s possible to achieve results in wildlife protection.” The revival was welcomed by author and commentator George Monbiot, who is launching Rewilding Britain, a new charity to encourage the return of wild landscape and extinct species.
“It is great to see the upward trend continuing but Britain is completely anomalous – we’ve lost more of our large mammals than any country except for Ireland,” he said. “Apart from the accidental reintroduction of boar, we’ve done almost nothing, whereas, in much of the rest of Europe, we’ve got bears, lynx and wolves coming back. It’s a massive turnaround from the centuries of persecution.”
The survey found the Eurasian lynx living permanently in 11 population groups across 23 European countries, of which only five were native populations, indicating the success of reintroduction efforts. According to Monbiot, momentum is building for the reintroduction of the lynx into the Cairngorms in Scotland.
“If it works in the rest of Europe, there’s absolutely no reason why it can’t work in the UK,” he said, pointing out that bears and wolves are found within an hour of Rome. “There’s no demographic reason why we can’t have a similar return of wildlife in the UK.” | 2adv
|
The roof is plastic held up by a crooked tree trunk and the desks just a jumble of cast-off chairs, but the students inside the Chemin des Dunes school are studying with the same intensity you would find in a seminar at Oxford University. At stake is the hope of a new life in France.
“The French language is very difficult but we try hard. If we come every day, maybe we can touch our dreams,” says Kamal, a refugee from Sudan’s war-torn Darfur district who comes to three or four hours of classes every day. “It’s a good thing to keep your brain active.”
The 29-year-old electrical engineer is one of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of refugees living in the “jungle” camp outside Calais who have applied for asylum in France and are eager to learn the language of what they hope will be their new home.
Like many of his fellow students, he is frustrated that media coverage of the sprawling tent-village has focused only on those who use it as a staging post for risky nightly bids to sneak on board cross-Channel lorries or trains.
“I need to tell people in the UK, they think that everyone wants to go there. But there are a lot of people here who want to stay in France,” Kamal said.
France is already home to more than a quarter of a million refugees, according to United Nations data – the country has taken in more than twice as many as the UK, even though the countries have similar populations.
There are a further 56,000 asylum seekers waiting for their claim to a French safe haven to be processed – the second highest number in Europe – while, in the UK, there are 36,000.
While the applicants wait for an answer, though, France does not provide them with any financial support or allow them to work – and the slow process can take many months. The jungle camp offers a free meal a day and a plastic roof over their heads so many decide to endure the basic conditions for a few extra months, rather than potentially jeopardize their asylum bid by working illegally.
The idea for the school was first touted by some of that group at the start of the summer, when they were bored with sitting around waiting and nervous about starting a new life in France totally unable to communicate. It was a reality within weeks, opening on 11 July.
“We did it to reunite the 'brothers' and, at the same time, they can learn French,” said Zimarco Jones, the school’s Nigerian founder, who arrived in Calais in 2013 and is still waiting for his asylum claim to be processed. “Now, we need to build another one,” he says with a grin.
At its busiest, the tiny classroom holds 30 pupils, crammed into five rows of desks in front of a big green chalkboard and pictures of cartoon animals for each letter of the French alphabet. There are also classes in English, art and t’ai chi but the biggest draw is the French lessons, provided by volunteers from Calais and beyond.
“French is not as easy as English but, two weeks ago, I decided there was no way to get to the UK,” says George, another Darfur refugee and dedicated student. He wanted to cross the Channel because he speaks fluent English but, with language classes, he says he is happy to settle in France.
“Anywhere there is peace, I can stay, no problem,” he says, already waiting at the classroom more than half an hour before his teachers arrive.
He admits he doesn’t know much about France but says that the classes are slowly helping him understand the country as well as the language.
Many of the volunteers at the jungle school are local teachers who are giving up their summer holidays.
Jenny Flahaut, 33, who works at a children’s home, was inspired to volunteer after seeing an advertisement on Facebook. “I saw these people in Calais every day and I wanted to do something for them,” she said.
She is particularly frustrated by the depiction of migrants in the media and by politicians who have never visited the camp, most recently David Cameron, the British prime minister, who in a much criticized speech talked about “swarms” of people trying to reach the UK.
“They don’t know them and have a bad vision but they are not like that,” Flahaut said as she prepared for an afternoon lesson. “Most of them are very good people. They are welcoming and friendly. They want to improve their life and make it better, and learning is part of that.”
The teachers and Zimarco are focused, now, on setting up a separate classroom to serve around 200 women and two dozen children. The women are outnumbered around ten to one by men in the Calais encampment and most feel uncomfortable attending classes with male students they don’t know, the volunteers say.
When that is finished, the former hotel worker whose work getting the school off the ground is remembered in its unofficial name – everyone in the camp just calls it “Zimarco’s school” – has more dreams for making the camp a place to live, not just survive. He wants to set up a football team for migrants, he explains over an instant cappuccino in the immaculate tent he calls home, and even dreams of changing the camp name. He hates “the jungle” because he says it implies the residents aren’t people.
“We have a discotheque, a house, a mosque, a school, shops,” he says. “We are not animals.” | 2adv
|
When Larry Pizzi, a veteran bicycle industry executive, first heard about electric bikes nearly 20 years ago, he asked: “Why would anyone want to screw up a bike by putting a motor and batteries on it?”
It’s a question that still puzzles traditionalists. Bicycle shops have been slow to stock e-bikes, even though they have been around since the late 1990s. Sales in the US have been modest.
Pizzi, who is now CEO of Currie Technologies, the number one seller of e-bikes in the US, believes that’s about to change. Others in the industry agree. Familiar brands including Trek, Raleigh and Specialized all offer electric models and they’re betting the market is about to take off.
“We’re on the cusp of mainstream adoption,” Pizzi said. “There are more players entering the category, it seems, with every passing month.”
The US is an outlier when it comes to electric bikes. Nearly 32m e-bikes were sold in 2014, the vast majority in China, where they are primarily used for transportation. They are popular in much of Europe, too. They’re common in the Netherlands and Switzerland; German postal workers use them to get around and BMW offers one for about $3,000.
Electric bikes are different from motorcycles or mopeds, which rely on motorized power; they are bicycles that can be pedalled with – or without – assistance from an electric motor. Riding an e-bike feels like riding a conventional bike with a brisk tailwind; the motor helps you go faster or climb hills but it’s typically not the primary source of propulsion. Unlike mopeds, e-bicycles are usually permitted on bike paths and they can’t travel faster than 20mph.
There’s debate about how many electric bikes are sold in the US and there is no official count.
Estimates of annual sales range from about 50,000 to 175,000. That’s comparable to the number of electric cars sold in the US – 118,000 in 2014. Yet, while many people are aware of the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt and Tesla, few have heard of e-bike companies Currie, Pedego or ElectroBike.
To succeed, the electric bike business in the US must clear legal, cultural and financial hurdles. E-bikes are banned in some states, including New York, although the law isn’t strictly enforced. Traditionalists who own and staff bike shops don’t like putting motors on bicycles, citing, among other things, the added weight. Some e-bikes are close to 30kg.
E-bikes are also pricey. While low-end models sell for as little as $700, Court Rye, the founder and editor of ElectricBikeReview.com, a popular website, says riders should expect to pay at least $1,500 for a quality e-bike with a good battery. Top-of-the-line models cost more than twice that.
The companies that make and sell e-bikes say they can overcome those obstacles.
E-bike technology, particularly the batteries, is improving. “Batteries are getting smaller, they’re getting lighter, they’re getting more reliable and they are lasting longer,” says Don DiCostanza, the founder and CEO of Pedego, an electric bikemaker and retailer.
Companies like Bosch, the German electronics giant, and Shimano, the leading manufacturer of bicycle gears, are entering the business, which should help erode resistance from bike shops. “This has really caught the attention and the imagination of bicycle dealers,” says Currie’s Larry Pizzi. Pedego and startup ElectroBike aren’t waiting for the shops to come around; they are building their own stores. In the meantime, lobbying efforts are underway to permit the use of e-bikes everywhere.
Perhaps most importantly, as more cities build cycling infrastructure, including dedicated bike lanes, bicycle commuting has become more popular. As the US Census Bureau reported in 2014, the number of bike commuters grew from about 488,000 in 2000 to 786,000 in 2012. That’s a “larger percentage increase than that of any other commuting mode,” the report notes. Electric bikes make commuting more practical – and fun – by easing worry about hills, headwinds, fatigue and sweat.
Most of our customers are “ageing baby boomers who want to rekindle the experience they had as a kid,” says Pedego’s Don DiCostanza. “The main reason they stopped riding bikes was because of hills.” Pedego has opened nearly 60 stores in the US and it has sold bikes to tour companies in San Francisco and Washington, DC.
ElectroBike, which operates 30 stores in Mexico, opened its first American store in Venice Beach, California in the autumn of 2014 and hopes to grow to 25 US stores in a year. CEO Craig Anderson says: “We want to help reduce traffic, help reduce our carbon footprint and promote a healthy lifestyle.” He tells customers: “Ride this once and try not to smile.”
Startups like Pedego and ElectroBike will have to compete with big companies like Trek and Currie, which, in 2012, was acquired by the Accell Group, a public company based in the Netherlands that is Europe’s market leader in e-bikes. Accell owns the Raleigh brand, as well as Haibike, an award-winning German electric bike.
“Accell has great expectations about e-bikes in North America,” Currie’s Larry Pizzi says. “While baby boomers are still a very important segment, we’re finding that a lot of younger people are using e-bikes for transportation, instead of cars.”
Accell’s Yuba brand even sells a cargo bike with a stronger motor and rear rack. “You can carry two children,” says Pizzi. “You can carry 45kg of shopping. It’s a minivan alternative.” | 2adv
|
A Canadian man who sprang to fame after offering a free round-the-world trip to a woman with the same name as his ex-girlfriend has returned from the jaunt with his chosen namesake, although, to the dismay of those following the story, love did not blossom between the pair. Jordan Axani, a 28-year-old Toronto real-estate developer turned charity founder, made it back to Canada with Elizabeth Quinn Gallagher but said the pair had “forged a brother-sister-like relationship”.
Axani had made headlines in 2014 after offering an air ticket to any Canadian named Elizabeth Gallagher. He had booked a three-week vacation with his ex-girlfriend but, after they split up, he was unable to change the name on the flights.
That’s where Axani’s new travelmate, a 23-year-old student from Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, came in. Gallagher, who goes by the name Quinn, replied to a Reddit post Axani had submitted – along with other hopeful Elizabeth Gallaghers – and was selected. Gallagher had made it clear before the trip that she had a “pretty serious” boyfriend but that had not stopped romantics, and journalists, from hoping the globetrotters might fall for one another. Unfortunately, it was not to be.
“It wasn’t easy and it certainly wasn’t immediate. It took us about a week to really figure each other out,” Axani said. There was a certain amount of “natural stumbling” around “the dos and don’ts of travelling together” as the pair got to know each other.
“I’m going to be explicitly clear,” Axani said, shortly after the pair returned to Toronto. “This was never a romantic endeavour. It was strictly platonic. I do not think of Quinn in a romantic light in the least. There is no future for us romantically. She is a good friend. I think of her as a little sister but that will be it. And her feelings are entirely mutual in that regard.” It took work to establish that brother-sister, good-friend, no-future-for-us-romantically relationship, however. other. “At the end of it, we’d developed a really great rhythm of, one second, having really funny inside jokes, and, the next second, knowing when the other needed space.”
Although the pair failed to fall for one another, Axani said the trip, which took in Milan, Venice, Vienna, Prague, Khao Lak (in Thailand) and Hong Kong, was “fantastic”. A favourite place was Prague, Axani said, where they “had the largest groundswell of people reaching out”.
“Over the course of two and a half days, I think we met about two dozen people. So that’s a lot of stories, that’s a lot of individuals and that’s a lot of love for their home city of Prague.”
People were following the pair on Twitter and Instagram, Axani said, and they were even recognized in the street in Hong Kong. “It was a real adventure. We had a blast. We learned a lot about ourselves and about each other. I think, coming out of it, I can’t imagine it going much better than it did.”
Axani made it back to Toronto at 3am on Monday, 12 January, when the holiday came to an abrupt halt. He went straight into a board meeting with fellow board members at his charity, A Ticket Forward. Axani started the non-profit organization after his Reddit post went viral and intends to offer round-the-world-trips to survivors of abuse, cancer and war.
Alongside that, Axani is also in talks to spin his story into a television show or film, although he would not comment on what form those productions might take. “Suffice to say there’s been significant interest from many production companies. We’re well advanced.” In terms of his love life, Axani said he was not looking for his next Elizabeth Gallagher just yet. “I’m not looking for anything, per se, but life happens and we’ll see,” he said. “As always, life’s a journey.” | 2adv
|
When two islanders spotted a small fibreglass boat washed up on a remote Pacific atoll, they decided to take a closer look. What they found inside was a tale of adventure and unlikely survival to rival the blockbuster book and film Life of Pi: an emaciated man with long hair and a beard, who claimed to have been drifting for 16 months after setting out from Mexico, more than 12,500km away.
The man, dressed only in a ragged pair of underpants, told his rescuers that he had been adrift in the 7.3-metre fibreglass boat, whose engines were missing their propellers, since he left Mexico for El Salvador in September 2012. A companion had died at sea several months earlier, he said.
“His condition isn’t good, but he’s getting better,” said Ola Fjeldstad, a Norwegian anthropology student doing research on the isolated Ebon Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands archipelago. The man had said his name was José Ivan and he had indicated that he survived by catching turtles and birds with his bare hands, but, because he spoke only Spanish, further details were sketchy. There was no fishing equipment on the boat, but a turtle was inside when it washed up. “The boat is really scratched up and looks like it has been in the water for a long time,” Fjeldstad told reporters.
According to the researcher, the islanders who found the man took him to the main island in the atoll – which is so remote it has only one phone line and no internet – to meet the mayor, Ione de Brum, who contacted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Majuro, the Marshall Islands capital. Officials at the ministry said that they were awaiting more details and expected the man to be taken to the capital.
The government airline’s only plane that can land at Ebon is currently undergoing maintenance and is not expected to return to service for several days. Officials are considering sending a boat to pick up the castaway. “He’s staying at the local council house and a family is feeding him,” said Fjeldstad, who added that the man had a basic health check and was found to have low blood pressure, but did not appear to have any life-threatening conditions and was able to walk with the aid of men on the island. “We’ve been giving him a lot of water and he’s gaining strength.”
Fraser Christian, who teaches maritime survival courses at his Coastal Survival School in Dorset, said the man’s story, if true, would be remarkable but far from unique. It was entirely possible to catch turtles or small fish by hand, he said, since “they are inquisitive and they will approach a small boat to shelter underneath it”. Christian advises clients who find themselves forced to eat turtles to start with their eyes – “lots of fluid” – then move on to the blood.
he major problems the man would have faced were exposure and dehydration. “The basic rule is: no water, no food. You need water to digest protein. If you have no fresh water and it doesn’t rain for a few days, so you can’t collect rainwater, you have basically had it.” Individual physiology also plays a part, he said, with some people better suited to survival than others. “The mental thing is key and that’s often down to people’s situation in life and how used they are to dealing mentally with hardship.”
Stories of survival in the vast Pacific Ocean are not uncommon. In 2006, three Mexicans made international headlines when they were discovered drifting, also in a small fibreglass boat near the Marshall Islands. They claimed to have survived for nine months at sea on a diet of rainwater, raw fish and seabirds, with their hope kept alive by reading the Bible. But Cliff Downing, who teaches sea survival to sailors, said he was sceptical about the latest tale. “It just doesn’t sound right to me. There are 1,001 hazards that would make his survival for so long very unlikely. One would want to know a lot more.”
More castaways: Poon Lim, a Chinese sailor from a British ship sunk by a German submarine in 1942, survived 133 days on a wooden raft floating in the South Atlantic before being rescued by Brazilian fishermen. In 1971, experienced Scottish sailor Dougal Robertson and his family were sailing to the Galápagos Islands from Panama when their boat was sunk by killer whales. They survived 38 days on a lifeboat before being rescued by a passing fishing trawler.
In 2006, three Mexican fishermen were discovered drifting in a small boat near the Marshall Islands, nine months after setting out on a shark-fishing expedition. They apparently survived on a diet of rainwater, raw fish and seabirds. Before being rescued by the US coastguard, the men stayed alive by eating tuna. A Panamanian fisherman sued Princess Cruises in 2012 after one of their ships ignored cries for help from him and two companions who were stranded in their broken boat. He survived 28 days adrift, but his friends both died of thirst. | 2adv
|
Every morning, before the temperatures in India’s capital start to rise, a handful of old friends gather. On the parched grass not far from the India Gate monument at the centre of Delhi, they stretch, breathe and meditate.
“It is the only healthy way to start the day. Much better than an egg or a sandwich or a cup of tea,” said Arvind Singh at 6.15am as he did his breathing exercises on a bench.
Singh, a 42-year-old salesman, and his friends are far from alone. All across India, in the overcrowded cities, on whatever green space is left, similar scenes are being played out.
On 21 June – the new International Day of Yoga – Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, hopes the world will join in. The grass near India Gate will be transformed into the venue for what, it is hoped, will be the biggest single yoga session ever held, with up to 45,000 people running through a 35-minute routine.
The participants will include 64-year-old Modi, most of his government and, they hope, a range of celebrities. Officials have been sent to round up volunteers from scores of countries to reinforce the international credentials of the ancient Indian practice.
Getting Indians, and others, stretching has emerged as something of a focus for Modi, who led his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to a landslide election victory in 2014. In May 2015, schools were directed to make sure students attended yoga events timed to coincide with the big demonstration in Delhi, even though it is being held on a Sunday.
Officials have already signalled the introduction of compulsory yoga for India’s famously out-of-shape police officers and said that daily yoga lessons would be offered free to three million civil servants and their families. Air India, the national carrier, has also said it will introduce yoga for trainee pilots. More controversially, senior politicians in India have suggested more widespread practice of yoga could bring down soaring levels of sexual violence in the country.
Modi, an ascetic who is a committed vegetarian and an enthusiastic yoga practitioner himself, suggested an international yoga day when speaking to the United Nations on a visit to New York in 2014.
“Yoga is an invaluable gift of India’s ancient tradition. It embodies unity of mind and body, thought and action, restraint and fulfilment, harmony between man and nature, a holistic approach to health and wellbeing. It is not about exercise but discovering the sense of oneness with yourself, the world and nature,” Modi said at the time, adding that yoga could help in tackling climate change.
The discipline is between 3,000 and 6,000 years old and originated somewhere on the Indian subcontinent, possibly among religious ascetics. Its meditative practices, as well as its physical exercises, have long been associated with local religious traditions including Buddhism and Jainism, as well as the Hinduism practised by 80% of Indians.
Modi, who started his career as an organizer for a hardline Hindu nationalist organization, has been previously criticized for promoting a view of Indian culture that has little place for other traditions. One commentator called the event on 21 June “a mix of cultural nationalism, commercialization and subtle coercion”.
Novelist Ajaz Ashraf wrote on India’s Scroll website: “Underlying it is the hope of bringing into the BJP tent the modern-day gurus and their teeming followers, who largely constitute the urban middle classes.”
Others, however, point to a recent US court ruling that said yoga was not inevitably linked to faith. A court in California ruled that: “While the practice of yoga may be religious in some contexts, yoga classes as taught in the [San Diego] district are, as the trial court determined, 'devoid of any religious, mystical or spiritual trappings.'” This came after two parents claimed yoga in schools promoted Hinduism and inhibited Christianity.
Amish Tripathi, the author of best-selling novels set 4,000 years ago in India that retell stories from Hindu mythology, said characters in his books practise yoga.
“In ancient India, it was part of daily life, both the physical and the mental aspects. Every culture has gifted something to the world and this is our gift,” Tripathi said.
Suneel Singh, a guru in south Delhi, agreed that yoga did not belong to any one religion: “Is t’ai chi just Chinese? Is football just English? Same with yoga. It is a complete package for everybody’s body and a cheap way to keep you hale and hearty.” | 2adv
|
The bestselling title on Amazon in the US is not Harper Lee’s hugely anticipated second novel, Go Set a Watchman, nor George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series, nor even Zoella’s much-mocked but much-bought young adult hit, Girl Online . Instead, Scottish illustrator Johanna Basford is topping the charts with her colouring books for adults, taking top spots on Amazon.com’s bestseller lists.
Basford’s intricately drawn pictures of flora and fauna in Secret Garden have sold 1.4 million copies worldwide to date, with the newly released follow-up Enchanted Forest selling just under 226,000 copies already. They have drawn fans from Zooey Deschanel, who shared a link about the book with her Facebook followers, to the South Korean pop star Kim Ki-Bum, who posted an image on Instagram for his 1.6 million followers.
“It’s been crazy. The last few weeks since Enchanted Forest came out have been utter madness, but fantastic madness,” said Eleanor Blatherwick, head of sales and marketing at the books’ publisher, small British press Laurence King. “We knew the books would be beautiful but we didn’t realize it would be such a phenomenal success.”
And it is not just Basford who is reaping the benefits of the hordes of adults who, it turns out, just wanted something to colour in. In the UK, Richard Merritt’s Art Therapy Colouring Book sits in fourth spot on Amazon’s bestseller lists, Millie Marotta’s Animal Kingdom – detailed pictures of animals to colour – sits in seventh and a mindfulness colouring book sits in ninth. Basford’s titles are in second and eighth place – that’s half of Amazon.co.uk’s top ten taken up by colouring books for adults.
At independent UK publisher Michael O’Mara, which has sold almost 340,000 adult colouring books to date, Head of Publicity, Marketing and Online, Ana McLaughlin, attributes the craze to the way the category has been reimagined as a means of relaxation. “The first one we did was in 2012, Creative Colouring for Grown-Ups . It sold strongly and reprinted but it was in 2014 that it all really mushroomed with Art Therapy . It really took off for us – selling the anti-stress angle gave people permission to enjoy something they might have felt was quite childish,” she said.
The Mindfulness Colouring Book pushes this perspective particularly strongly, with its publisher telling readers that it is “filled with templates for exquisite scenes and intricate, sophisticated patterns, prompting you to meditate on your artwork as you mindfully and creatively fill these pages with colour ”, and urging potential colourers to “take a few minutes out of your day, wherever you are, and colour your way to peace and calm ”.
“I think it is really relaxing to do something analogue, to unplug,” said Basford. “And it’s creative. For many people, a blank sheet is very daunting; with a colouring book, you just need to bring the colour. Also, there’s a bit of nostalgia there. So many people have said to me that they used to do secret colouring in when their kids were in bed. Now, it is socially acceptable; it’s a category of its own. These are books for adults. The art in my books is super intricate.”
The illustrator, who lives in Aberdeenshire, has been astonished at the reaction since she released Secret Garden in 2013. “I had a kids’ book commissioned and I told them I would like to do one for grown-ups. It really wasn’t a trend then. I drew up the first story and they thought, ‘Let’s go for it’. I was thinking simply that people like me would like to do it. My intention was just to make a book I would like to have. So it’s been a real surprise to see the category bloom.”
She is currently working on a third book and Michael O’Mara, which already has 17 adult colouring books in circulation, will increase this to 22 by May, with forthcoming titles including The Classic Comic Colouring Book and The Typography Colouring Book. “It’s just an enormous trend and shows no signs of slowing down,” said McLaughlin, adding that those who buy the titles are keen to display their ability to stay within the lines to the world at large.
“The pictures are all over Twitter and Instagram. People are really proud of them – they are so intricate,” she said. “You don’t have to have any artistic talent but what you create is unique. People send us pictures of them, framed and laminated. The appetite is simply enormous. I reckon people are taking their kids’ pictures off the fridge and replacing them with their own.” | 2adv
|
He had the tastes of a typical millionaire. He owned a gold and silver Rolex and a fleet of expensive cars. He liked to dabble in modern art. But, although this Chinese businessman had several companies and a palatial villa in the Madrid suburbs, he had almost no money in the bank, a detail that piqued the interest of Spanish authorities.
Gao Ping, who had lived most of his adult life in Spain, had a monopoly on supplies to 4,000 Chinese bazaars across the Mediterranean country. But, authorities suspected he was not paying taxes on the clothes, furniture and other goods he was importing from China.
When police swooped on his warehouses in 2012 they found piles of cash: wads of €100, €200 and €500 notes were wrapped in elastic bands. Around €12m was wheeled away in trolleys, the largest ever cash seizure by Spanish police. The gang, with Gao the alleged ringleader, stands accused of laundering up to €300m a year, as well as selling counterfeit goods and toys with fake safety marks. The government prosecutor said Gao’s illegal business was so big it was damaging the competitiveness of Spain. Gao is on bail; the case has not yet come to trial.
Law enforcement officials have long had concerns about €500 notes. Small and easy to transport relative to their value, they are the payment method of choice for tax dodgers, money launderers and drug barons. The sum of €1m in €500 notes fits easily into a small laptop bag, where the same amount in €50 notes would require a small suitcase. Cash mules have been known to fold the notes into plastic pellets and swallow them. A less dangerous method of concealment is to stuff the banknotes into a car chassis.
The UK stopped distribution of the €500 note in 2010 on the grounds that demand for it was “almost entirely for criminal purposes ”. In 2009, Italy’s 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 scrapped its $1,000 note in 2000 on the advice of law enforcement officers.
In an age of electronic payment systems and contactless cards, more are questioning whether printing these notes can be justified. Peter Sands, the former head of Standard Chartered Bank, has called for the abolition 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 argued it was time to get rid of high-value notes that make life easier for “bad guys” pursuing tax evasion, financial crime, terrorist finance and corruption. Although criminals would switch to smaller- denomination bills, or gold or diamonds, these substitutes are bulkier and more traceable, making it more likely they will get caught, he said.
At a conference on terrorist financing in London, the Head of Europol, Rob Wainwright, called on the European Central Bank (ECB) to look at whether it “should continue to produce and circulate these notes that make it easier for criminals and terrorists to hide their business and to fund illegal activities”. According to Europol, the purple €500 note accounts for 30% of the value of all the euro notes in circulation, 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. Several European countries favoured high- value banknotes. “It is definitely a preference that has been there for a long time,” says Pia Hüttl, an affiliate fellow at the Bruegel thinktank. “The preference is based on the idea that cash has a lower cost and is accepted everywhere.”
Cash remains king in Germany and Austria, where more than half of all transactions are made with paper money and coins. The former president of Germany’s constitutional court, Hans-Jürgen Papier, told Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that restrictions on cash were at odds with individual freedom, while tabloid newspaper Bild has launched a petition in defence of paper money, including the €500 note – “hands off my cash ”.
Law enforcement authorities are less convinced, amid a steady stream of reports of suspicious bundles of cash. In one case that has caught the attention of police, two men walked into a bank and tried to deposit €200,000 of torn and muddy €500 notes. In the same week, €1.3m in €500 notes was found stuffed in the false bottom of suitcase. But, a suspicion of criminality is not enough to keep people in custody. “Our frustration from a law enforcement perspective is that, in many jurisdictions, it is impossible to provide sufficient evidence to satisfy judicial authorities of a link between suspicious cash detections and criminality,” says Jennifer MacLeod, a specialist in Europol’s financial intelligence group. “The search for these links is complicated further through time constraints and fragmented cooperation and information exchange.”
The agency would like to see central banks take more responsibility for the “striking anomalies” in the use of €500 notes. Luxembourg, for example, issued more than twice its annual GDP in banknotes in 2013 alone, despite being one of the most cash-averse countries in Europe. Europol asked Luxembourg’s central bank to explain. “The reply we had from Luxembourg is that they simply issue the notes requested and have no explanation for the reasons behind the demand,” MacLeod says. “I find it surprising that a central bank does not consider itself to have a responsibility in this area.”
This could be changing. Mario Draghi, the head of the ECB, has said he is determined that the income the bank generates from issuing the notes should not be “a comfort for criminals”. Other members of the ECB’s top team, such as Yves Mersch, contend there is no evidence about the criminal uses of the €500 note. But, amid heightened fears about terrorism, this argument may no longer cut any ice. EU finance ministers have called on policymakers to explore “appropriate restrictions” on high-value notes and report back by 1 May 2016. | 2adv
|
Young Cubans are flocking to use the first known free, open-access internet service in the communist island nation, which has been made possible by one of Cuba’s most famous artists. A modest cultural centre in the capital city, Havana, has suddenly become a rare source of free wi-fi. The internationally renowned Cuban artist Kcho is providing the service. Perhaps more surprisingly, his spokesman said the move had been approved by the state-owned telecommunications utility, Etecsa.
The service is reportedly very slow, especially when the centre gets crowded. But, in a country where only an estimated 5% of the population has unrestricted access to the internet, a facility that is both free of charge and free of restrictions is being hailed as an unprecedented boon.
The chance to click on international news websites, communicate with friends and family overseas and use sites like Facebook and Twitter has created a massive buzz. “I come as often as I can,” said Adonis Ortiz, 20, while video-chatting with his father, who lives in the US and whom he has not seen in nine years.
The gradual loosening of the long diplomatic and trade freeze between the US and Cuba is expected to bring American tech giants such as Google and Apple into the Cuban market as soon as they are permitted. In the meantime, Cuba has installed a high-speed, fibre-optic cable under the sea from Venezuela and internet users have some access to Chinese equipment.
Another estimate, that a quarter of Cubans have access to the internet – still one of the lowest penetration rates in the Western Hemisphere – in fact measures residents who use a restricted domestic intranet featuring only certain websites and limited email.
Kcho has offered the public admission to his own personal internet connection. But, instead of this being the counter-revolutionary, or post-revolutionary, move of a free-market rebel, Kcho may have been selected as the acceptable face of a regime acquiescing to the inevitable lure of the internet.
Kcho, who has close ties to the Cuban government, announced that his actions had been approved by the Ministry of Culture. The artist said he wanted to encourage Cubans to familiarize themselves with the internet. “It’s only possible through the will to do it and absorb the costs,” Kcho told the Associated Press. “It is expensive but the benefit is tremendous. I have something that is great and powerful. I can share it and I am doing so.”
Kcho’s real name is Alexis Leiva Machado.
He gained international fame for his painting, sculpture and drawings after winning the grand prize at a prominent art biennial in South Korea. He is currently preparing for the Havana biennial in May. Born on one of Cuba’s outlying islands, he is known for contemporary art with rustic, seaside and patriotic themes and imagery.
In the centre’s courtyard, tech-savvy millennials lounge throughout the day in wicker chairs beneath a white canopy or just outside when it’s packed, tapping away on laptops and tablets or glued to their smartphones.
Cuba has some of the lowest connectivity rates on the planet, with dial-up accounts closely restricted and at-home broadband almost unheard of except in the case of foreigners who pay hundreds of dollars a month for the service in a country where the average salary is between $17 and $20 a month. Kcho is estimated to be paying $900 a month to provide the free wi-fi.
Since 2013, Cuban authorities have opened hundreds of internet salons, where an hour online costs $4.50, at speeds far lower than those at Kcho’s studio of around 2mbps. A 2014 report by Akamai Technologies found average internet connectivity speeds to be around 10.5mbps in the US and 23.6mbps in world-leading South Korea. Globally, the average was about 3.9mbps.
With dozens of users at any given time, the signal strength of Kcho’s wi-fi gets diluted. One user said he sometimes swings by in the middle of the night, when nobody else is around, and finds it to be unbelievably fast. | 2adv
|
Until the last, David Bowie, who has died of cancer, was still capable of springing surprises. His latest album, Blackstar, appeared on his 69th birthday on 8 January 2016 and proved that his gift for making dramatic statements as well as challenging, disturbing music hadn’t deserted him.
Throughout the 1970s, Bowie was a trailblazer of musical trends and pop fashion. Having been a late-60s mime and cabaret entertainer, he evolved into a singer-songwriter, a pioneer of glam-rock, then veered into what he called “plastic soul”, before moving to Berlin to create innovative electronic music. His capacity for mixing brilliant changes of sound and image underpinned by a genuine intellectual curiosity is rivalled by few in pop history.
Bowie was born David Robert Jones in south London. In 1953, the family moved to Kent, where David showed aptitude in singing and playing the recorder. Later, he studied art, music and design. In 1961, David’s mother bought him a plastic saxophone, introducing him to an instrument which would become a recurring ingredient in his music.
At 15, David formed his first band, the Kon-rads. It was clear that David’s talents and ambition dictated that he should go solo. David adopted the name Bowie to avoid confusion with Davy Jones of the Monkees.
Bowie’s first album, released in June 1967, was titled simply David Bowie . In July 1969, Bowie released Space Oddity, the song that would give him his initial commercial breakthrough. Timed to coincide with the Apollo 11 moon landing, it was a top five UK hit.
In March 1970, Bowie married art student, Angela Barnett. Artistically, Bowie was powering ahead. The Man Who Sold the World was released in the US in late 1970 and in the UK the following year, and with its daring songwriting and broody, hard-rock sound, it was the first album to do full justice to his writing and performing gifts. The album’s themes included immortality, insanity, murder and mysticism, evidence that Bowie was a songwriter who was thinking way beyond pop’s usual boundaries.
He followed it with 1972’s Hunky Dory, a mix of wordy, elaborate songwriting. It was an excellent collection that met with only moderate success but that all changed with The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars later that year.
This time, Bowie emerged as a fully fledged science-fiction character – an intergalactic glam-rock star visiting a doomed planet Earth – and the album effectively wrote the script for his own stardom. The hit single Starman brought instant success for the album, while Bowie’s ravishing stage costumes and provocative performances triggered fan enthusiasm unseen since Beatlemania.
Everything Bowie touched turned to gold. He had his first UK number 1 album with Aladdin Sane (1973), which generated the hit singles The Jean Genie and Drive-in Saturday . But Bowie was already planning fresh career moves.
His increasing interest in funk and soul music came to the fore on the deliciously listenable Young Americans (1975), which gave him a US chart-topper with Fame (featuring John Lennon as a guest vocalist).
Station to Station (1976) introduced a new persona, the Thin White Duke, which Bowie had carried over from his headlining performance as a melancholy space traveller in Nicolas Roeg’s film The Man Who Fell to Earth.
Bowie’s relationship with his wife had been disintegrating under the pressures of success and the couple divorced in 1980. This was a year of further creative triumph, bringing a fine album, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), and its spin- off chart-topping single, Ashes to Ashes, followed by Bowie’s well-received stint as John Merrick in The Elephant Man on the Broadway stage. He achieved a number 1 single with his 1981 partnership with Queen, Under Pressure while becoming increasingly involved in crossovers between different media. He appeared in the German movie Christiane F (1981) and wrote music for the soundtrack. He had another chart hit with Cat People (Putting Out Fire) from Paul Schrader’s movie Cat People (1982). Bowie continued to make progress as a screen actor with appearances in The Hunger and the second world war drama Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, both released in 1983.
Musically, this was the year in which he put his energy into an all-out commercial onslaught with the album Let’s Dance and follow-up concerts. Let’s Dance moulded Bowie into a crowd-friendly global rock star, with the album and its singles Let’s Dance, China Girl and Modern Love all becoming huge international hits.
This was the heyday of MTV and Bowie’s knack for eye-catching videos fuelled this commercial splurge, while the six-month Serious Moonlight tour drew massive crowds. It was to be the most commercially successful period of his career. His profile gained another boost from his appearance at the 1985 Live Aid famine relief concert at Wembley Stadium, where he was one of the standout performers. In addition, he teamed up with Mick Jagger to record the fundraising single Dancing in the Street, which sped to number 1. A few days after his appearance at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert at Wembley Stadium in April 1992, Bowie married the Somalian model Iman and the couple bought a home in New York. This new start in his private life coincided with a search for fresh musical inspiration.
For the album Black Tie White Noise (1993), he sprinkled elements of soul, electronica and hip hop into the mix. It topped the UK album chart and yielded a top 10 single, Jump They Say . New media and technology influenced his recordings, too. His 1999 album Hours … was based around music he had written for a computer game called Omikron, in which Bowie and Iman appeared as characters. The birth of Bowie and Iman’s daughter, Alexandria, followed in August 2000.
As an adopted New Yorker, Bowie was the opening act at the Concert for New York City in October 2001, where he joined Paul McCartney, Jon Bon Jovi, Billy Joel, the Who and Elton John in a benefit show six weeks after the 9/11 attacks. Bowie was back in the studio the following year for Reality . However, in the midst of his Reality tour in 2004, Bowie was stricken with chest pains while performing in Germany and underwent emergency surgery in Hamburg to clear a blocked artery.
He took the medical emergency as a warning and reduced the pace of his activities. In 2006, he announced he would be taking a year off from touring and recording. In February that year, he was given a Grammy lifetime achievement award, having been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.
The Next Day (2013) was his first album of new material in a decade. It contained the single Where Are We Now?, which gave him his first UK top 10 hit since 1993. The album topped charts in Britain and around the world. In 2014, Bowie was given the Brit Award for Best British Male, making him the oldest British recipient in the awards’ history. He is survived by Iman, their daughter, Alexandria, his stepdaughter, Zulekha, and his son, Duncan, from his first marriage. | 2adv
|
David Mitchell, a regular contender for the Man Booker literary prize, is used to his novels being picked over by the critics. So, it’s something of a relief, says the British author, that his latest work – completed at 1am one Tuesday morning before a car arrived to take him to the airport to catch a flight to Norway – won’t be seen by anyone until 2114.
Mitchell is the second contributor to the Scottish artist Katie Paterson’s Future Library project, for which 1,000 trees were planted in 2014 in Oslo’s Nordmarka forest. Starting with Margaret Atwood, who handed over the manuscript of a text called Scribbler Moon in 2015, each year for the next 100 years, an author will deliver a piece of writing that will only be read in 2114, when the trees are chopped down to make paper on which the 100 texts will be printed.
Each author – their names revealed year by year and chosen by a panel of experts and Paterson, while she is alive – will make the trek to the spot in the forest high above Oslo, where they will surrender their manuscripts in a short ceremony.
“It’s a little glimmer of hope in a season of highly depressing news cycles, which affirms we are in with a chance of civilization in a hundred years,” said Mitchell. “Everything is telling us that we’re doomed but the Future Library is a candidate on the ballot paper for possible futures. It brings hope that we are more resilient than we think: that we will be here, that there will be trees, that there will be books and readers, and civilization.”
Mitchell said he found writing the book “quite liberating because I won’t be around to take the consequences of this being good or bad ... But, I’m sandwiched between Margaret Atwood and no doubt some other brilliant writer. So, it better be good. What a historic fool of epochal proportions I’d look if they opened it in 2114 and it wasn’t any good.”
Usually, says Mitchell, who was shortlisted for the Man Booker for his novels number9dream and Cloud Atlas, he “polishes and polishes” his writing. “Actually, I over-polish. But, this was very different – I wrote up to the wire. So, the first two-thirds were polished and the final third I didn’t have time. And, it was a liberation.”
Future Library creator, Paterson, whose past works have involved her mapping dead stars and compiling a slide archive of the history of darkness through the ages, asked the writers to tackle “the theme of imagination and time, which they can take in so many directions”. Mitchell revealed only the name of the manuscript, From Me Flows What You Call Time, during a ceremony in the Norwegian woods next to where Paterson’s 1,000 trees are planted. The title is taken from a piece of music by Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu but, other than admitting that “it’s somewhat more substantial a thing than I was expecting”, the author would say nothing.
Handing over his text in the forest, sheltered from the intermittent rain by an umbrella and amid the foot-high shoots of 1,000 pine trees, Mitchell read his damp audience of children and adults a short story and William Wordsworth’s A slumber did my spirit seal. Its ending, “Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course / With rocks, and stones, and trees”, felt appropriate in this small section of forest, carpeted with blueberry bushes, which will be carefully tended to for the next 98 years before it is turned into Future Library’s manuscripts.
“How vain to suppose the scribblings of little old me will be of enduring interest to future generations. Yet, how low-key and understated, to slave over a manuscript that nobody will ever pat you on the back for and say: ‘Nice one’ or ‘God, I loved the bit where she did that and he did this... ’” Mitchell wrote in a piece for the Future Library.
His manuscript, now delivered, will be sealed and placed alongside Atwood’s in a wood-lined room in Oslo’s new public library, which will open in 2019. Watched over by a trust of experts until it is finally printed, it is now, says the novelist, “as gone from me as a coin dropped in a river”. | 2adv
|
Some cities have pigeons. Lima has black vultures or gallinazos. They circle in groups overhead and perch on the city’s most emblematic buildings – the decrepit, colonial-era churches and crumbling eighteenth-century piles in the city centre.
In many ways, with their wrinkly heads and beady eyes, they remind Lima residents of the side of their city they would rather ignore: the neglect, poverty and filth. But these carrion-eaters’ natural affinity for dead and decaying things is being turned into a virtue. Environmental authorities are giving these much- maligned birds a PR makeover, kitting them out with GoPro action video cameras and GPS trackers, and giving them a new mission in the fight against fly-tipping and illegal dumping. Samuel is one of the project’s ten certified disease- free Coragyps atratus that have been charged with doing what they do best: sniffing out rubbish. Fitted with his tracker, he is set free above the city, where he identifies clandestine dumps and records the GPS coordinates ona live map.
His trainer at Lima’s Huachipa Zoo, Alfredo Correa, beams with admiration. “They can eat dead animals because their metabolism protects them from viruses and bacteria,” he says. “They’ve got some of the strongest gut flora in the natural world.” The effort is a collaboration between USAID and the Peruvian Environment Ministry to tackle Lima’s rubbish problem.
Samuel’s other airborne companions have been given more evocative names: Capitan Huggin, Capitan Fenix (named after the mythological creature that rises from the ashes) and Capitana Aella ( “Whirlwind”). A tongue- in-cheek video adds a melodramatic voiceover, in which the noble” carthatidae lineage – the vultures” are pitted against pestilence and disease, while “humanity is placidly ignoring the danger”. The project makes a serious point. With just four landfills in a city of nearly ten million inhabitants, there are countless illegal dumps. A fifth of the rubbish ends up there, according to the Environment Ministry. Run-off from the waste contaminates Lima’s main water source, the Rimac river, as well as the Chillon and Lurin rivers, which flow into the Bay of Lima.
The environmental supervision agency, OEFA, says that three poorer neighbourhoods, despite having only 12% of Lima’s population, have by far the most fly-tipped rubbish: Villa Maria del Triunfo (39.4%), Villa El Salvador (25.3%) and El Agustino (18.3%). The problem, in part, is unpaid taxes. Many residents, especially in the barrios , just don’t pay. That means some of the 43 district municipalities lack the resources for basic services such as rubbish collection.
It also means nobody is necessarily going to clean up where the vultures identify illegal rubbish. “We share the vulture’s GPS coordinates with the municipalities,” says Javier Hernandez, the project director. “It’s their job to collect the rubbish and to try and change the habits of their residents.”
The project aims to encourage citizens to be “vultures on the ground ”: to report fly-tipping, cut back on their own waste and recycle. Some residents are responding, posting photos of illicit dumps on the Twitter feed and Facebook page. The idea was hatched at the 2014 United Nations Climate Change Conference, hosted in Lima. “We were looking for ways to involve not just the authorities but also citizens to generate environmental awareness,” Hernandez says. Artist Cristina Planas had placed huge, sculpted vulture heads on top of 25 dead palm trees in a wetland reserve in the south of the city. Rich residents hated it as an ugly imposition but Planas invited citizens to “adopt a vulture” in support of conservation and recycling.
“We are a little scared of the vulture’s appearance,” she said. “But in reality, he is out there sacrificing himself for us. He is out there recycling, in the last place we threw out our rubbish.” | 2adv
|
Europe is to become the first place in the world to force 'real-world' emissions tests on car makers, opening up a new front in the fight to tackle air pollution. New regulations will introduce the tests to reveal what cars’ emissions are like when driving on roads and in traffic rather than in ideal, laboratory-like conditions, as is currently the case.
Green lit by European Commission Vice President, Frans Timmermans, the tests are designed to enforce a limit of 80mg of nitrogen oxide per kilometre, a level met by only one car out of 16, according to researchers. Other countries, such as China and Korea, which are also considering real-world emissions tests, will be watching what happens next closely.
Pollutants from diesel engines such as nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide and particulates are thought to be responsible for at least one quarter of the 29,000 annual pollution-related deaths in the UK alone. That figure is likely to rise, when the committee on the medical effects of air pollutants publishes what it calls “strengthening evidence” of damage to public health from nitrogen oxide emissions later in 2015.
But the current 'New European Drive Cycle' laboratory test for measuring these emissions is a quarter of a century old and has been outpaced by technological developments in the car industry. Studies have shown that the results of lab techniques to measure car emissions can easily be fixed by using techniques such as taping up doors and windows to minimize air resistance, driving on unrealistically smooth roads and testing at improbably high temperatures. Campaigners say that car makers also use tricks such as programming vehicles to go into a low emissions mode when their front wheels are spinning and their back wheels are stationary, as happens in such lab experiments.
“The Commission is finalizing a proposal to introduce a new emissions testing procedure that will allow proper assessment of the vehicles in real driving,” said Lucia Caudet, a Commission spokesperson. The proposal still needs approval from other commissioners and a technical committee but “we don’t expect any major internal hurdles,” a European Union (EU) source added.
“One key reason why air pollution kills 400,000 citizens annually is that car makers cheat the tests for diesel cars, causing many times more pollution on the road,” said Greg Archer, the clean vehicles manager for Transport and Environment. “The development of a new, real-world driving emission test is an important step forward in tackling urban air pollution. EU states should now support the Commission’s proposals and ignore the whingeing from car makers that the rules are too tough.”
According to research by the International Council on Clean Transportation in 2014, actual nitrogen oxide emissions from cars are seven times higher than the 80mg/km standard, with some models running at 22 times above the recommended limit. Only one car out of 16 met the 80g target. Around one third of all nitrogen oxide pollution comes from road transport – mostly diesel – and, in urban areas, concentrations can rise as high as 64%, European Environment Agency figures indicate.
Campaigners say that the car industry has tried to delay reforms to car test cycles but industry groups deny this, arguing that a five-year lead-time is necessary for technical and economic reasons. “Real Driving Emissions (RDE) is a totally new regulation that will force significant emission control hardware changes that may be demanded in the middle of a vehicle’s production lifetime,” said Cara McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA). “However, ACEA fully accepts that RDE will apply to new types of cars from September 2017.”
In an unusual move, the car association sent Timmermans a draft regulation of their own for him to consider, after EU representatives finally agreed a regulation to implement the nitrogen oxide limits with beefed-up road trials and strict monitoring of exhaust fumes. ACEA’s draft regulation would have covered fewer pollutants and further delayed the regulation’s phased introduction until 2020. Test distances would have been shortened from 1,300m to below 700m, minimum temperatures would have been raised from -7C to -3C and more rural roads would have been used. “The lobbyists were all over this,” Archer said. “This was a real attempt at subversion of the legislative process.”
After Timmerman’s apparent rejection of the ACEA proposal, the regulation will now pass to commissioners for a rubber stamp, and member states for final amendments, before an expected introduction in September. By 2017, the first real-world car emissions tests are expected to begin in earnest. With a similar battle already looming over the testing of CO 2 emissions for cars at the end of 2015 – and with comparable debates in other countries – the introduction of the EU’s new emissions tests will be watched closely. | 2adv
|
It was a beautiful summer evening and I decided to go for a swim off Doolin Pier in County Clare, Ireland, where I moved in 2012. There was a woman in the water with Dusty, a dolphin who has a great relationship with a group of people she regularly swims with.
Dusty arrived in Doolin in about 2008 and hundreds of people have swum with her since, giving the impression that she’s totally tame. She has even starred in an Irish tourist-board ad campaign in which a girl says she would like to touch a dolphin.
That evening, this woman was tickling Dusty’s tummy and it just looked so inviting. There were about 20 tourists and locals on the pier, looking at this lovely spectacle. Just after I got into the water, Dusty left the woman she was with and went ballistic – I found out afterwards that she’s very territorial when she is with somebody. Her tail was flapping wildly and, at first, I thought it was a display but, then, I twigged: maybe she’s angry. I knew I had to get out of the water so I swam towards the pier but, within microseconds, Dusty had ploughed into me with her snout. It was very powerful and painful, and the speed was amazing. I went hurtling forwards.
All these people on the pier were staring down at me open-mouthed. Dusty was still in the water beside me, her tail flapping crazily. That was more frightening than anything: I thought, if she hits me with her tail, I could go under; I’m gone.
I was at the pier but couldn’t get out because of my injuries. I felt pure terror. I shouted for help and a guy put his arm in and pulled me out on to the steps. Then, another man appeared and said he was an orthopaedic surgeon who specialized in marine trauma. He had been driving into Doolin when he saw what was happening on the pier. I was so cold and very worried – I didn’t know how bad my injuries were and my biggest fear was internal bleeding. He checked me over and was very reassuring, saying he couldn’t feel any evidence of it but that I probably had broken bones. I found out later that I had six spinal fractures, three broken ribs and a damaged lung.
I was in hospital for five days, in a back brace for several weeks and off work for five months with limited mobility, stiffness and pain. Then, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress. My near-death experience had left me anxious about everything and overreacting in a way I had never done before. I felt that people were looking at me in the wrong way, I began to struggle with loud noises and I suffered from memory loss. Three months before the accident, I had opened a health-food shop but I had to let it go because I could no longer work. It was the toughest year ever but, now, it’s all behind me. I had craniosacral therapy, osteopathy and massage, and am building up my own osteopathy practice now. I have a new empathy with patients because I have been one.
I am grateful that I am healthy and I really want to prevent other people being injured. We have this lovely idea about dolphins and have faith in them – who would think a dolphin would ever attack a person? If you see a ferocious animal coming at you with its teeth bared, it’s scary, but dolphins have this lovely, wide smile.
I don’t have any anger towards Dusty. I respect her. But I was in her territory and she’s a wild, unpredictable animal. People need to know that. So many come here to swim with her and they don’t understand how dangerous it can be. Mine were reportedly among several injuries that summer.
After the man pulled me out of the water, Dusty swam away but, then, she came back and was bobbing vertically next to me, looking at me. We locked eyes and I felt there was complete remorse in her. She was a totally different dolphin; the anger had gone. The people on the pier were in awe. When she had that little moment with me, that was the end of the terror. I made my peace with her. | 2adv
|
The threatened extinction of the tiger in India, the perilous existence of the orangutan in Indonesia, the plight of the panda: these are wildlife emergencies with which we have become familiar. They are well-loved animals that no one wants to see disappear. But, now, scientists fear the real impact of declining wildlife could be closer to home, with the threat to creatures such as ladybirds posing the gravest danger to biodiversity.
Climate change, declining numbers of animals, rising numbers of humans and the rapid rate of species extinction mean a growing number of scientists now declare us to be in the Anthropocene – the geological age of extinction when humans finally dominate the ecosystems.
WWF’s Living Planet Index (LPI) 2014 seemed to confirm that grim picture, with statistics on the world’s wildlife population that showed a dramatic reduction in numbers across countless species. The LPI showed the number of vertebrates had declined by 52% over four decades. Biodiversity loss has now reached “critical levels ”. Some populations of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians have suffered even bigger losses, with freshwater species declining by 76% over the same period.
But it’s the creatures that provide the most “natural capital” or “ecosystem services” that are getting many scientists really worried. Three quarters of the world’s food production is thought to depend on bees and other pollinators such as hoverflies. Never mind how cute a panda is or how stunning a tiger – it’s worms that are grinding up our waste and taking it deep into the soil to turn into nutrients, and bats that are catching mosquitoes and keeping malaria rates down. A study in North America has valued the loss of pestcontrol from ongoing bat declines at more than $22bn in lost agricultural productivity.
“It’s the loss of the common species that will impact on people, not so much the rarer creatures because, by the very nature of their rarity, we’re not reliant on them in such an obvious way,” said Dr Nick Isaac, a macroecologist at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology in Oxfordshire. He says that recent work he and colleagues have been doing suggests that Britain’s insects and other invertebrates are declining just as fast as vertebrates, with “serious consequences for humanity”. “The really interesting thing about this work is that we are learning that it’s not just about the numbers of species going extinct, but the actual numbers in a population; that’s the beginning of a fundamental shift in our understanding,” he says.
He pointed to the fact that between 23 and 36% of all birds, mammals and amphibians used for food or medicine are now threatened with extinction. In many parts of the world, wild- animal food sources are a critical part of the diet, particularly for the poor.
The blame, most agree, sits with unsustainable human consumption damaging ecosystems, creating climate change and destroying habitats at a far faster rate than previously thought. But, this time, it’s not just the “big, cuddly mammals” we have to worry about losing but the smaller, less visible creatures upon which we depend – insects, creepy- crawlies and even worms. They might not be facing immediate extinction but a decline in their numbers will affect us all. “We are going to feel the impact of those losses. With the UK species, the pattern is much the same with invertebrates as it is with vertebrates. It’s not as simplistic as 'fish die and people starve' – it’s more complex,” said Isaac.
Humans, said TV naturalist Sir David Attenborough in 2013, are a “plague on earth”, but WWF claims there is still time to stop the rot. Its UK Chief Executive, David Nussbaum, said: “The scale of the destruction highlighted in this report should act as a wake-up call for us all. We all – politicians, business and people – have an interest, and a responsibility, to act to ensure we protect what we all value: a healthy future for people and nature.
“Humans are cutting down trees more quickly than they can regrow, harvesting more fish than the oceans can restock, pumping water from our rivers and aquifers faster than rainfall can replenish them and emitting more carbon than the oceans and forests can absorb,” he said. | 2adv
|
The Canadian tennis player Frank Dancevic slammed Australian Open organizers for forcing players to compete in “inhumane” conditions after he collapsed on court as temperatures rose to 41C.
Dancevic, who collapsed during the second set of his first-round match against France’s Benoît Paire on the uncovered court six at Melbourne Park and passed out for a minute, said conditions were plainly dangerous for the players. He also said the heat had caused him to hallucinate: “I was dizzy from the middle of the first set and then I saw Snoopy and I thought, 'Wow, Snoopy – that’s weird.'”
“I think it’s inhumane. I don’t think it’s fair to anybody – to the players, to the fans, to the sport – when you see players pulling out of matches, passing out,” he added. “I’ve played five-set matches all my life and being out there for a set and a half and passing out with heat stroke, it’s not normal.
“Having players with so many problems and complaining to the tournament that it’s too hot to play; until somebody dies, they just keep going on with it and putting matches on in this heat. I, personally, don’t think it’s fair and I know a lot of players don’t think it’s fair.”
Other players were in broad agreement. The British number one, Andy Murray, said: “It’s definitely something that you have to look at a little bit. As much as it’s easy to say the conditions are safe, it only takes one bad thing to happen. And it looks terrible for the whole sport when people are collapsing, ball kids are collapsing, people in the stands are collapsing. That’s not great.
“I know when I went out to hit before the match, the conditions at 2.30–3pm were very, very tough. Whether it’s safe or not, I don’t know. There’s been some issues in other sports with players having heart attacks.”
Caroline Wozniacki said: “I put the water bottle down on the court and it started melting a little bit underneath the plastic. So, you know it was warm.”
John Isner, who retired from his first-round match with a right ankle injury, said: “It was like an oven when I open the oven and the potatoes are done. That’s what it’s like.”
The defending champion Victoria Azarenka took the same line. “It felt pretty hot, like you’re dancing in a frying pan or something like that,” she said.
The tournament’s “extreme heat” contingency plan was put into force for women’s matches on Tuesday, allowing an extra ten-minute break between the second and third sets. Under a change to the rules for 2014, however, the decision on whether to stop matches at the tournament is now at the discretion of the tournament director, Wayne McKewen. Rather than use the raw Celsius readings to assess the heat, organizers prefer to use the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature composite, which also gauges humidity and wind to identify the perceived conditions. Organizers said temperatures peaked at 42.2C in the early evening on Tuesday and conditions had never reached the point where play would be stopped. “We have to reach a minimum threshold and have a forecast that it will be sustained for a reasonable time,” McKewen said in a statement. “That didn’t happen. While conditions were hot and uncomfortable, the relatively low level of humidity ensured play would continue.”
Dancevic, who said he had felt dizzy from the middle of the second set, resumed after medical attention but, unsurprisingly, ended up losing 7–6, 6–3, 6–4. “I was really close to stopping completely,” he said. “I wasn’t really running too much towards the end. I wasn’t tired; I just felt my body temperature was too high.”
A ball boy had earlier required medical attention after collapsing during Milos Raonic’s 7–6, 6–1, 4–6, 6–2 victory over Daniel Gimeno-Traver on the equally exposed court eight and the tournament shortened rotations for the ball boys to 45-minute shifts. China’s Peng Shuai also said the heat had caused her to cramp up and vomit, and she had to be helped from the court after her 7–5, 4–6, 6–3 defeat to Japan’s Kurumi Nara. Officials played down health risks, saying the majority of matches were completed without calls for medical attention.
“Of course, there were a few players who experienced heat-related illness or discomfort, but none required significant medical intervention after they had completed their match,” Tim Wood, the tournament’s chief medical officer, said in a statement.
Most competitors, though, followed Roger Federer’s line that, although conditions were tough, they were the same for both players. “It’s just a mental thing,” the Swiss said, albeit before Dancevic collapsed. “If you’ve trained hard enough your entire life, or the last few weeks, and you believe you can do it and come through it, there’s no reason. If you can’t deal with it, you throw in the towel.”
Dancevic disagreed. “I don’t think it’s much to do with the shape the players are in. Some players are used to the heat – their bodies can genetically handle the heat and others’ can’t,” he said. “It’s hazardous to be out there; it’s dangerous. It’s an hour and a half since my match and I still can’t pee.” | 2adv
|
A day that began with a fresh round of dawn raids on the Baur Au Lac hotel in Zurich ended with 16 football officials being indicted on corruption charges in the US, including five current or former members of FIFA’s executive committee. They included the notorious former Brazilian federation chief Ricardo Teixeira and his successor, Marco Polo Del Nero, who has recently stepped down from the FIFA executive committee.
They were among 16 individuals accused of fraud and other offences by the US Department of Justice as it set out a series of kickback schemes in a new 240-page indictment that superseded the previous one in May 2015. It takes to 27 the number of defendants charged by the US with a further 24 unnamed 'co-conspirators' including former FIFA executive committee members. “The betrayal of trust set forth here is outrageous,” the US Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, said. “The scale of corruption alleged herein is completely unacceptable.”
On a day when FIFA’s executive committee had hoped to present new reforms in the midst of an ongoing corruption crisis, Swiss police led away the president of the South American football confederation, the Paraguayan Juan Ángel Napout, and Alfredo Hawit, the head of the North and Central American and Caribbean governing body. Hawit only succeeded Jeffrey Webb in May 2015, after Webb was arrested as part of the US operation that threw FIFA into crisis and precipitated the downfall of Sepp Blatter. Webb’s predecessor, the controversial Jack Warner, was also seized in May.
The Swiss Federal Office of Justice said of the latest arrests: “They are being held in custody pending their extradition. According to the US arrest requests, they are suspected of accepting bribes of millions of dollars”. Webb and the Colombian former executive committee member Luis Bedoya were among those whose guilty pleas were entered in the US. Lynch said that eight individuals, five of them unnamed in the original indictment, had come forward with guilty pleas since May.
Eleven current and former members of FIFA’s executive committee have now been charged in the investigation, which alleges $200m in bribes, mainly as kickbacks from TV and marketing contracts but also FIFA’s development programmes. The last three presidents of the regional bodies CONCACAF and Conmebol have all been indicted.
“The message from this announcement should be clear to every culpable individual who remains in the shadows, hoping to evade our investigation: you will not escape our focus,” said Lynch. Teixeira, the former son-in-law of the longstanding FIFA president João Havelange, was charged alongside Del Nero and his predecessor, José Maria Marin, who was charged in May.
Fourteen men had been charged in May 2015, when four additional guilty pleas were entered. Days later, Blatter won a fifth term as president but later agreed to step down as the crisis grew. He was then provisionally suspended alongside the UEFA President, Michel Platini, over an alleged £1.3m “disloyal payment” to the Frenchman. Both men face possible life bans when their case is heard by the FIFA ethics committee in December if they are found guilty of the charges.
Among those also charged on Thursday were Rafael Salguero, a Guatemalan who left the executive committee in May; the former South American Confederation Secretary General, Eduardo Deluca; Peru’s former football federation president, Manuel Burga; and Bolivia’s football president, Carlos Chaves, already jailed in his own country.
Lynch said: “The Department of Justice is committed to ending the rampant corruption we have described amidst the leadership of international football – not only because of the scale of the schemes alleged earlier and today, or the breadth of the operation required to sustain such corruption, but also because of the affront to international principles that this behaviour represents.”
The acting FIFA President, Issa Hayatou, refused to comment on the detail of the latest arrests. But he maintained neither he nor the organization was corrupt. Appearing for the first time before the media since taking the role in September 2015, when Blatter was suspended, Hayatou responded in a similar way to his predecessors in improbably claiming the current crisis was down to a handful of errant individuals.
“FIFA is not corrupt. We have individuals that have shown negative behaviour. Do not generalize the situation,” said Hayatou, president of the Confederation of African Football for more than 25 years. “There are lots of people who have been in FIFA for more than 20 or 30 years that have not been accused of anything.” | 2adv
|
It has been called 'the hotel of mum and dad' but few guesthouses have such favourable terms. As the housing crisis bites, a fifth of young adults are staying in the family home until they are at least 26 and the same proportion are not paying a penny towards their keep. A recent survey found that the proportion of adults living at home varied around the country, from just under 9% in the East Midlands to more than double that in London, where house prices and rents are highest. While many around the country contributed financially, the survey found that 20% were paying nothing at all.
Young adults are being squeezed by low wages and rents, which have hit record highs, while those who want to buy a property are finding the monthly cost of renting is preventing them from saving enough to get on the housing ladder. Research published by the homeless charity Shelter showed half of tenants were unable to save a penny towards a deposit, while a quarter could only put by £100 or less each month. Mortgages are cheaper than ever before thanks to record low interest rates but the best deals are still reserved for borrowers with large deposits.
Faced with this, young adults are increasingly returning to the family home in order to save money and parents who cannot afford to offer their offspring a lump sum seem willing to help. The survey found that 28% of adults were living at home because they were trying to save for a deposit. However, it also found that 30% were not saving any money.
A spokesman for the company conducting the survey commented: “The hotel of mum and dad is often staying open for longer than many anticipated, our latest research shows. Rental costs and deposits or the need to save for a mortgage deposit mean that some children understandably have to wait before flying the nest. And, for some, moving out may never be an option.”
Michael Day, 30, who lives with his parents in Bristol, says he has been caught between paying high rents and saving for a mortgage deposit. Rents for a one-bedroom home in the city are between £500 and £800 a month, while buying a similar property would cost about £130,000. “I don’t really want to move out to rent as it’s more than a mortgage but you need such a big deposit to get a mortgage so it’s been a bit of a vicious circle.”
Day does not want to share with strangers so his options are limited. At home, he pays a nominal rent to cover bills and is able to keep the rest of his earnings from his job at a candle retailer. He plays golf at county level and he admits that, instead of saving, he spends his spare cash on golf and holidays. “You need so much money that I will have to save for the foreseeable future,” he said. “Because it’s been so difficult, I’ve been going on holiday and enjoying it.”
Sue Green, of Saga, a business that sells insurance and products to the over-50s, said the majority of parents may not have planned to have their children living with them well into their 20s or 30s. “Most will be more than happy to house them in the family home rent-free because it might help their kids get on the property ladder sooner,” she said. “Children who don’t pay rent may contribute in other ways like buying groceries, family takeaways or doing odd jobs around the home.”
Angus Hanton, co-founder of a thinktank called the Intergenerational Foundation, said older generations were “the architects of the housing crisis” and children should not be blamed for staying at home. “The under-30s have suffered a fall in average incomes of about 20% since the 2008 downturn. Rents and car insurance have never been so high and mortgage lending rules have been tightened for the young but not for older buy-to-let investors, who squeeze out the young,” he said. “Student-fee debt is rising rapidly yet many jobs on offer – zero- hour and short-term contracts – are turning younger workers into second-class citizens. Rather than blaming the young, we should be standing up for their interests so they can afford to build lives of their own.”
Jenna Gavin, 29, lives in Southport, Merseyside, in the family home where she grew up. She moved out for a year to go to university but has been living with her parents ever since. She works as a medical receptionist nearby so she wants to stay in the area. But renting a one-bedroom flat would cost more than £420 a month before bills, which would take up a lot of her earnings. “I don’t want to rent – I don’t want to spend all that money and have nothing at the end,” she said. “I’ve looked at buying and seen mortgage advisers but I just can’t borrow enough to get on the property ladder.”
Gavin is trying to save but is struggling to amass the necessary funds. “You don’t really see it building up as much as you need – even a 5% deposit is such a lot of money and I would like to put down more,” she said. Her parents are happy not to charge her rent. “They want me to try to save up and I contribute in other ways – I bring food in and I do things around the house.”
Gavin gets on with her parents and has her own space in a room that she moved into when she was 14 but she said she had always imagined she would have her own place by the time she was 30. “I don’t see that happening as it’s next year. But, hopefully, in a couple of years, I’ll have moved out.” | 2adv
|
The continual relegation of women to the sidelines of football was given a good kicking when France appointed its first female professional team manager. It did not matter that it was a second-division club. It did not matter if it was, as some bad sports – male, of course – suggested, just a cynical stunt to drum up publicity for a minor team, Clermont Foot 63, currently ranking a lowly 14th out of 20 in its league.
What mattered was that Helena Costa had been given the top job, a move that saw her make football history by becoming the first female manager to be appointed in the highest two divisions of any professional European league. “As a woman, it’s made me happy,” Véronique Soulier, president of the club’s supporters’ association, told journalists. “When I first heard the news, I was rather surprised, but, once that passed, we were pretty unanimous that it’s good news. We all agree that a woman at the head of a group of men is no bad thing.”
The new manager of Clermont Foot 63, whose average home crowd at the stadium at Clermont- Ferrand in the Auvergne region of south-central France is around 3,800, is a former talent spotter for the Scottish Premiership side Celtic. Costa, 36, was born in Alhandra on the River Tagus in southeast Portugal and graduated with a master’s degree in sports science. She is also a UEFA-licensed coach. She previously coached Benfica’s male youth teams, the Qatar women’s team, which she led to its first international victory in 2012, and, more recently, the Iranian women’s national side, which she left in September 2013.
Costa was appointed on a two-year contract by the president of Clermont Foot 63, Claude Michy, who is a champion at grabbing the headlines for his club. In 2013, he announced the team had signed Messi. They had. Not the Argentinian and FC Barcelona record-breaking striker Lionel Messi, but Junior Messi Enguene, a 20-year-old midfielder from Cameroon.
France’s women’s minister, Najat Vallaud- Belkacem, tweeted: “Bravo to Clermont Foot for understanding that giving women a place is the future of professional football.”
Carolina Morace, an Italian who was the only previous woman coach of a men’s professional team, said: “I don’t know Helena, but, if she has been hired by a team, then it means that she knows how to do her job. I hope that, one day, this can become normal.” Morace was an outstanding player in the women’s game. She was the top scorer for 12 seasons in Italy’s Serie A and played for Italy in 153 internationals. In 1999, she was named as the coach of Viterbese in the men’s Serie C1. But, after only two games, she resigned from the job following a clash with the club’s mercurial proprietor, Luciano Gaucci, who at the time was also the owner of a Serie A side, Perugia.
Morace was quoted as saying that she had refused Gaucci’s demand that she fire her deputy and the side’s trainer. “He let me know that I could carry on working with whomever I wanted. But, by then, mutual trust was lacking and I didn’t fancy carrying on in that climate of uncertainty,” she said. Morace works today as a lawyer in Rome and as expert soccer commentator on television and in the pages of the daily Gazzetta dello Sport.
She said: “For the time being, I see too many men, even in the women’s game, who are working, despite not having the same expertise as women, who, by contrast, are not working.” Raymond Domenech, former manager of the French national team, said: “Women know how to play football and how to manage and are good at doing it. Why shouldn’t they manage men’s teams? The opposite happens and doesn’t cause any problems. It’s a natural choice and reflects our society in which women are equal to men. I say well done to President Michy. I told myself that, if I took charge of a club again, I’d hire a woman as my number two. He beat me to it.”
A statement on Clermont Foot 63’s website said Costa’s appointment would allow the club to enter “a new era”. On the club supporters’ website, reaction to Costa’s appointment was a mix of surprise and a certain cynicism. “In my opinion, it’s just a publicity stunt to get people talking about the club and she won’t last the season. I find it hard to believe she’ll be able to get the players’ respect, above all when she’s the same age as the oldest,” wrote one fan. “Her CV isn’t bad, but now the question is: will she be good enough?” added another. A third wrote: “I wish her welcome and success but I think it’ll be hard for her to make her mark as a woman in such a macho business. Has our president pulled off a media coup?”
But Soulier was hopeful: “Hopefully, with the new manager, the club can find the motivation they’re lacking at the moment,” she said. “The boys in the team can be difficult to manage. With a woman in charge, maybe they’ll be less demanding.”
If Costa’s reputation is anything to go by, she will be the one making the demands. After doing work experience at Chelsea during her compatriot José Mourinho’s first stint as manager of the club between 2004 and 2007, she was reportedly described as “Mourinho in a skirt”. Costa quickly kicked the sexist remark into touch. “Like Mourinho, I always want to win. As far as that’s concerned, yes, I’m happy to be compared with him,” she said. | 2adv
|
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. | 2adv
|
The beginning of the year is probably prime-time for feeling glum about work: it’s ages until the next holiday, and it’s dark in the morning and when you get home. And, if you’re stuck in a job you don’t like, it could be enough to have you reaching for your CV.
But, before you start hunting through the job ads, try to put things in perspective. So, what else could you be doing instead? We asked five people doing some unusual jobs how much they are paid, what the worst parts are and why they enjoy their work.
1. Dog-food taster
The job: Tasting dog food to make sure it meets a premium brand’s quality standards
What it involves: Opening sample tins of each freshly made batch of dog (or cat) food, smelling it and eating it. “Although dogs’ palates are different from ours, taste is an important quality check to ensure each different ingredient is perfectly balanced in just the right way,” says Philip Wells, the chief taster for Lily’s Kitchen pet food. “Trying the food is also a good way to pick up on the nuances of the cooking; this works especially well on the dry food.”
Typical salary: £20,000 for an entry-level job in the quality department. However, Wells says £50,000 or more is “easily achievable” for an experienced technical director who, as well as tasting products, is also likely to be responsible for developing new recipes and advising the business on technical and regulatory matters. Worst part of the job: The deadlines, for Wells, who admits he quite likes the food. The meat used in pet food has to be derived from animals passed as fi t for human consumption, under the Animal Feed Regulations 2010, and he says the firm uses “human-grade freshly prepared raw food” in its recipes. He adds: “There are some pretty gruesome pet foods out there and, although I don’t taste them, the smell is enough to turn the stomach when I do a bit of market research.”
Job satisfaction: “No two days are ever the same.” It’s rewarding, Wells says, that a project he has worked on will “help pets to become happier and healthier”. However, he acknowledges that some of the credit must go to another “key member” of the tasting team: Lily, the border terrier.
2. Hygiene technician
The job: Disinfecting areas that have potentially been exposed to bio-hazardous situations
What it involves: Cleaning up crime scenes, road accidents and suicides. Clearing hoarders’ houses full of rubbish, rats and excrement … among other things. “The job is about keeping people safe,” says Richard Lewis, a hygiene technician for Rentokil. “We deal with some very disturbingly dirty sites.”
Typical salary: The entry-level salary is usually around £14,500 and a top salary can be up to £22,000. Worst part of the job: Cleaning up after suicides. “You get used to the job being disgusting but the emotional side of it is still hard.” You learn not to take your work home with you, he says. “You also need to have a sense of humour, as some days can be tough.”
Job satisfaction: Lewis finds the variety of tasks exciting. “One day, I’m cleaning up after a dead body; another day, I’m in a prison cell or 100 feet in the air being lowered down into a silo to clean it.” He also takes pride in the transformation he brings about: “It’s satisfying to return a potentially hazardous site back to a safe environment. And it bene fits society.”
3. Biogas engineer
The job: Setting up biogas plants in developing countries
What it involves: Linking a system of digesters – which can be filled with human excrement, animal dung and other waste products – to toilets to produce a biogas that can be used for cooking and lighting. “You have to know what size and shape the mixing pit needs to be, how to create the optimum temperature for digestion and where to situate the biogas plant,” says Baburam Paudel, chief technical officer in Nepal for the charity Renewable World. “You also have to convince poor communities that poo can be productive – many are repelled by the idea of connecting their toilets to their kitchens.”
Typical salary: An entry-level salary is around £10,000, while a typical salary for a chief technical officer is £30,000. Worst part of the job: For Paudel, it’s seeing people struggling to survive on very little income. But, he admits, anyone who won’t change a nappy would struggle. “You have to be willing to get your hands dirty during the build process and inspections. Unsurprisingly, the anaerobic digestion (the process that takes place when bacteria eat the decomposing waste and produce methane) smells like rotten eggs. It can be disgusting and there is no room for mistakes.”
Job satisfaction: “I find it immensely satisfying to know that I am helping people to increase their incomes and allowing girls to attend school by replacing the need to collect firewood,” says Paudel. “My work improves the health and hygiene of whole communities.”
4. Eel ecologist
The job: Conserving the critically endangered European eel
What it involves: To monitor the size of the endangered eels, ecologists wade into the Thames and other London rivers and marshes full of eels, sometimes up to their armpits, and reach into a net filled with up to 20 adult eels to grab one with their bare hands. “Adult eels can be a metre long, or even larger, and weigh up to 2kg. They’re not at all dangerous but they are almost pure muscle and they can be a little bit slimy,” says Stephen Mowat, an eel conservationist and ecologist for the Zoological Society of London. “We have to weigh and measure them, and they wriggle … a lot. It’s difficult to look professional while crawling on the ground chasing an eel across the grass.”
Worst part of the job: “Eels are really tricky creatures to work with – and getting outsmarted by an eel can be quite embarrassing,” says Mowat. “You also have to be ready to jump from one project to the next. I once had to dissect a tub of dead eels to examine parasites living in them, moments before jumping into a suit for a meeting with government officials. I remembered to wash my hands.” But, for Mowat, the worst part of the job is definitely not handling the eels – he believes baby eels (known as elvers) are “as cute as pandas”: “The worst thing about the job is regularly learning how much damage we, the British population, are doing to the environment.”
Job satisfaction: “Getting to work outdoors and seeing British wildlife up close is the best part of the job,” says Mowat. “Eels are beautiful creatures and working with eels doesn’t just bene fi t the eel: it helps whole river systems, estuaries and coastal habitats. That is something worth working on.”
5. Shopping channel presenter
The job: Selling and demonstrating a wide range of products on live TV
What it involves: Presenting hours and hours of monotonous content, while simultaneously demonstrating the products and appearing to be enthusiastic and knowledgeable about everything that you’re selling. “I prepare and research as much technical and practical information as possible on every single product beforehand,” says Shaun Ryan, presenter for Ideal World TV. “But you also need the ability to relate to every genre of products and to every viewer.”
Typical salary: A trainee presenter would start on a minimum of £30,000, while an experienced presenter can expect over £55,000.
Worst part of the job: “The unsociable hours,” says Ryan. “An experienced presenter like myself generally gets to work prime-time hours, which means all weekends, bank holidays and very late evenings, plus the occasional 5am shift.” His worst task ever, he says, was singlehandedly having to sell some female slimming pants: “It was a very tricky hour and not my fi nest.”
Job satisfaction: “I love the rush of live presenting and having to think on my feet every second,” says Ryan. “I also get an adrenaline rush from knowing that, at times, I have thousands of viewers ordering the product that I have just been presenting.” | 2adv
|
Such is the lot of the modern-day chemist: you wait ages for a new element to turn up and then four come along at once. Discovered by researchers in Japan, Russia and the US, the four new elements are the first to be added to the periodic table since 2011, when elements 114 and 116 were included. The new elements, all spectacularly short-lived and highly radioactive, complete the periodic table’s seventh row and render science textbooks around the world out of date.
The US-based International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), the global organization that governs chemical nomenclature, terminology and measurement, verified the elements on 30 December, 2015 after poring over studies dating back to 2004. The scientists who found them must now come up with formal names to replace the clunky Latin- based placeholders – ununtrium, ununpentium, ununseptium and ununoctium – which reflect their atomic numbers, 113, 115, 117, and 118. The atomic number is the number of protons found in an element’s atomic nucleus.
IUPAC announced that a Russian-American team of scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California had produced sufficient evidence to claim the discovery of elements 115, 117 and 118. The body awarded credit for the discovery of element 113, which had also been claimed by the Russians and Americans, to a team of scientists from the RIKEN Institute in Japan. The decision means Japan becomes the first Asian country to name an element. Under IUPAC rules, new elements can be named after mythological concepts, minerals, a place or country, or a scientist.
When elements 114 and 116 were assigned formal names in 2012, scientists chose flerovium and livermorium respectively, after the Flerov Lab at Dubna’s Joint Institute of Research and the Lawrence Livermore Lab in the US, where the elements were discovered. Kosuke Morita, who led the research at RIKEN, said his team now planned to “look to the uncharted territory of element 119 and beyond.” Jan Reedijk, president of the Inorganic Chemistry Division of IUPAC, said: “The chemistry community is eager to see its most cherished table finally being completed down to the seventh row.”
The Japanese team is believed to be considering three names for ununtrium: japonium, rikenium and nishinarium, after the Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science, where the element was found. “They will have been thinking about it for a while already,” said Polly Arnold, professor of chemistry at Edinburgh University. “This is painstaking work. All this trying to understand Mother Nature helps us with our models and with understanding radioactive decay. If we understand it better, hopefully we can do better at dealing with nuclear waste and things that are important in the real world. It also leads to fantastic technological advances in building the kit to make these observations.”
Along with new names, the scientists must propose two-letter symbols for the elements. When IUPAC has received the researchers’ suggestions, they will be put up for public review for five months. That allows scientists and others to raise any objections. In 1996, the symbol Cp was proposed for copernicium, or element 112, but it was swapped to Cn when scientists complained that Cp referred to another substance.
To discover the elements, researchers at the three labs slammed lighter nuclei into one another and looked for signature radioactive decays that should come from the new elements. Ununtrium and ununpentium are thought to be metals, while ununseptium could be a metalloid – a material bearing some metallic properties. The fourth element, ununoctium, may be a noble gas, like other group-18 elements, helium, neon and argon. It is hard to know for sure because so few atoms of each element have ever been made.
Paul Karol, chair of the IUPAC panel that verified the elements, said: “For now, most of the successes will be used by nuclear theorists to improve their understanding of the structure and stability of these very heavy nuclei as experimenters seek the alleged but highly probable 'island of stability' at or near element 120 or perhaps 126. It might be that those elements have long enough lifetimes for their detailed chemistry to be explored. Practical applications of the new elements, if any, are a long way off because of the difficulty in synthesis.” | 2adv
|
Glastonbury Festival is to combat the scourge of the plastic water bottle as part of a long- term strategy to become the world’s most environmentally friendly outdoor music event.
Festival organizers are targeting the disposable bottle, one of the most conspicuous symbols of the throwaway culture, that each year leaves the 900-acre Somerset site wreathed in plastic, with an estimated one million plastic bottles being used during the festival.
Stainless-steel reusable bottles will be given to 2,000 road crew and band members, with thousands more on sale to festival-goers, to stop them relying on plastic bottles. The 140,000 ticket-holders are also being urged to bring reusable bottles that they can fill at 400 drinking- water taps dotted across the site.
Lucy Smith, Glastonbury’s green issues organizer, said: “We have amazing water quality in the UK but everyone is obsessed with drinking bottled water.”
She said the initiative precedes a plan for Glastonbury 2015 to replace all plastic beer glasses and cutlery with reusable items in an attempt to eradicate the legacy of plastic waste from the huge rural site.
Environmentalists estimate that 150 million tonnes of plastic waste currently litters the planet and oceans, poisoning ecosystems and killing wildlife.
Ultimately, festival organizers hope to make Glastonbury the world’s greenest greenfield festival, emulating America’s Burning Man festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, which is a “leave-no-trace” event, where people have to take away all that they bring.
Glastonbury revellers are also being urged to travel to the site on public transport or try car-sharing with friends. “We want to be as sustainable as we can. We do everything we can, but coping with the litter of 140,000 people is a challenge. We can’t put bins everywhere,” added Smith.
Campaigners say that plastic water bottles can take hundreds or even thousands of years to completely biodegrade, with their manufacture exacerbating their negative ecological impact. Millions of barrels of oil are used in the manufacture of plastic bottles and the transportation of mineral water across the planet produces even more carbon emissions.
Overall, an estimated 13 billion plastic water bottles are sold in the UK every year, yet just one in five is said to be recycled.
Smith said that, instead of buying bottled water, festival-goers should take advantage of the water on tap, which is being drawn from huge underground reservoirs, instead of old-fashioned water tanks that provided heavily chlorinated drinking water. The charity WaterAid will also set up water kiosks around the site, stocking reusable bottles and cups, and offering free refills. In 2015, the kiosks – modelled on those found in Africa – will double as DJ booths at night.
Organizers say that almost half of all the rubbish left on site was recycled in 2013 and add that there will be 15,000 bins for recycling across the festival grounds in 2014.
Despite its growing eco-credentials, critics continue to snipe at Glastonbury, accusing it of becoming increasingly corporate in tone. The latest critic, Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson, has vowed never to bring his band to Glastonbury Festival after dismissing it as “the most bourgeois thing on the planet”.
The weather forecast for Glastonbury was positive, with the festival due to be sunny and dry, experts ruling out a repeat of 1985, the festival’s windiest year; 1997, its muddiest; and 2005, known as the “year of thunder”. | 2adv
|
In homes and cafes across the country, a cup of tea, baked beans on toast and fish and chips have long played a key role in the British dining experience. But, the extent of a change in tastes over the generations has been captured in a dataset published recently in the National Food Survey, which was set up in 1940 by the government after concerns about health and access to food.
Despite the apparent British love of tea, consumption has more than halved since the 1970s, falling from 68g of tea per person per week to only 25g. With a teabag or portion of loose tea weighing around 3g, that means Britons are drinking on average only eight cups of tea a week today, down from 23 cups in 1974. And, while tea remains the most drunk hot drink in the UK, households now spend more on coffee.
The data, published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as part of its “open data” scheme, is from 150,000 households who took part in the survey between 1974 and 2000, combined with information from 2000 to 2014. It shows some moves towards healthier diets in recent decades, with shifts to low-calorie soft drinks, from whole to skimmed milk and increasing consumption of fresh fruit. But, weekly consumption of chips, pizza, crisps and ready meals has soared.
There has also been a dramatic shift from white to brown, wholemeal and other bread but the figures suggest the amount people are eating has fallen from 25 to 15 slices a week over the past four decades, based on a 40g slice from a medium sliced loaf. The consumption of baked beans in sauce has dropped by a fifth despite a rise in other types of convenience food, particularly Italian dishes. Adults in the UK now eat an average of 75g of pizza every week compared with none in 1974, while the consumption of pasta has almost tripled over the same period.
Fresh potatoes are also becoming less essential with a 67% decrease from 1974, when adults ate the equivalent of 188g every day. Other vegetables such as cucumbers, courgettes, aubergines and mushrooms have gained space on the table. Consumption of takeaway food has almost doubled since 1974, from 80g per person per week to 150g. Around 33g of this amount is chips and 56g is meat, with kebabs (10g), chicken (7g), burgers (5g) and “meat-based meals” (32g) particularly popular.
Some trends suggest that British people are becoming more prudent in what they put on their plates, with the average consumption of fruit, both fresh and processed, increasing by 50% since 1974. In 2014, UK adults ate an average of 157g of fruit per day, equivalent to almost two portions of the five-a-day recommendation from the government. Bananas have been the most popular fruit in the UK since 1996, reaching 221g per adult per week in 2014, well above apples (131g) and oranges (48g). Low-calorie soft drinks represented half of all soft drinks consumed in 2014 for the first time.
Other social changes emerge from the survey, with questions about owning chickens and getting your own eggs being dropped in 1991 and a somewhat belated end in the same year to asking the “housewife” to fill out the questionnaire. Britons are spending a smaller proportion of pay on food today – 11%, compared with 24% in 1974.
The UK Environment Secretary, Elizabeth Truss, said: “Food is the heart and soul of our society and this data not only shows what we were eating 40 years ago but how a change in culture has led to a food revolution. Shoppers are more plugged in to where their food comes from than ever before, the internet has brought quality produce to our doorsteps at the click of a button, pop-up restaurants are showcasing the latest trends and exciting global cuisines are now as common as fish and chips.”
“By opening up this data, we can look beyond what, where or how previous generations were eating and pinpoint the moments that changed our habits for good. We’ve only scraped the surface of what the National Food Survey can tell us and, from local food maps and school projects to predicting new food trends, I look forward to seeing how this data can be used to learn more about our past and grow our world-leading food and farming industry in the future.” | 2adv
|
Piles of digitized material – from blogs, tweets, pictures and videos to official documents such as court rulings and emails – may be lost forever because the programs needed to view them will become defunct, Google’s vice-president has warned. Humanity’s first steps into the digital world could be lost to future historians, Vint Cerf told the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in San Jose, California, warning that we faced a “forgotten generation or even a forgotten century” through what he called “bit rot”, where old computer files become useless junk.
Cerf called for the development of “digital vellum” to preserve old software and hardware so that out-of-date files could be recovered no matter how old they are. “When you think about the quantity of documentation from our daily lives that is captured in digital form, like our interactions by email, people’s tweets and all of the world wide web, it’s clear that we stand to lose an awful lot of our history,” he said. “We don’t want our digital lives to fade away. If we want to preserve them, we need to make sure that the digital objects we create today can still be rendered far into the future,” he added.
What is 'bit rot' and is Vint Cerf right to be worried? Being able to access digital content in the coming decades could be less of an issue than one of the 'fathers of the internet' has implied. The warning highlights an irony at the heart of modern technology, where music, photos, letters and other documents are digitized in the hope of ensuring their long-term survival. But, while researchers are making progress in storing digital files for centuries, the programs and hardware needed to make sense of the files are continually falling out of use.
“We are nonchalantly throwing all of our data into what could become an information black hole without realizing it. We digitize things because we think we will preserve them but what we don’t understand is that, unless we take other steps, those digital versions may not be any better, and may even be worse, than the artefacts that we digitized,” Cerf says. “If there are photos you really care about, print them out.”
Ancient civilizations suffered no such problems because histories written in cuneiform on baked clay tablets or rolled papyrus scrolls needed only eyes to read them. To study today’s culture, future scholars would be faced with PDFs, Word documents and hundreds of other file types that can only be interpreted with dedicated software and sometimes hardware, too.
The problem is already here. In the 1980s, it was routine to save documents on floppy disks, upload Jet Set Willy from cassette to the ZX spectrum, slaughter aliens with a Quickfire II joystick and have Atari games cartridges in the attic. Even if the disks and cassettes are in good condition, the equipment needed to run them is now mostly found only in museums.
The rise of gaming has its own place in the story of digital culture but Cerf warns that important political and historical documents will also be lost to bit rot. In 2005, American historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote Team of Rivals: the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, describing how Lincoln hired those who ran against him for presidency. She went to libraries around the US, found the physical letters of the people involved and reconstructed their conversations. “In today’s world, those letters would be emails and the chances of finding them will be vanishingly small one hundred years from now,” said Cerf.
He concedes that historians will take steps to preserve material considered important by today’s standards but argues that the significance of documents and correspondence is often not fully appreciated until hundreds of years later. Historians have learned how the greatest mathematician of antiquity considered the concept of infinity and anticipated calculus in 3BC after the Archimedes palimpsest was found hidden under the words of a Byzantine prayer book from the thirteenth century. “We’ve been surprised by what we’ve learned from objects that have been preserved purely by chance that give us insights into an earlier civilization,” he said.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh have made headway towards a solution to bit rot, or at least a partial one. There, Mahadev Satyanarayanan takes digital snapshots of computer hard drives while they run different software programs. These can then be uploaded to a computer that mimics the one the software ran on. The result is a computer that can read otherwise defunct files. Under a project called Olive, the researchers have archived Mystery House, the original 1982 graphic adventure game for the Apple II, an early version of WordPerfect, and Doom, the original 1993 first person shooter game.
Inventing new technology is only half the battle, though. More difficult still could be navigating the legal permissions to copy and store software before it dies. When IT companies go out of business, or stop supporting their products, they may sell the rights on, making it a nightmarish task to get approval. “To do this properly, the rights of preservation might need to be incorporated into our thinking about things like copyright and patents and licensing. We’re talking about preserving them for hundreds to thousands of years,” said Cerf. | 2adv
|
Unveiling a car with a top speed of 25mph, two seats and no pedals or steering wheel might not make much of an impression at a motor show. But Google, in the US, sent a minor earthquake through the car and taxi industries as it unveiled the latest version of its driverless car.
The electrically powered vehicle, which Google has begun testing around its headquarters in Mountain View, California, dispenses with all the normal controls, including foot pedals. Instead, it has a smartphone app that summons it and tells it the destination, and a single STOP button mounted between the two front-facing seats in case the occupants need to override the computer.
The car, in fact, takes over all the tasks of navigation, steering, acceleration and braking.
The company is building about 100 prototypes for a two-year test. The company’s co-founder, Sergey Brin, told a conference in California that the vehicle was “still in the prototype stage” but that the project was “about changing the world for people who are not well served by transportation today ”.
He said of the car: “You’re just sitting there; no steering wheel, no pedals. For me, it was very relaxing. About ten seconds after getting in, I forgot I was there. It reminded me of catching a chairlift by yourself – a bit of solitude I found really enjoyable.”
Google says that the principal aim of the project is to improve safety and that, because the car is constructed with impact-absorbing foam at the front and a plastic windscreen, “it should be far safer than any other car for pedestrians”.
The cars, which have been built specially by a company (as yet unnamed) in Detroit, will be used to investigate further how best to make driverless vehicles work. Google will run a pilot programme using the cars, which are not yet for sale.
One challenge is creating high-definition scans of the roads and surroundings before the cars can drive along them because they cannot gather and process enough information in real time.
So far, there are high-detail maps of about 2,000 miles of California’s roads, but the state has more than 170,000 miles of public roads.
Google says it is interested in licensing the technology to traditional vehicle manufacturers once it has refined it sufficiently. Members of the team had been working on the project even before joining Google, for more than a decade.
But the prospect of driverless cars replacing human-driven taxis has been the cause of some alarm.
“If you get rid of the driver, then they’re unemployed,” said Dennis Conyon, the south- east director for the UK National Taxi Association. “It would have a major impact on the labour force.”
London has about 22,000 licensed black cabs and Conyon estimates that the total number of people who drive taxis for hire in the UK is about 100,000.
However, Steve McNamara, general secretary of the 10,500-strong London Taxi Drivers’ Association, said: “You won’t get these driverless cars in London for 20 or 25 years. Maybe, by then, they’ll have a charge point – because there isn’t a single one in London now.”
Other car makers, including Volvo, Ford and Mercedes, are working on driver-assisted vehicles, which, unlike Google’s version, do not dispense with the driver controls.
But Chris Urmson, director of the self-driving car project at Google, said that the new prototypes dispensed with the steering wheel and brakes because there was no guarantee that a human occupant would be able to take over in an emergency, and that it was simpler just to have an emergency stop button.
Urmson said: “The vehicles will be very basic. We want to learn from them and adapt them as quickly as possible. But they will take you where you want to go at the push of a button. And, that’s an important step towards improving road safety and transforming mobility for millions of people.”
So far, the Google versions of the self-driving cars have covered 700,000 miles without an accident caused by the computer. The company points out that thousands of people die each year on the roads and that about 80% of crashes can be ascribed to human error.
But, they could have some way to go to match Conyon at the National Taxi Association. Aged 79, he has been driving a taxi for 50 years and claims never to have had an accident. | 2adv
|
An atmosphere of melancholy and changing times pervades the opening to the final series of Downton Abbey. The year is 1925 and there are already the first rumblings of the economic storms that will blight the end of the decade. The neighbours are selling up their own stately home, while Lord Grantham seeks to cut back on servants after declaring that under-butlers are no longer affordable.
But at the real Downton Abbey, Highclere Castle – a stately home owned by George “Geordie” Herbert, 8th Earl of Carnarvon – the financial outlook has rarely been brighter. According to Lady Fiona Carnarvon, the huge global success of Downton has funded a rolling programme of building repairs aimed at safeguarding Highclere for the next generation.
“It’s been an amazing magic carpet ride for all of us,” she said. “It’s given us a wonderful marketing platform, an international profile. I’m hugely grateful. My husband and I love the house, and the people here. Now, without doubt, it is loved by millions of other people.”
Currently, only the ground and first floors of Highclere, on the borders of Hampshire, are used. But, a restoration project of derelict tower rooms has begun that will eventually allow visitors to climb up into the tower to an exhibition showcasing the work of the architect of the Houses of Parliament, Sir Charles Barry, who rebuilt the house between 1839 and 1842.
When the Downton Abbey producers first approached Highclere in 2009, the family faced a near £12m repair bill, with urgent work priced at £1.8m. But, by 2012, the Downton effect had begun to take the pressure off. Lord Carnarvon said then: “It was just after the banking crisis and it was gloom in all directions. We had been doing corporate functions but it all became pretty sparse after that. Then, Downton came along and it became a major tourist attraction.”
Visitor numbers doubled, to 1,200 a day, as Downton Abbey, scripted by Julian Fellowes, came to be screened around the world after becoming a hit in the UK in 2010 and, then, in the US. It is now broadcast in 250 countries. The formerly somewhat basic ticketing policy has become a computerized advance booking system, helping to guarantee foreign visitors admission. The accounts of Highclere Enterprises for 2014-15 show current assets have almost trebled to around £1m since 2012. Gareth Neame, the executive producer for the series, said: “I think Downton Abbey secured Highclere’s future.”
Peter Fincham, ITV’s director of television, recalls the moment when Highclere was booked. “I thought, 'So what?', because I had never heard of Highclere Castle. One stately home looks much the same as another. How wrong I was. The castle has been one enormous character as well.”
The Downton tourists are part of a growing phenomenon. VisitBritain estimates that nearly 30% of foreign visitors, or nearly nine million people, include castles and historic houses on their itineraries. Almost half of potential visitors to Britain now say they want to indulge in “set jetting ”, visiting places featured in films or on TV. More than a million embark on a tour of historic buildings each year, spending in excess of £1bn. From the biggest emerging tourist markets, 51% of Brazilians, 42% of Russians and Chinese, and 35% of Indian visitors are likely to include a visit to a site of interest in their trips. VisitBritain’s director, Patricia Yates, said: “The links between tourism, films and TV are potent ones.” She added that period dramas have also raised the popularity of regions outside of London.
Neame is now an ambassador for the GREAT Britain campaign, which is backed by government departments and the British Council, using it to promote the UK around the world. Events include special Downton -themed receptions at British embassies.
Neame said: “They approached me because of the reach. A lot of people here think of it as soapy entertainment. In other parts of the world, people revere our actors, our writing and production talent. It is something I am passionate about; I am a really strong believer in soft power. We are not nearly as proud of our achievements as we should be.
“Downton Abbey is iconic for expressing Britishness. Really, it is a fantasy world, based in a particular time in history. It’s the first TV period drama that has really leapt out of the screen and become part of popular culture.”
Lady Carnarvon is still keen to emphasize that the long-term future of Highclere is not necessarily secure. “The bottom line is quite thin,” she said. “The programme has allowed us to spend faster on the buildings, have the follies restored.”
In the pipeline is a Tutankhamun centenary event in 2022, 100 years after the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, together with Howard Carter, discovered the tomb that revolutionized our understanding of Egyptology. Another opportunity to keep Highclere in the public mind is the 300th anniversary of the birth of Lancelot “Capability” Brown, who designed the grounds.
“What you do is never sit on your laurels. Every single day, don’t take anything for granted,” said Lady Carnarvon. “For all these great houses, you have to invest in them. And, there has been a deficit since the 1930s. Perhaps, in the past, an estate and house defined and supported the family and their lifestyle but, today, it is quite the reverse: the challenge is how Geordie and I seek to support and look after Highclere.
“From my point of view, I’ve tried to persuade people it is fun and have specific events they can engage with, not just a wander around a dusty house. We have to compete with attractions like the London Dungeon.” | 2adv
|
A degree in Spanish got me my first job as a journalist, with an international press agency in Mexico City, but it didn’t prevent me blundering badly as a rookie reporter.
I had just arrived in the Mexican capital after a Greyhound bus journey all the way from New York and the job interview was a test of my language skills. In my new role, day shifts were spent on the streets in political rallies and nights were spent alone in the office, coordinating the coverage from strife- torn El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and the rest of Central America. But, I also had to report on occasional disasters: fires, floods and explosions at fi rework factories.
It was as a reporter that I soon found out that I was as bad at understanding numbers in Spanish as I was at calculating them in English. Phone calls meant for the police got Mexican grandmothers out of bed at 2am because I had misunderstood a number and dialled a dodgy digit. Even worse, victims were piled too high in my stories – almost 83 dead in a fi re at 6pm turned out to be as few as 38 by 7pm; 12 people injured in a coach crash soon became two and so it went on. Finally, I got a call from the main office in Washington. “I don’t know what training you have had,” an editor yelled, “but has no one ever told you a death toll can’t go down?!”
Why are numbers in another language such a conundrum? It may have to do with different numbering systems. If we consider that, in German, for example, which belongs to the same Indo-European language family as English, 2.30pm becomes halb drei (half of three) and 21 becomes einundzwanzig (one and twenty), clearly different numeral systems can cause confusion and that’s without even considering indigenous languages with numeral systems so rare they are in danger of dying out.
Some experts believe there is a link between dyscalculia – the difficulty in comprehending arithmetic – and problems learning foreign languages, particularly if languages are learnt by rote, since this involves the sequential processes that students with dyscalculia struggle with. But, some students who struggle to learn languages with a grammar textbook may thrive in a foreign-language setting, where learning is more natural and less reliant on sequences of adjectives, prepositions and so on. In my case, I have always found languages easy enough, apart from the numbers.
But, perhaps it’s also because numbers in a non-native language are often heard out of context or in isolation, when the listener might have switched off from the foreign language and be unable to suddenly tune in. A straw poll of multilingual friends found that many can be florid in French or Italian when ordering from a restaurant menu, for example, but freeze if they have to relay numbers, especially over the phone. Numbers seem to be taxing, but no one could really say why.
In my case, being numerically challenged in a foreign tongue followed me from Mexico to other countries and from Spanish to German and Portuguese. But, in that first journalism job, getting the numbers wrong didn’t always add up to failure.
One night, a Mexican colleague learnt that the American consul in the port city of Veracruz was being held hostage at gunpoint in his office. With no senior English-speaking reporter in the office, it was left to me to try to reach the consulate by phone. Having got the number wrong, I was put through to an extension elsewhere in the building and the identity of the person who took my call was unmistakable: I chatted for 15 minutes to the gunman. I may not have persuaded him to put away his gun – but my reputation as a rookie reporter still rose overnight. | 2adv
|
David Cameron, Barack Obama and Pamela Anderson have refused. George W Bush, Benedict Cumberbatch and Stephen Hawking have taken part. As the Ice Bucket Challenge notched up $100m for 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, the bracing cold water of a backlash has quickly followed.
Narcissistic celebrities showing off toned bodies, people having all the fun without donating, complaints about the waste of water – the attacks have come from commentators, animal-rights groups and environmentalists. And the US Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Association – which is not related to Britain’s MND Association – also came under fire for the six-figure salaries being paid to its top staff.
Meanwhile, the challenge continues to grow. For anyone unaware of 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, before nominating three people to either do the same or donate.
It began in the US in July, although whether it was on a golf course or a baseball field depends on which version you prefer, and first appeared on mainstream American television on 15 July. But the ALS Association has now been forced to withdraw an attempt to patent the phrase “Ice Bucket Challenge” after criticism. “We understand the public’s concern and are withdrawing the trademark applications,” spokeswoman Carrie Munk said. The ALS has yet to respond to criticism of its high overheads and wage bills.
The unfortunate coincidence that 31 August to 5 September was World Water Week, with international delegates arriving in Stockholm to discuss the planet’s water crisis, has not been lost on some. The charity WaterAid is asking people to use recycled water from bathtubs or garden butts or to douse people with sea water.
Douglas Graham, the MND Association’s fundraising director, said: “The backlash is to be expected but, really, this is just a wonderful windfall and we’re so grateful. We didn’t 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, a longstanding 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 California’s drought. Actor Matt Damon got around the problem by pulling up water from his toilets – pointing out that much of the world had less clean drinking water available. Actor Verne Troyer used milk, again citing environmental reasons. And the challenge has been blamed for causing a water shortage on the Scottish island of Colonsay after its 135 inhabitants picked up on the craze.
In Australia, a TV anchorman apologized over his robust “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. I’d 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 won’t be able to cope with the extra cash, but the MND Association rejected this. “Oh, we can cope here,” said Graham. “We fund world-class research into the causes and, ultimately, 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 it’s a costly one to manage. Over 50% die within two years of diagnosis. It’s 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 cash. 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 couldn’t have created this if we’d tried. Charities are all worthwhile causes and I understand even 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. It’s fabulous for us to get this windfall. We’ll 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.” | 2adv
|
You can be Aagot, Arney or Ásfríður; Baldey, Bebba or Brá. Dögg, Dimmblá, Etna and Eybjört are fine; likewise Frigg, Glódís, Hörn and Ingunn. Jórlaug works OK, as do Obba, Sigurfljóð, Úranía and – should you choose – Vagna. But you cannot, as a girl in Iceland, be called Harriet.
“The whole situation,” said Tristan Cardew, with very British understatement, “is really rather silly.” With his Icelandic wife, Kristin, Cardew is appealing against a decision by the National Registry in the capital Reykjavik not to renew their ten-year-old daughter Harriet’s passport on the grounds that it does not recognize her first name.
Since the registry does not recognize the name of Harriet’s 12-year-old brother, Duncan, either, the two children have, until now, travelled on passports identifying them as Stúlka and Drengur Cardew: Girl and Boy Cardew. “But, this time, the authorities have decided to apply the letter of the law,” Cardew, a British-born cook who moved to Iceland in 2000, said. “And that says no official document will be issued to people who do not bear an approved Icelandic name.”
The impasse meant the family, from Kópavogur, risked missing their holiday in France until they applied to the British embassy for an emergency UK passport, which should now allow them to leave.
Names matter in Iceland, a country of barely 320,000 people, whose phone book lists subscribers by their first name for the very sensible reason that the vast majority of Icelandic surnames simply record the fact that you are your father’s (or mother’s) son or daughter. Jón Einarsson’s offspring, for example, might be Ólafur Jónsson and Sigríður Jónsdóttir.
The law dictates that the names of children born in Iceland must – unless both parents are foreign – be submitted to the National Registry within six months of birth. If they are not on a recognized list of 1,853 female and 1,712 male names, the parents must seek the approval of a body called the Icelandic Naming Committee.
For the 5,000 or so children born in Iceland each year, the committee reportedly receives about 100 applications and rejects about half under a 1996 act aimed mainly at preserving the language of the sagas. Among its requirements are that given names must be “capable of having Icelandic grammatical endings”, may not “conflict with the linguistic structure of Iceland” and should be “written in accordance with the ordinary rules of Icelandic orthography”.
What this means in practice is that names containing letters that do not officially exist in Iceland’s 32-letter alphabet, such as “c ”, are out. Similarly, names unable to accommodate the endings required by the nominative, accusative, genitive and dative cases used in Icelandic are also routinely turned down. “That was the problem with Harriet,” said Cardew.
The country’s naming laws have come under increasing fire in recent years: in 2013, Blær – “Light Breeze” – Bjarkardóttir Rúnarsdottir won the right to be officially known by her given name, as opposed to “Girl”, when a court ruled that denying her was a violation of the Icelandic constitution. The former mayor of Reykjavik, Jón Gnarr, has also called Iceland’s naming law “unfair, stupid and against creativity”.
The Cardews could get round Harriet’s problem by giving her an Icelandic middle name. “But it’s a bit late for that and way too silly,” said Cardew. “Are they saying they don’t want us here?” | 2adv
|
1 Passing clouds
One of the pleasures of flying is seeing clouds close up. Even though they seem insubstantial they carry a considerable weight of water – around 500 tonnes in a small cumulus cloud. And water is denser than air. So why don’t clouds fall out of the sky like rain? They do. But the droplets take a long time to sink. An average cloud would take a year to fall one metre.
2 On cloud nine
Most of us are happy to label clouds “fluffy ones” or “nasty black ones ”, but meteorologists identify more than 50 cloud types based on shape and altitude. These fit into categories given numbers from one to nine. Cloud nine is the vast, towering cumulonimbus, so to be “on cloud nine” implies being on top of the world.
3 Around the rainbow
There’s no better place to see a rainbow than from a plane. Rainbows are produced when sunlight hits raindrops. We see a bow because the Earth gets in the way, but, from a plane, a rainbow is a complete circle. When passing over clouds, the plane’s shadow appears neatly in the centre of the effect.
4 Mr blue sky
Sunlight is white, containing all the colours of the spectrum but, as it passes through air, some of the light is scattered when it interacts with the gas molecules. Blue light scatters more than the lower-energy colours, so the blue appears to come from the sky.
5 There’s life out there
Apart from clouds and other planes, we don’t expect to see much directly outside a flying aircraft’s window, but the air is seething with bacterial life – as many as 1,800 different types of bacteria have been detected over cities and they can reach twice the cruising height of a plane.
6 Turbulence terror
Even the most experienced flyer can be turned green by turbulence. The outcome can be anything from repeated bumping to sudden, dramatic plunges. The good news for nervous flyers is that no modern airliner has ever been brought down by turbulence. People have been injured and occasionally killed when they are not strapped in, or get struck by poorly secured luggage – but the plane is not going to be knocked out of the sky.
7 In-flight radiation
When body scanners were introduced at airports there were radiation scares but the level produced is the same as passengers receive in one minute of flight. The Earth is constantly bombarded by cosmic rays, natural radiation from space that has more impact at altitude.
8 You can’t cure jet lag
The world is divided into time zones. The result is that long-haul travel results in a difference between local time and your body’s time, causing jet lag. However, its effects can be minimized by keeping food bland for 24 hours before travel, drinking plenty of fluids and living on your destination time from the moment you reach the aircraft.
9 Supersonic 747s
Many of us have travelled faster than sound. There are a number of jet streams in the upper atmosphere, notably on the journey from the US to Europe, where a temperature inversion causes a corridor of air to move as fast as 250mph. If an airliner with an airspeed of 550mph enters a jet stream, the result can be to fly at 800mph, above sound’s 740mph.
10 Flying through time
Time zones provide an artificial journey through time – but special relativity means that a flight involves actual time travel. It’s so minimal, though, that crossing the Atlantic weekly for 40 years would only move you 1/1,000th of a second into the future.
11 Terrible tea
Don’t blame the cabin attendant if your tea isn’t great. Water should be just under 100°C when it is poured on to tea leaves – but that isn’t possible on a plane. It’s impossible to get water beyond 90°C during flight – so choose coffee.
12 I can’t hear my food
Airline food has a reputation for being bland and tasteless. Some of the problem may not be poor catering, though. A plane is a noisy environment and there is evidence that food loses some of its savour when we are exposed to loud noises.
13 Needle in a haystack
With modern technology, it seems strange that Malaysian flight MH370 could disappear without a trace – yet, finding a missing aircraft is a needle- in-a-haystack problem. The plane knows its location, both from GPS and inertial tracking, but this information is not relayed elsewhere in real time. That would be perfectly possible. Ocean- going ships have had tracking since the 1980s – the limitation is not technology but a lack of legislation requiring it.
14 Volcanic fallout
Air travel can be cancelled by volcanic activity. Glass-like ash particles melt in the heat of the engine, then solidify on the rotors. A clear-skies policy in an ash cloud may be inconvenient – but the risks of ignoring the ash are clear.
15 The wing myth
For many years, we taught the wrong explanation for the way wings keep planes in the air. In fact, almost all a plane’s lift comes from Newton’s Third Law of Motion. The wing is shaped to push air downwards. As the air is pushed down, the wing gets an equal and opposite push upwards, lifting the plane.
16 Forget electric planes
When we see ultra-light, experimental, electric planes, it’s easy to assume there will soon be clean, green, electric airliners, but it won’t happen any time soon. Aircraft fuel packs in a remarkable amount of energy. Batteries are much less efficient. To provide the same energy as a tonne of fuel would take 100 tonnes of batteries – and a 747 uses 150 to 200 tonnes of fuel. Unless battery technology is made vastly more efficient, electric airliners won’t get off the ground.
17 Beware the vortex
Pilots often wait a long time to get clearance. This is to allow the air to settle after a previous take-off, as a plane’s wingtips generate vortices in the air, which can take two or three minutes to disperse. If the following aircraft set off immediately, the rapidly moving air would make the plane difficult to handle. The delay gives the air time to recover from the miniature whirlwinds caused by the preceding plane.
18 The doors aren’t locked
In practice, the doors on a plane don’t need to be locked. If you watch an aircraft door being opened, it swings in an unusual way. It first has to be opened inwards before manoeuvring it out of the way. Once the plane has taken off, a significant pressure difference soon builds up between the inside of the plane and the outside. This differential forces the door into place. To open it, you would have to pull against the air pressure, well beyond the capabilities of human muscles. | 2adv
|
They call it the Richie Rich Club and it is about to get even richer. India’s wealthiest will quadruple their net worth between now and 2018, a report says, with hundreds of thousands of new entrepreneurs and inheritors becoming multimillionaires. The survey, based on interviews with 150 ultra-high-net-worth individuals, comes amid signs of returning business confidence in the world’s biggest democracy.
Recent years have seen lacklustre growth, rising prices of basic foodstuffs and a weakening currency. But the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a landslide victory in May 2014 on a pledge to reinvigorate the ailing economy. Despite the slowdown, there are nearly a sixth more Indians worth in excess of $3.75m than in 2013, the report for the Kotak Mahindra Bank notes. “Cities are mushrooming, the middle class population growing, opportunities have increased manyfold and the political environment has improved greatly in recent months,” according to Murali Balaraman, a co-author.
Between them, India’s rich hold assets worth a trillion dollars, which is around a fifth of the total wealth in the country. By 2018, that total is likely to reach $4tn, the report says, making three times as many people multimillionaires.
Serving the new rich – and the old money – is a booming luxury market. “They really want to show or talk about their wealth in a really subtle way and consumption of luxury goods is a nice way to do it,” Balaraman said. Abhay Gupta, the CEO of brand consultancy Luxury Connect, said the market for top-end goods and experiences would “only get bigger”. “There is a huge aspirational class who look up to what the very wealthy are doing and then copy it,” he said.
Cars are among the most popular items bought, the report says. Whereas, in 2009, locally made SUVs were shown off by the wealthy, now only foreign cars will turn heads. Mercedes saw a 47% surge in sales in India in 2013. BMW has launched a new $200,000 model in Delhi. India’s appalling infrastructure restricts demand, however. Lamborghini’s Chief Executive, Stephan Winkelmann, admitted, in 2013, that the traffic and roads in India “are not so suitable” for the $450,000 sports cars. In India, Lamborghini sells two models: the Gallardo and the Aventador, which has a top speed of 217mph. Winkelmann said Lamborghini’s Indian customers were much younger than those in Europe, with a typical buyer being in his 30s. However, the most popular investments remain real estate – mainly within India – and jewellery.
India’s super-rich have long raised eyebrows around the world with their spectacular spending. Mukesh Ambani, the country’s wealthiest man, has built the world’s most valuable home in Mumbai, the commercial capital. The 27-storey tower, complete with helicopter pads, indoor cinemas and a staff of more than 600, is worth an estimated $1bn.
The three-day wedding of the niece of Lakshmi Mittal, the UK-based steel tycoon who is worth an estimated $16bn, was reported to have cost $80m. Hundreds of guests were flown to Barcelona for the ceremony and party, which took place in a museum in the city.
But buyers of luxury goods searching for the psychological satisfaction of exclusivity are becoming increasingly demanding, the Kotak Mahindra report says. One ordered nine cases of Japanese whisky costing over $750 a bottle for a wedding reception. The attraction of the imported whisky was that no one who attended the wedding would find out how to source the same drink in India, the report adds. Another big spender systematically bought identical pairs of Louis Vuitton bags, then cut up half of them to make clothes that would match her accessories. Even the traditional wedding is evolving fast. Presents such as silver plates, dried fruit or sweets once sent with wedding invitations are being replaced by gifts by top western designer brands. “These days, it’s Rolex watches and Louis Vuitton bags,” says Gupta.
Almost half new ultra-high-net-worth individuals live in smaller provincial cities. A high proportion give substantial amounts to charity, though the report notes that the “growth of philanthropic spends in India has not been proportional to overall growth in ultra-high-net-worth individual wealth”.
Co-author Balaraman says that growth in the number of rich people would not result in social tensions as a wide gap in incomes and wealth is an “accepted norm” in India. “People know that someone is rich and someone is poor and they carry on with their lives,” he explains. | 2adv
|
An octopus has made a brazen escape from the National Aquarium in New Zealand by breaking out of its tank, slithering down a 50-metre drainpipe and disappearing into the sea.
In scenes reminiscent of Finding Nemo, Inky – a common New Zealand octopus – made his dash for freedom after the lid of his tank was accidentally left slightly ajar. Staff believe that in the middle of the night, while the aquarium was deserted, Inky clambered to the top of his glass enclosure, down the side of the tank and travelled across the floor of the aquarium.
Rob Yarrell, national manager of the National Aquarium of New Zealand in Napier, said: “Octopuses are famous escape artists. I don’t think he was unhappy with us, or lonely, as octopuses are solitary creatures. But, he is such a curious boy. He would want to know what’s happening on the outside. That’s just his personality.”
One theory is that Inky slid across the aquarium floor – a journey of three or four metres – and then, sensing freedom was at hand, into a drainpipe that led directly to the sea. The drainpipe was 50 metres long and opened onto the waters of Hawke’s Bay, on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island.
Another possible escape route could have involved Inky squeezing into an open pipe at the top of his tank, which led under the floor to the drain. “When we came in the next morning and his tank was empty, I was really surprised,” said Yarrell, who has not launched a search for Inky. “The staff and I have been pretty sad. But then, this is Inky and he’s always been a bit of a surprise octopus.”
Reiss Jenkinson, exhibits keeper at the National Aquarium, said he was absolutely certain Inky had not been taken. “I understand the nature of octopus behaviour very well,” he said. “I have seen octopuses on boats slip through bilge pumps. And, the security here is too tight for anyone to take Inky and why would they?”
Because octopuses have no bones, they are able to fit into extremely small spaces and have been filmed squeezing through gaps the size of coins. They are also understood to be extremely intelligent and capable of using tools. At the Island Bay Marine Education Centre in Wellington, an octopus was found to be in the habit of visiting another tank overnight to steal crabs, then returning to its own. Another at the centre, Ozymandias, was thought to have broken a world record for opening a jar before it was released into the ocean.
Inky was brought to the National Aquarium a number of years ago by a local fisherman who found him caught in a crayfish pot. He was scarred and “rough looking”, with shortened limbs, said Yarrell. “He had been living on the reef and fighting with fish so he wasn’t in the best shape.” According to Yarrell, Inky – who is about the size of a rugby ball – was an “unusually intelligent” octopus. “He was very friendly, very inquisitive and a popular attraction here. We have another octopus, Blotchy, but he is smaller than Inky and Inky had the personality.”
The aquarium has no plans to step up security as a result of the escape as Inky was a “one- off” but the staff are “increasingly aware of what octopuses can actually do”. Although the aquarium is not actively searching for a replacement for Inky, if a fisherman brought in another octopus, it might be willing to take it on. “You never know,” said Yarrell. “There’s always a chance Inky could come home to us.” | 2adv
|
1 Flappy Bird
Be careful what you wish for, especially if you want to invent something new. Recently, Dong Nguyen, the designer of the mobile game Flappy Bird, pulled it from app stores, saying its success – it had been downloaded more than 50 million times, and was making him around £30,000 in advertising revenue each day – had ruined his simple life. He took to his Twitter account to say: “I cannot take this anymore.”
OK, so regretting making Flappy Bird isn’t quite the same as regretting making a rifle, but Nguyen is just the latest in a long line of inventors who wish they hadn’t created a monster.
2 The labradoodle
The labradoodle isn’t a monster – it’s adorable, obviously. But what’s monstrous is the way crossbreed dogs have been bred and marketed since the labradoodle’s inventor, Wally Conron, first created the breed in the 1980s. “I’ve done a lot of damage,” he told the Associated Press. “I’ve created a lot of problems. There are a lot of unhealthy and abandoned dogs out there.” Conron came up with the labradoodle when he was working for the Royal Guide Dog Association of Australia to provide a dog for a blind woman whose husband was allergic to dog hair. What he didn’t expect was that the labradoodle – and its other poodle-cross variants, many of which have health problems – would become so popular.
3 The AK-47
Six months before his death in December 2013, Mikhail Kalashnikov, the designer of the assault rifle, wrote to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church: “My spiritual torment is unbearable. One and the same question: if my ri fl e killed people, does that mean that I, Mikhail Kalashnikov, 93 years of age, the son of a peasant, Christian and Orthodox by faith, am responsible for people’s deaths, even if they were enemies?”
4 Electronic tagging
The electronic tag was originally conceived in the 1960s as a way of tracking former prisoners’ attendance at schools and workplaces, and rewarding them for good behaviour. Its inventors, Bob Gable and his brother Kirkland, were later horri fi ed that the tag had become a form of control and punishment. “It’s not pleasant,” Kirkland Gable told the Guardian in 2010, “but I’m not in control of the universe. I have to realize there are some things out of my control.”
5 Pepper spray
After police sprayed peaceful protesters with pepper spray at a University of California campus in 2011, one of the scientists who helped develop it in the 80s denounced its use. “I have never seen such an inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents,” Kamran Loghman told The New York Times.
6 The office cubicle
In the late 60s, a new form of office was launched, designed to give workers privacy and increase productivity by providing more work space. Instead, it became a way for companies to cram employees into tighter spaces, a visual shorthand for uniformity and soulless work. Its inventor, Bob Propst, said in 1997, “the cubiclizing of people in modern corporations is monolithic insanity.” | 2adv
|
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. | 2adv
|
The regulation eight hours in the office is over. The most important work of the day is done; whatever is left can wait until the morning. This is the point many workers would think about heading for the door.
Yet, for millions of Japanese employees, the thought of clearing away their desks and being at home in time for dinner is enough to invite accusations of disloyalty.
But, after decades of giving companies carte blanche to milk every last drop of productivity from their workforce, a challenge to Japan’s ingrained culture of overwork has come from the government, which is considering making it a legal requirement for workers to take at least five days’ paid holiday a year.
Japanese employees are currently entitled to an average 18.5 days’ paid holiday a year – only two fewer than the global average – with a minimum of ten days, as well as 15 one-day national holidays. In reality, few come even close to taking their full quota, typically using only nine of their 18.5-day average entitlement, according to the labour ministry. While many British workers regard a two-week summer holiday as an inalienable right, workers in Japan have come to see a four-night vacation in Hawaii as the height of self-indulgence.
The move, to be debated in the current parliamentary session, comes after companies started encouraging employees to nap on the job to improve their performance.
By the end of the decade, the government hopes that, if passed, the law will push Japanese employees towards following the example set by British workers, who use an average of 20 days’ paid annual leave, and those in France, who take an average of 25.
Japan’s unforgiving work culture may have helped turn it into an economic superpower, its corporate foot soldiers revered in the rest of the world for their commitment to the company, but this has often been to the exclusion of everything else.
Japan’s low birth rate and predictions of rapid population decline are partly blamed on the lack of time couples have to start families. More employees are falling ill from stress, or worse, succumbing to karoshi, death through overwork.
Despite studies suggesting that longer hours in the office or workshop or on the factory floor do not necessarily make people more productive, today’s workers are still nursing a collective hangover from the bubble years of the 1980s.
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 compiled by the Japanese government. At 35%, South Korea’s workaholics are even worse off.
In spending 14 hours a day at work and giving up many of her paid holidays, Erika Sekiguchi is not even an extreme example. The 36-year-old trading company employee used eight of her 20 days of paid vacation in 2014, six of which counted as sick leave. “Nobody else uses their vacation days,” Sekiguchi said.
She faces the dilemma shared by her peers in companies across Japan: never to take time off to recharge or to risk inviting criticism for appearing to leave more committed colleagues in the lurch.
Yuu Wakebe, a health ministry official overseeing policy on working hours, who admits putting in 100 hours of overtime a month, blames the irresistible pressure to match one’s colleagues, hour for hour. “It is a worker’s right to take paid vacations,” Wakebe said. “But working in Japan involves quite a lot of volunteer spirit.”
That fear of being ostracized at work is being blamed for a rise in stress-related illness, premature death and suicide. According to official data, about 200 people die every year from heart attacks, strokes and other karoshi events brought on by punishing work schedules.
The prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is not known for taking long vacations. Yet even he has spoken out against the unreasonable demands companies place on their employees as they struggle to stay afloat in a more complex globalized market. Japan’s working culture, Abe said recently, “falsely beatifies long hours”. | 2adv
|
A lonely old man living in a crater on the moon is the unlikely focus of John Lewis’s Christmas 2015 advert, as the department store puts a charitable spin on its latest multi-million pound campaign.
Amid increasing hype around John Lewis’s seasonal ad, which has come to mark the beginning of the Christmas shopping season for many, the department store will aim to use its profile to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds for Age UK. It will also encourage staff and customers to join up with their local branch of the charity to care for elderly people who might otherwise be alone over the holiday.
The retailer has spent £7m on a campaign that ranges from the slick TV ad to a smartphone game and merchandise, including glow-in-the- dark pyjamas, as well as areas decked out like the surface of the moon in 11 stores.
After two years of successful ads featuring cuddly animals – a bear and hare, then a penguin – this time, the retailer is tugging at the heartstrings with a story of a young girl, Lily, who spots an old man living in a shack on the moon through her telescope. The determined child tries sending him a letter and firing a note via bow and arrow, before floating him a present of a telescope tied to balloons, which finally enables them to make contact.
The ad’s strapline is: “Show someone they’re loved this Christmas”, which echoes Age UK’s own campaign: “No one should have no one at Christmas”. Profits from three products – a mug, gift tag and card – will go to the charity.
“The charity really resonates with people at this time of year and the ad lends itself to thinking about someone who lives on your street that might not see anybody,” said Rachel Swift, head of marketing at John Lewis.
The campaign features the Oasis track Half the World Away reinterpreted by little-known Norwegian artist Aurora.
The ad cost £1m to make. The moon scenes were shot at the Warner Bros Studios, where the Harry Potter films were made, and the specially built set was created by one of the team behind the latest Star Wars film, The Force Awakens.
As in the last few years, John Lewis has drummed up interest in their most recent ad with a teaser campaign on TV and social media using the hashtag #OnTheMoon. There will be a full moon on Christmas Day 2015 – a complete coincidence, according to Swift.
In 2014, the retailer also spent £7m on a campaign featuring a realistic animated penguin and a young boy playing together to the tune of John Lennon’s Real Love, sung by British singer-songwriter Tom Odell. It had drummed up 22m views on YouTube by the first week of January, ahead of the 16.6m clocked by Sainsbury’s ad featuring First World War soldiers sharing a bar of chocolate, the UK’s next most popular ad of 2014.
Swift said that, despite the hype, John Lewis had stuck to the same strategy for the last five years. “It’s all about thoughtful gifting and going the extra mile for someone you love at Christmas,” she said. “We don’t go into it thinking, 'This is going to be huge,' just getting something right for the brand at this time of year and something we hope customers really love.”
Sarah Vizard, news editor of trade journal Marketing Week, said John Lewis appeared to have reined in its efforts this time, with a lower- key presence in stores despite a growing army of competitors. “There are definitely a lot more brands doing Christmas ads this year but I think a lot of those brands who tried to compete with John Lewis by doing something emotional and creative have gone back to what you can buy in store,” she said. “John Lewis still does the emotional piece the best. This campaign is another great way of putting that across in a way that will resonate with customers. I think people will think it is really cute.”
Among those fighting for attention in the flurry of Christmas ads was sister chain, Waitrose, which launched its Christmas ad online on social media ahead of a TV debut during The X Factor . It used the agency which has created John Lewis’s Christmas ads for years.
Burberry has launched what is only its second festive film, featuring Romeo Beckham and Elton John, while electrical chain Currys drafted in Jeff Goldblum for its first ever dedicated Christmas ad. Asda, Lidl and Morrisons also launched their campaigns at the beginning of November.
Marc Bolland, chief executive of Marks & Spencer, which also launched its Christmas ad at the beginning of November, said that, in the first week of September, the most searched term on its website was Christmas.
Boots, another retailer launching its festive campaign in early November, is going back to a more traditional approach after a critically acclaimed ad in 2014, which featured a family going to great lengths to get together at Christmas. | 2adv
|
The last time she took to the stage, the prototype of the mobile phone was undergoing its first trials. Thirty-five years later, as she performs once again, singer Kate Bush is faced with a different world.
While most concerts are now aglow with phones and tablets, Bush is taking a stand against fans watching her shows through the digital veil of a screen.
Prior to her highly anticipated series of concerts at the Hammersmith Apollo in London, Bush released a statement appealing to her fans to put down their mobile phones at her gigs.
Bush wrote on her website: “I have a request for all of you who are coming to the shows. We have purposefully chosen an intimate theatre setting rather than a large venue or stadium. It would mean a great deal to me if you would please refrain from taking photos or filming during the shows.
“I very much want to have contact with you as an audience, not with iPhones, iPads or cameras. I know it’s a lot to ask but it would allow us to all share in the experience together.”
With her love of theatrics and opulent costumes, Bush’s keenness to stop fans uploading grainy footage to YouTube could also be an attempt to keep the show a surprise for the thousands of fans who have purchased tickets for the 22 dates she is playing.
Bush is not the first to speak out against the detrimental effect of the presence of phones at concerts, with numerous artists berating their fans for experiencing live music through the filter of a screen.
The Who front man, Roger Daltrey, recently said it was “weird” that people did not have their mind on the show when they had gone to a performance and were concentrating on staring at the screen rather than the artist on stage.
He said: “I feel sorry for them, I really feel sorry for them. Looking at life through a screen and not being in the moment totally – if you’re doing that, you’re 50% there, right? It’s weird. I find it weird.”
In 2013, Beyoncé berated one of her fans at a gig for filming. “You can’t even sing because you’re too busy taping,” Beyoncé told him. “I’m right in your face, baby. You gotta seize this moment. Put that damn camera down!”
The debate around the presence of phones at live events is not restricted to music, with sport fans equally vocal on the subject. Recently, Dutch fans at PSV Eindhoven launched a vehement protest against the introduction of wi-fi in their stadium, holding up banners with messages like “No wi-fi. Support the team,” “You can sit at home,” and “Stand united ”, while Manchester United have also told fans to leave their “large electronic devices” at home, prohibiting filming on tablets this season.
Jarvis Cocker has previously criticized phone- wielders in the audience for driving him “insane at concerts”, adding: “It seems stupid to have something happening in front of you and look at it on a screen that’s smaller than the size of a cigarette packet.”
Johnny Marr said in 2013 that it meant that fans missed out on the sensory experience of live music in their desperation to document the event for later.
“To stand and just be looking at it through your phone is a completely wasted opportunity. You know, I don’t mean to be unkind but I think you should put your phone down because you’re just being an idiot, really. Just enjoy the gig,” he said.
“That’s one of the things about gigs – it’s taking in what’s going on with the people around you and, watching it on a little screen, it’s a waste of time.”
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs resorted to putting up a sign at one of their venues, pleading with fans to pocket their technology. It read: “Please do not watch the show through a screen on your smart device/camera. Put it away as a courtesy to the person behind you, and to the band.”
It has even filtered into the world of classical music, with one of the world’s leading pianists surprising concert-goers in June 2013 when he stormed off stage because a fan was filming his performance on a smartphone. Krystian Zimerman returned moments later and declared: “The destruction of music because of YouTube is enormous.”
But Sam Watt of Vyclone, a phone app that encourages audiences to film at concerts and then brings together the footage to create a crowd-sourced video of the event, said that such artists were fighting a losing battle and that filming at concerts enhanced rather than detracted from the experience.
“Fans filming is now part of the concert experience – that is a just a fact – so we take that footage that people are filming at concerts through the app, they upload it onto the app, and then it comes back to them mixed together with everybody else who was filming. You end up with really fantastic content,” he said.
“Our overall thinking is that filming at concerts adds to the experience, rather than taking away from it and I think, if Kate Bush came round for a cup of tea, we could have a really interesting discussion about this and we might be able to win her round,” he added. “Knowing that people are going to film and want those memories is really important because it is probably going to hit them on the head in the future if they say to everyone they can’t film. You’ve got to embrace it.” | 2adv
|
Cities don’t often decide to pack their bags, get up and move down the road. But that’s exactly what Kiruna, an Arctic town in northern Sweden, is having to do – to avoid being swallowed up into the earth.
“It’s a dystopian choice,” says Krister Lindstedt of White, the Stockholm-based architects firm charged with the biblical task of moving this city of 23,000 people away from a gigantic iron-ore mine that is fast gobbling up the ground beneath its streets. “Either the mine must stop digging, creating mass unemployment, or the city has to move – or else face certain destruction. It’s an existential predicament.”
Founded in 1900 by the state-owned Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara mining company (LK), Kiruna has grown rich off the vast seam of iron ore below the town, but it’s now facing destruction by the very phenomenon that created its wealth. “We are symbiotic: the town is here because of the mine,” says Deputy Mayor Niklas Siren. “Otherwise, no devil would have built a city here.”
Located 145km inside the Arctic Circle, Kiruna is subject to a brutal climate, enduring winters with no sunlight and average temperatures below -15C. But the deep deposit of magnetite has proved a strong enough magnet to keep people here. Driven by the insatiable global appetite for construction, the mine has become the world’s largest underground iron-ore extraction site, producing 90% of all the iron in Europe, enough to build more than six Eiffel Towers a day. And demand continues to grow.
In 2004, the mining company broke it to the town that its days were numbered: digging its shafts towards the city at an angle of 60 degrees, subsidence would soon lead to the widespread cracking and collapse of the town’s buildings. A decade on, fissures are starting to appear in the ground, creeping ever closer to the town.
“The people of Kiruna have been living in limbo for ten years,” says Viktoria Walldin, a social anthropologist who works with the architects. “They have put their lives on hold, unable to make major decisions like buying a house, redecorating, having a child or opening a business.”
After years of dithering, the city has finally unveiled a master plan for how it will proceed. “Imagine it like a walking millipede of a city,” says Lindstedt, unrolling a plan that shows the town’s streets and squares beginning to crawl eastwards along a new high street, until the whole place has moved safely out of the way of the mine by 2033.
A new town square is already under way, 3km to the east, with a circular town hall planned by Danish architect Henning Larsen, while 20 key buildings have been identified to be dismantled and resurrected piece by piece in their new home – like an Ikea flatpack on a grand scale. Kiruna’s rust-red wooden church, built in 1912 in a form that recalls the indigenous Sami teepees, and once voted Sweden’s most beautiful building, will take pride of place in a new park, while the cast- iron bell tower will stand once again above the town hall. But not everything will be saved.
“I spoke to an old lady who walks past the bench every day where she had her first kiss,” says Walldin. “It’s things like that – the hospital where your first child was born, for example – that are important to people’s sense of identity and all that’s going to disappear.”
Billed as “the most democratic move in history ”, the project has been allocated the equivalent of £320m by the mining company for building new facilities, including a high school, fire station, community centre, library and swimming hall. But top of most people’s concerns is where they will actually live and what process will determine the housing allocation.
“These details have yet to be determined,” admits Lindstedt. “People are used to very low rents and very high incomes but, in future, this will have to change.” LK has agreed to compensate residents to the value of their homes plus 25% but many locals say this is not enough to afford a new-build house at market rates.
To aid the valuation process, the architects have monitored the housing lettings in nearby cities over a period of years, and “tagged” the homes in Kiruna with the assets they possess, from internal space and gardens to proximity to bus stops and the city centre. They have also proposed a “Kiruna Portal ”, a kind of mass salvage yard, where materials from the doomed homes can be brought and hopefully recycled in the construction of the new buildings – although, given that Sweden has no tradition of self-build, it’s hard to see this taking off.
A closer look at the plan shows the new town bears little relation to the original Kiruna at all. The current town is a sprawling suburban network of winding streets, home to detached houses with gardens. White’s plan incorporates a much higher-density arrangement of multi-storey apartment blocks around shared courtyards, lining straight boulevards, down which the icy winds will surge.
It is an opportunity, say the architects, for Kiruna to “reinvent itself” into a model of sustainable development, attracting young people who wouldn’t have stayed in the town before, with new cultural facilities and “visionary” things such as a cable car bobbing above the high street. But it is a vision that many of the existing residents seem unlikely to be able to afford. | 2adv
|
Lego’s profits rose strongly in the first half of 2014, helped by the success of its Lego Movie , which has stormed box offices in the US and UK.
The Danish toy firm’s sales rose across Europe, the Americas and Asia as children snapped up products linked to the film. The film, released in February, took more than $250m in the US and £31m in the UK by the first weekend in April.
The movie cost about $60m to make and has been described as a near-flawless piece of content marketing by creating entertaining content aimed at consumers who are likely to go out and buy the company’s products.
Lego’s finance director, John Goodwin, said: “The strong performance of the Lego Movie products had a positive effect during the first half of 2014, and it remains to be seen how the line will continue to develop behind the highly anticipated launch of the movie on DVD in the second half of 2014.”
Operating profit for the first six months of Lego’s financial year increased by 12% to $630m. Sales rose by 11% to more than three times the figure six years before.
Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, Lego’s chief executive, said: “It is a very satisfactory result that shows our significant growth in recent years in a tough economic environment. The result for the first half of 2014 is an outcome of our ability to develop, launch and distribute Lego products, which children all over the world put at the top of their wishlists.”
Lego, based in the small town of Billund, started producing its plastic bricks in 1949 and became a staple children’s toy around the world by the 1970s. But the group lost its way and was on the brink of collapse in 2003. Knudstrop took over as chief executive, ending 70 years of family rule, and ditched hundreds of surplus products to refocus the business on its trademark bricks.
The company opened its first factory in China in April and opened an office in Shanghai to spearhead expansion in the world’s second- biggest economy. | 2adv
|
Loneliness has finally become a hot topic – the Office for National Statistics has found Britain to be the loneliest country in Europe. British people are less likely to have strong friendships or know their neighbours than residents anywhere else in the EU and a relatively high proportion of them have no one to rely on in a crisis. Meanwhile, research by Professor John Cacioppo at the University of Chicago has found loneliness to be twice as bad for older people’s health as obesity and almost as great a cause of death as poverty.
But, shocking as this is, such studies overlook the loneliness epidemic among younger adults. In 2010, the Mental Health Foundation found loneliness to be a greater concern among young people than the elderly. The 18- to 34-year-olds surveyed were more likely to feel lonely often, to worry about feeling alone and to feel depressed because of loneliness than the over-55s.
“Loneliness is a recognized problem among the elderly – there are day centres and charities to help them,” says Sam Challis, an information manager at the mental health charity Mind, “but, when young people reach 21, they’re too old for youth services.” This is problematic because of the close relationship between loneliness and mental health – it is linked to increased stress, depression, paranoia, anxiety, addiction, cognitive decline and is a known factor in suicide. In a new essay, Paul Farmer, the chief executive of Mind, and Jenny Edwards, the chief executive of the Mental Health Foundation, say it can be both a cause and effect of mental health problems.
But what can young people do to combat loneliness? Dr Grant Blank, a survey research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, points out that social media and the internet can be a boon and a problem. They are beneficial when they enable us to communicate with distant loved ones, but not when they replace face-to-face contact. “People present an idealized version of themselves online and we expect to have social lives like those portrayed in the media,” says Challis. Comparing friends’ seemingly perfect lives with ours can lead us to withdraw socially.
While meditation techniques and apps such as Headspace are trendy solutions frequently recommended for a range of mental health problems, they’re not necessarily helpful for loneliness, as they actively encourage us to dwell alone on our thoughts. “You’d be better off addressing the underlying causes of being lonely first – what’s stopping you going out and seeing people?” asks Challis.
Indeed, a study of social media at the University of Michigan in 2013 found that, while Facebook reduces life satisfaction, using technology to help you meet new people can be beneficial. And, if for whatever reason, you are unable to venture outside, the internet can bring solace. Mumsnet has been “an absolute godsend” for Maddy Matthews, 19, a student with a two-month-old daughter. Since the birth, she rarely sees her university friends and her partner works most evenings. “In the first few days, I was up late at night feeding her and I was worried I was doing something wrong. Being able to post on Mumsnet has helped me feel less alone.”
Helplines can also reduce loneliness, at least in the short term. One in four men who call the emotional support charity Samaritans mention loneliness or isolation and Get Connected is a free confidential helpline for young people, where they can seek help with emotional and mental health issues often linked to loneliness. There are also support services on websites such as Mind’s that can remind you you’re not alone.
At work, it can be beneficial to tell your employer how you’re feeling. John Binns, who advises businesses on mental health and well-being, was admitted to hospital for stress-related depression in 2007 and took two months off work. He felt as if there was no one to talk to and he wasn’t close enough to colleagues for them to notice the changes in his behaviour. Greater openness with his employer and colleagues made his return to work easier. “Often people find that colleagues are more supportive than they’d expected. Mine started to reach out, asking me to lunch and reassuring me that the world hadn’t moved on that much since I’d left.”
Office chit-chat may seem like a waste of time, but it helps to cushion us from the emotional and psychological effects of work strain. “If you form connections with your team, you might be stressed but not isolated,” says Rick Hughes,
the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy’s (BACP) lead adviser for the workplace.
“We treat the networks we have as incidental but they’re fundamental to our well-being,” says Nicky Forsythe, a psychotherapist and the founder of Talk for Health, a social enterprise that trains people to give and receive peer support in groups. “The most important thing is to have a regular time and place to reflect on your life and to have an empathetic listener.”
For developing personal skills such as empathy, counselling can help. The BACP website allows you to search for counsellors in your area. “A problem aired is a problem shared and sometimes you need to talk to someone impartial and independent of your friends and family,” says Hughes. Most universities offer students such counselling and many run group sessions that specifically address loneliness.
If recent research is to be believed, loneliness is killing the elderly and, with an ageing population, we should aim to reduce our isolation before it is too late. “Getting older doesn’t have to mean getting lonelier,” says Ruth Sutherland, the chief executive of the relationship counselling service Relate, in a new report. “But much of this rests on laying the foundations to good-quality relationships earlier in life.” | 2adv
|
A nasal spray laced with the 'Love hormone' oxytocin could help children with autism learn to handle social situations better, US researchers claim. Scans of children with autistic spectrum disorder showed that a single dose of the chemical improved brain responses to facial expressions, a shift that could make social interactions feel more natural and rewarding for them.
The scientists behind the research said a course of oxytocin might boost the success of behavioural therapies that are already used to help people with autism learn to cope with social situations. “Over time, what you would expect to see is more appropriate social responding, being more interested in interacting with other people, more eye contact and more conversational ability,” said Kevin Pelphrey, director of the Child Neuroscience Lab at Yale University.
Autism is a developmental disorder seen in more than one in 100 people. The condition affects individuals in different ways, but is characterized by difficulties in social interaction and communication. So far, there is no established treatment for the social problems caused by autism. Researchers at Yale have studied the brain chemical oxytocin as a potential treatment for the social impairments caused by autism because it plays a crucial role in bonding and trust. Results have been mixed, though: one recent study found no significant benefit for youths given the chemical over several days. But Pelphrey said oxytocin might help the brain learn from social interactions; it would work best when used with therapies that encourage people with autism to engage more socially, he said.
“Our study shows that oxytocin affects the brain and opens up the possibility that, when combined with behavioural treatments, it works like a social enhancer,” he said. The scientists used a technique called functional MRI to scan the brains of 17 youths aged eight to 16 with autism while they looked at images of cars or the eyes of people expressing various emotions. The scans were given 45 minutes after the participants inhaled a placebo or oxytocin through a nasal spray.
The scans showed that reward circuitry in the children’s brains behaved more normally after a snort of oxytocin, being more active when the person was looking at faces and less active when viewing the inanimate cars. The study appears in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States. “If this is replicated, it suggests that oxytocin might treat something for which we don’t have a treatment in autism, and that’s the core social motivation,” Pelphrey told the Guardian.
He warned that it was too early to use oxytocin as a treatment for the social difficulties caused by autism and cautioned against buying oxytocin from suppliers online. “We don’t want them running out on the basis of this study or any other and trying oxytocin at home. There is no telling what they are buying. We are nowhere near thinking this is a ready treatment. It needs more follow-up,” he said. “This is an important new study in identifying changes in brain activity in key regions of the brain involved in social cognition in autism following oxytocin administration,” said Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University. A surprising finding, however, is that oxytocin nasal spray did not change performance on the social cognitive task. Nor is it clear yet if oxytocin only has benefits for people with autism or has any unwanted side effects.
Finally, oxytocin effects only last about 45 minutes, so there may be practical considerations as to whether this could be used as a treatment.
“From a scientific perspective, this study has a lot of evidence from animal and human work to justify serious attention, but more research is needed. Doctors should be cautious about the clinical potential of this hormone until we know much more about its benefits and risks, in much larger studies.” Said Simon Baron-Cohen.
Uta Frith, who studies autism at University College London, said: “According to this study, oxytocin may have the effect of making faces more interesting as assessed by greater activity in brain structures concerned with reward evaluation. Disappointingly, this effect is seen only in brain activity and not in behaviour. Demonstrating an effect on behaviour will be critical if nasal spray treatment is to be of any value.” | 2adv
|
He is the star of one of the world’s longest running and most successful film series, with 23 movies and more than $6bn amassed at the global box office, but James Bond shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, the Bond brand is stronger than ever, after the record-breaking performance of Skyfall, which became the biggest ever film at the UK box office on its release in 2012 and, with its total earnings of $1.1bn, currently stands in ninth place of all-time largest earners.
Hence the intense interest that surrounded the announcement of a few more details of the 24th Bond film – not the least its official title, Spectre. The number one question is this: can Spectre repeat the Skyfall trick? Will Skyfall remain a high water mark for the Bond movie or can Spectre extend this winning run?
Charles Gant, film editor for Heat magazine, says the indications are it is heading in the right direction.” Skyfall was a brilliant strategic move,” he says. “It was cleverly positioned as simultaneously modern and retro. It appealed to the Daniel-Craig-era fans, who are relative newcomers to the franchise, and it also managed to engage the older, more nostalgic elements of the audience, who may have lost interest over the previous few films. With the new title,” he adds, “they are already on to a winner. My feeling is that Spectre announces that they want to hang on to the nostalgic, more age-diverse Bond fan, as well as retaining the younger audience.”
The initial signs are that Eon Productions, the company originally founded in 1961 to make Dr No and that is behind all the “official” Bonds, is doing its utmost to ensure lightning strikes twice by installing the key creative talent behind Skyfall on Spectre. Daniel Craig has been tied down at least until Bond 25, while the same writers have produced the script.
But it’s the recapture of director Sam Mendes that gives Bondwatchers the most hope. A director principally known for character studies such as American Beauty and Revolutionary Road, Mendes has taken the Bond series to new heights. Gant says: “Mendes managed to engage with both the modern and the traditional Bond audience, and he also pulled in high-calibre actors like Ralph Fiennes. To get actors like Fiennes in, they have to be happy with the director.”
Among other achievements, Skyfall virtually doubled the box office of its predecessor, Quantum of Solace, which managed a worldwide figure of $586m on its release in 2008. No one is expecting anything like that this time, but Eon will not be complacent.
Though the Bond series was not in trouble before Mendes’s arrival – and Craig’s – there was the sense of a certain amount of staleness towards the end of Pierce Brosnan’s run. The series had survived the drying up of actual Bond stories to adapt, the movies having long since departed from any resemblance to the Ian Fleming originals, but it was lacking a certain dynamism.
This cycle, however, was nothing new: the history of the Bond series has been one of ebb and flow, stasis and renewal, revolving most obviously around the lead actor: first, Sean Connery; then, successively, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Brosnan and, now, Craig. Each appointment has been a response to the state of the series and some have worked out better than others.
Lazenby only lasted a single film, while Dalton’s two efforts, The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill coincided with a period in the late 80s when the 007 movie had been thoroughly eclipsed by more aggressive, slickly produced Hollywood action movies. According to Gant, “the period of Roger Moore’s last ones, going into Dalton, didn’t really excite audiences. Brosnan saw a bit of an upturn commercially, while Craig has taken it to new levels. On the other hand, the early Bonds were incredibly commercial films, sexy and exciting, and there was very little around like them.”
It’s a point worth underlining that, although Skyfall’s actual receipts dwarf all the other Bond films, the performance of some of the 1960s entries in the series was almost as brilliant by comparison. With figures adjusted for inflation, the 1965 release, Thunderball , is only a hair’s breadth below Skyfall , while Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice both outperformed the other Craig films (as did the 70s Bonds, The Spy Who Loved Me and Live and Let Die ). By this reckoning, Licence to Kill is the worst-performing of all Bonds, with Moore’s final effort, A View to a Kill, in second-to-last place.
Nevertheless, the Bond brand has remained immensely powerful over the decades, with Eon being forced to fend off attempts by rival outfits to capitalize on the series’s popularity. Through a quirk of rights ownership, adaptations of Casino Royale (in 1967) and Thunderball (as Never Say Never Again , in 1983) were released in competition with Eon productions. Although subject to legal disputes over several decades, Eon now has full control of both books.
Casino Royale, whose rights had been individually sold off by Fleming in 1955, eventually passed to Eon in 1999 as a result of an agreement between Eon’s backers, MGM, and rival Hollywood studio Sony – thereby clearing the way for the 2006 version. Thunderball, on the other hand, owed its disputed status to writer-producer Kevin McClory, who helped Fleming outline the original story and who claimed ownership of the novel over subsequent decades, and produced Never Say Never Again as a result. After McClory’s death in 2006, his family eventually settled with MGM and Eon’s parent company in November 2013.
If the initial surge of enthusiasm for Bond movies lasted through the 60s and into the 1970s, it’s fair to say that the series almost ground to a halt after Licence to Kill’s poor figures. Goldeneye, the first of Brosnan’s efforts, heralded a dramatic renewal: not simply because of a new actor but, more significantly, because of who was behind the camera.
However, after a six-year break, Eon installed Martin Campbell in the chair: another experienced British director but one who was able to orchestrate one of the most elaborate stunts in Bond history. The justly renowned opening scene of Goldeneye – during which Bond freefalls into the cockpit of a pilotless light aeroplane – did much to reinvigorate and modernize the series on its own. Moreover, a whole new generation was reached through a hugely successful Goldeneye video-game spin-off, making a significant contribution to perceptions that the Bond film was no longer stale and old-fashioned. | 2adv
|
Benjamin Carle is 96.9% made in France, right down to his underpants and socks. Unfortunately, six Ikea forks, a Chinese guitar and unsourced wall paint stopped him being declared a 100% economic patriot, but nobody is perfect.
Carle, 26, set out, in 2013, to see if it was possible to live using only French-made products for ten months as part of a television documentary.
The idea was triggered by the Minister for Economic Renewal Arnaud Montebourg’s call for the public to buy French to save the country’s industrial production sector.
The experiment cost Carle his smartphone, television, refrigerator (all made in China); his spectacles (Italian); his underpants (Moroccan); morning coffee (Guatemalan) and his adored David Bowie music (British).
Fortunately, his long-suffering girlfriend, Anaïs, and cat, Loon, (both French) stuck with him.
“Politicians say all sorts of things and expect us to go along with it. I wanted to see if it was possible and feasible to do what the minister was asking us to do; to hold him to account for his words,” Carle told the Guardian over a non-French coffee in a Parisian café after finishing his documentary.
He set just three rules: eat only foods produced in France, eliminate contact with foreign-made goods and do so on €1,800 a month (above the minimum wage of €1,430 to cover the extra expense of living in Paris).
The journalist was shocked to find out at the start of the experiment that only 4.5% of the contents of his flat were made nationally – and that the rest would have to go, including the lightbulbs (China) and green beans (Kenya).
The removal men left his home almost bare.
Left without a refrigerator (none are made in France) or nail clippers, he was forced to chill his food on the window ledge and saw at his toenails with a penknife.
His foreign-made clothes, down to his underwear, were replaced with more expensive alternatives: French-produced underpants (€26), socks (€9), polo shirt (€75), espadrille sandals ( €26), but no jeans as none are produced in France.
During the experiment, Carle scoured supermarket shelves for 100% French-made products, learned to cook seasonal fruit and vegetables grown in France, proudly brushed his teeth with the last toothbrush made in France by a company in Picardie employing 29 people and hand-washed his smalls until he found the last French-made washing machine (which, being top opening, would not fit under the kitchen counter).
Going out with friends was problematic – no American films, no Belgian beer, no sushi or pizza. Staying home, with no sofa for the first few months and no television, meant listening to crooner Michel Sardou and reading French novels. French wine was, of course, allowed and French-Canadian singer Céline Dion, but not, according to his advisers, French bands such as Daft Punk, who sing in English.
Unable to use his British-made bicycle or even a French car after discovering the only affordable Peugeot, Renault and Citroën models are mostly made overseas, he invested in a fug-emitting orange Mobylette moped.
The last things to go were the computer, replaced by a Qooq, a recipe tablet that connects – slowly – to the internet and the iPhone, swapped for an old Sagem mobile.
The documentary shows Carle – realizing he is addicted to his iPhone – smashing it with a brand-new French-made Tefal saucepan, while his girlfriend shrieks: “Are you crazy? Those are new pans!”
Carle tells viewers his aim is to “save the French economy. After all, I like Mission Impossible”. He admits the experiment was part serious and part jest. At one point, he consults a French language expert to check if he should be using “cool” and other Anglicisms – he was advised to swap it for the nearest French equivalent: “chouette”.
On discovering France makes no refrigerators (apart from wine coolers) or televisions, but is big in aeroplane seats and windmills, he sighs and says: “Great. Nothing that will fit into my apartment.”
At the end of the experiment, Carle takes out a bank loan to refurnish his home and clothe himself. A special “auditor” declares him 96.9% “made in France” and Montebourg visits to present him with a medal.
Carle’s conclusion: “It’s not entirely possible or even desirable to live 100% made in France, particularly in terms of new technology. But that wasn’t the point.
“This wasn’t about French nationalism or patriotism. It was trying to show that we should reflect about the way we consume and make different choices, and that applies in all countries. If we want to save jobs and industries, wherever we are, we might think about supporting them.
“A T-shirt is more expensive in France but I can be sure it has been produced by workers who are correctly paid and have good working conditions. I cannot be sure about a cheaper T-shirt produced in Asia or Morocco.”
He added: “It’s hypocrisy to go around blaming capitalists for a country’s economic decline when people could be doing more as consumers.”
Carle says he hopes to continue supporting French industry and producers, but not 100%. “It is a full-time job just finding the stuff,” he said.
The first thing he did when the experiment ended was invite his friends around for the evening to enjoy “a plate of cheese and listen to the David Bowie album Aladdin Sane”.
“It was difficult not being able to invite people around because there was nowhere to sit ... but I’d choose the Bowie over a sofa any day.” | 2adv
|
He is not the first person to express scepticism about Mars One, a vastly ambitious private mission aiming to settle humans on Mars from 2025. But Joseph Roche is different from most critics: he’s on the shortlist of astronauts.
Roche, an astrophysicist at Trinity College Dublin who was announced in February as among the 100 people in line for the mission, has written for the Guardian expressing his grave doubts about the viability of Mars One.
The selection process, Roche writes, “was not rigorous enough to reach the requisite standard of more traditional astronaut selection programmes”. He also says the Dutch Mars One team have displayed “a certain naivety” in believing they can succeed alone in the supposed $6bn mission and should now accept it is very unlikely to happen.
He writes: “More openness and transparency would benefit Mars One greatly but I think that the shortcomings of the selection process, coupled with their unwillingness to engage and collaborate with the scientific community mean that the time might have come for Mars One to acknowledge the implausibility of this particular venture and turn their efforts towards supporting other exciting and more viable upcoming space missions.”
Roche also expressed worries about the way the mission organizers publicized a so-called top-ten candidates. The ranking, he said, didn’t mean these were the most likely potential astronauts but was, instead, based on how many “supporter points” each had earned through acts such as buying official merchandise.
He writes: “These points are Mars One’s supporter points which 'represent the degree of your support to Mars One’s mission'.” These points play no role in the selection process and serve only to show how much each supporter has donated to Mars One.”
The official timeline for the mission says the group plans to dispatch a stationary lander and satellite to Mars in 2018, followed by a rover in 2020 and cargo missions starting in 2022. Humans would start arriving in 2025 and crews of four would be sent every two years to add to the settlement. They would not return to Earth.
In February, a prominent supporter of the project, Gerard’t Hooft, a Dutch Nobel laureate in physics, said he did not believe this timetable was realistic. He said: “It will take quite a bit longer and be quite a bit more expensive. When they first asked me to be involved, I told them: 'You have to put a zero after everything'.”
Roche also spoke to Medium, a US blogging platform that has previously expressed grave sceptism about Mars One, reporting among other things that the supposed 200,000 applications to be astronauts in fact totalled 2,761.
He told Medium about the selection process in more detail: “I have not met anyone from Mars One in person. Initially, they’d said there were going to be regional interviews; we would travel there, we’d be interviewed, we’d be tested over several days and, in my mind, that sounded at least like something that approached a legitimate astronaut selection process.
“But then they made us sign a non-disclosure agreement if we wanted to be interviewed and then, all of a sudden, it changed from being a proper regional interview over several days to being a ten-minute Skype call.”
Roche told the Guardian he did not want to give more interviews as he was wary about being negative about the idea of space travel.
In his comment piece he writes: “I am passionate about pushing the boundaries of scientific endeavour and that is why the ambitiousness of the Mars One plan appealed to me. Although Mars One were never likely to overcome the financial and technical barriers during their proposed timeline, it was refreshing to hear a new idea that challenges us to think about our own role in the future of space exploration.
“Being part of the subsequent public debate over the ethics and morality of future missions has been one of the most interesting and enjoyable aspects of my candidacy with Mars One. If a one-way mission to Mars ever became possible, then I would always volunteer. For an astrophysicist, that is not a difficult decision to make but it is also a moot point because I do not think we will see a one-way mission in my lifetime.” | 2adv
|