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"For 85 years, it was just a grey blob on classroom maps of the solar system. But, on 15 July, Pluto was seen in high resolution for the first time. The images show dramatic mountain ranges made from solid water ice as big as the Alps or the Rockies.
The extraordinary images of the former ninth planet and its large moon, Charon, were sent back 4bn miles to Earth from the New Horizons spacecraft. They are the climax of a mission that has been quietly underway for nearly ten years.
Alan Stern, the mission’s principal investigator, said “New Horizons is returning amazing results. The data look absolutely gorgeous, and Pluto and Charon are just mind-blowing.”
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 is, with about 100,000 smaller icy objects. John Spencer, a mission scientist, said the mountains appear to be around 3,000 metres high and several hundred miles across.
The detailed image of one edge of the dwarf planet showed not a single crater. This tells scientists that there has been recent geological activity on the surface, which could include dramatic geysers throwing ice into the atmosphere or cryo-volcanoes that erupt in explosions of ice.
Pluto used to be the ninth planet but, since 2006, it has been known as a dwarf planet. The NASA press conference began with 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 shown.
Stern said that there would be many more images and that we would learn a lot more about the planet during the coming year. The images have already produced some surprises. Scientists believe the mountains are made from water ice with just a thin cover of “exotic” ices, methane and nitrogen.
“Water ice is strong enough to hold up big mountains and that’s what we think we can see here. This is the first time we’ve seen this. The methane and nitrogen are just a coating.” The mountains on Pluto probably formed no more than 100m years ago – extremely recently in the 4.56bn-year-old solar system. This suggests the region, which covers about 1% of Pluto’s surface, may still be geologically active. The images are the first to show ice mountains, except those found on the moons of giant planets.
The images are so detailed that, if the craft were flying over London, we would be able to see the runways at Heathrow airport.
The distance to Pluto – 5bn km – means it takes New Horizons hours to send back a picture and it will take 16 months to send back all the data. The team also announced that the heart-shaped feature visible on Pluto will now be known as the Tombaugh Regio, after Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered the dwarf planet in 1930.
The new view of Charon reveals an area of cliffs stretching about 1,000km. This suggests cracks in Charon’s surface, which could also be the result of geological activity. The image also shows a dramatic canyon about 7 to 9km deep.
Cathy Olkin, a mission scientist, said: “Charon just blew our socks off when we saw the new image today. The team has just been abuzz. There is so much interesting science in this one image alone.” Scientists think that Pluto is two thirds rock surrounded by a lot of ice, with surface temperatures of about minus 230C. As the £460m mission continues into the Kuiper belt, scientists hope that it will help us to see and understand more of the ancient solar system and the origins of planets. It may even help to explain 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 sending back data until the mid-2030s. Then, its plutonium power source will run out and it will drift outwards towards the edge of the solar system and deep space.
New Horizons also observed the smaller members of the Pluto system, which includes four other moons: Nix, Hydra, Styx and Kerberos. “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 images also suggest that 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.”",intermediate,0
"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.",advanced,1
"The Moroccan city of Ouarzazate is used to big productions. On the edge of the Sahara Desert and at the centre of the North African country’s “Ouallywood” film industry, it has played host to big-budget location shots in Lawrence of Arabia, The Mummy, The Living Daylights and even Game of Thrones. 
Now, the trading city, nicknamed the “door of the desert”, is the location for another blockbuster – a complex of four linked solar mega-plants, which, alongside hydro and wind, will help provide nearly half of Morocco’s electricity from renewables by 2020 with, it is hoped, some spare to export to Europe. The project is a key plank in Morocco’s ambitions to use its untapped deserts to become a global solar superpower. 
When the full complex is complete, it will be the largest concentrated solar power plant in the world and the first phase, called Noor 1, will go live in November 2015. The mirror technology it uses is less widespread and more expensive than the photovoltaic panels that are now familiar on roofs the world over but it will have the advantage of being able to continue producing power even after the sun goes down. 
The potential for solar power from the desert has been known for decades. In the days after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986, the German particle physicist Gerhard Knies calculated that the world’s deserts receive enough energy in a few hours to provide for humanity’s power needs for a whole year. The challenge, though, has been capturing that energy and transporting it to the population centres where it is required. 
As engineers put the finishing touches to Noor 1, its 500,000 crescent-shaped solar mirrors glitter across the desert skyline. The 800 rows follow the sun as it tracks across the heavens, whirring quietly every few minutes as their shadows slip further east. 
When they are finished, the four plants at Ouarzazate will occupy a space as big as Morocco’s capital city, Rabat, and generate 580 mega-watts (MW) of electricity, enough to power a million homes. Noor 1 itself has a generating capacity of 160MW. 
Morocco’s Environment Minister, Hakima el-Haite, believes that solar energy could have the same impact on the region this century that oil production had in the last. But the $9bn project to make her country’s deserts boom was triggered by more immediate concerns, she said. 
“We are not an oil producer. We import 94% of our energy as fossil fuels from abroad and that has big consequences for our state budget,” el-Haite told the Guardian. “We also used to subsidize fossil fuels, which have a heavy cost, so when we heard about the potential of solar energy, we thought, 'Why not?'” 
Solar energy will make up a third of Morocco’s renewable energy supply by 2020, with wind and hydro taking the same share each. 
“We are very proud of this project,” el-Haite said. “I think it is the most important solar plant in the world.” 
Each parabolic mirror is 12 metres high and focused on a steel pipeline carrying a 'heat transfer solution' (HTF) that is warmed to 393C as it snakes along the trough before coiling into a heat engine. There, it is mixed with water to create steam that turns energy- generating turbines. 
The HTF is made up of a synthetic thermal oil solution that is pumped towards a heat tank containing molten sands that can store heat energy for three hours, allowing the plant to power homes into the night. The mirrors are spaced in tier formations to minimize damage from sand blown up by desert winds. 
Technicians say that the Noor 2 and 3 plants, due to open in 2017, will store energy for up to eight hours – opening the prospect of 24/7 solar energy in the Sahara and the surrounding region. 
“The biggest challenge we faced was being able to finish the project on time with the performance level we needed to achieve,” said Rashid al-Bayad, the project director. 
But, even as the first phase of the project nears completion, Morocco is eyeing grander international ambitions. “We are already involved in high tension transportation lines to cover the full south of Morocco and Mauritania as a first step,” says Ahmed Baroudi, manager of Société d’Investissements Energétiques, the national renewable energy investment firm. But he says the project’s ultimate impact will go far wider – even as far as the Middle East. “The ultimate objective given by his majesty the king is Mecca.” 
Whether that ambition is achieved remains to be seen but exporting solar energy could have stabilizing effects within and between countries, according to the Moroccan solar energy agency (Masen). Talks are ongoing with Tunisia and energy exports northwards across the Mediterranean remain a key goal. 
“We believe that it’s possible to export energy to Europe but, first, we would have to build the interconnectors which don’t yet exist,” said Maha el-Kadiri, a Masen spokeswoman. “Specifically, we would have to build interconnections, which would not go through the existing one in Spain, and, then, start exporting.” 
Spain has itself prohibited new solar projects because of a lack of interconnectors to transmit the energy to France. The EU has set a target of ensuring that 10% of each member country’s power can be transported abroad by cable by 2020. 
In the meantime, Morocco is focused on using solar to meet its own needs for resource independence. This could, one day, include water desalination, in a country that is increasingly being hit by drought as the climate warms. Officials are keenly aware of the running they are making in what is the most advanced renewable energy programme in the Middle East and North African region. “We are at the avante-garde of solar,” el-Kadiri says. 
About $9bn has been invested in the Noor Complex, much of it from international institutions such as the European Investment Bank and World Bank and backed by Moroccan government guarantees. Undisclosed energy subsidies from Morocco’s unelected ruler, King Mohammed VI, have prevented the cost from being transferred to energy consumers. 
One month before launch, over a thousand, mostly Moroccan, workers are still racing to fix electric wires, take down scaffolding and wrap rockwool insulation around steel pipelines. They bustle past in yellow and orange bibs, working 12-hour shifts against a backdrop of the Atlas Mountains. Harnesses with hammers and gloves strapped to their belts swing by their sides. Ubiquitous hard hats, safety shoes and ear plugs give the scene an air of theatrical camp. 
For Hajar Lakhael, a 25-year-old environment and security manager from Meknes, rehearsals are almost over and the blockbuster production is nearly ready for action. 
“We’ve done the construction and, now, we will see how these projects look when they start,” she says. “It is exactly like the preparation for a grand performance.” 
A global audience will be watching with interest.",advanced,2
"SeaWorld has suffered an 84% collapse in profits – customers have deserted the controversial aquatic theme park company because of claims that it mistreated orca whales.
The company trains dolphins and killer whales to perform tricks in front of stadiums full of people. They have suffered declines in attendance, sales and profits because people think they don’t treat their animals well.
SeaWorld has been in the news since the 2013 documentary Blackfish said that its treatment of orca whales made the whales act violently and that this caused the deaths of three people. After the documentary was shown, attendance collapsed and the company lost more than half of its market value on Wall Street. Its former CEO also had to leave the company.
Animal rights activists say that orcas kept in tanks die at a younger age than wild whales. SeaWorld started a marketing campaign to show that this isn’t true.
It cut ticket prices and spent $10m on marketing but SeaWorld CEO Joel Manby had to admit that the company is still struggling to convince the public that it treats its whales well.
“We realize we have much work ahead of us,” Manby said. Talking about the company’s reputation, he said, “Early feedback on our campaign has been positive. However, we recognize that solving our image problems in California will be challenging.”
“We will continue to fight with the facts because the facts are on our side,” he said.
Manby, who joined the company as CEO in 2015 to help the company recover, said he would give a presentation on his vision for the future of the company at a special event on 6 November.
There are already plans for a new shark exhibition in Orlando and an attraction in San Antonio that will allow customers to swim with dolphins in a “naturalistic” setting.
The company’s financial report, released on 6 August, showed profits in the second quarter dropped from $37.4m in 2014 to $5.8m in 2015. This is an 84% decrease. Revenue fell from $405m to $392m. Attendance dropped by more than 100,000 from 6.58 million to 6.48 million.
Analysts will now be closely watching SeaWorld’s sales and attendance numbers in the third quarter, which is traditionally the company’s most profitable and covers the summer holiday season. Attendance may suffer from a fresh scandal in July 2015 – it was alleged that a SeaWorld employee had infiltrated animal rights protest groups against the company.
Jared Goodman, director of animal law for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), said: “SeaWorld has a spying scandal, animals are dying in its tanks and tens of thousands of people are against its plan to build a new orca prison. Families just don’t want to buy tickets to see orcas going insane inside tiny tanks. SeaWorld’s orcas won’t recover and SeaWorld’s profits won’t recover either until it empties its tanks and builds sanctuaries by the coast.”
SeaWorld’s shares, which were worth $39 in 2013, fell to just under $18 in August 2015.",intermediate,3
"There are worse things to do in life than stroll along Rio’s Copacabana beach in the sunshine on the way to watch a World Cup match. So it was not surprising that England fan Anthony McDowell from Liverpool was in a good mood. “The place is lovely. The people are great. There’s a party atmosphere,” said McDowell. “The only thing that could be better is the England team.”
He and six friends were among the thousands of supporters from around the world who have made the beach into a party zone. Some danced, some took photos, some drank, but mostly they just walked and talked about football, waiting for the next game to begin on the big screen nearby.
The friendly, mostly peaceful mood was very different from the protests, transport chaos and stadium problems during the preparations for the World Cup. But, now the football has started, visiting supporters want to enjoy the experience. “If I knew, when I started planning, how complicated and expensive it would be, I wouldn’t have come. But, now that we’re here, it’s great,” said Brian Hill, another England fan.
The trip has not been without its problems. Hill travelled for more than 20 hours to get to Rio. His son’s sunglasses were stolen almost as soon as he sat on the beach. And, they have been surprised that many bars do not have big screens for the games. But, like many fans, they said they loved the atmosphere of this tournament, which has had a spectacular start.
Everyone enjoyed Robin van Persie’s extraordinary diving header for the Netherlands against Spain. And, there have been lots of goals: 28 in the first eight games – almost three times as many as at the same stage in South Africa in 2010. Latin-American teams have been very successful so far and, as most fans are from neighbouring countries, this has added to the carnival atmosphere.
Up to now, the tournament has avoided the problems many people predicted, though it is not trouble free. The stadiums were delivered late and – in some cases – not fully finished, but there have been no structural problems or difficulties entering the grounds.
As at previous World Cups, ticketing has been a problem, with many empty seats at several games. FIFA spokesman Saint-Clair Milesi said that only 48,000 of the 51,900 seats were filled at the game between the Netherlands and Spain.
The Globo newspaper listed a number of problems in the 12 host cities. Almost all had worse traffic jams than usual. The worst transport problems were in Natal, where bus drivers were on strike. In Salvador, some journey times were five times longer than usual. “Traffic was already bad but this week it is chaotic,” said Jecilda Mello, a local person.
But, protests have happened less often since the opening day, when small demonstrations took place in several cities and police used pepper spray. Since then, the only security problem has been petty theft and overexcited fans. Police used pepper spray on Argentinian fans when they started a spontaneous street party and blocked roads.
The huge distances have created some very different World Cup experiences. The tournament has had only a small effect on São Paulo, South America’s biggest city. But, far away in Manaus – the remote Amazonian city where England played Italy – visitors said there was World Cup fever with brightly decorated streets and flags on many cars.
The English Football Association chairman, Greg Dyke, said there was a big difference in atmosphere. “We’ve had a really warm welcome in Manaus. It’s a big thing for them. But we were in São Paulo for four or five days before the first match and it was hard to see until the last day that the World Cup was happening. It was weird.”",elementary,4
"Poorer countries will be most affected by climate change in the next century. 
Sea levels will rise, there will be stronger cyclones, warmer days and nights, more rainfall, and larger and longer heatwaves, says a new report. 
The last big United Nations (UN) report, in 2007, said there would be temperature rises of 6°C or more by the end of the century. Scientists now think this will not happen, but average land and sea temperatures will probably continue rising during this century, possibly becoming 4 °C hotter than now. That rise would ruin crops and make life in many cities too hot. 
As temperatures rise and oceans become warmer, there will be big changes in annual rainfall in tropical and subtropical regions, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, released in Stockholm and published online in September 2013. 
East Africa can expect more short rainfalls and west Africa should expect heavier monsoons. Burma, Bangladesh and India can expect stronger cyclones; elsewhere in southern Asia, there will probably be heavier summer rainfalls. Indonesia may receive less rainfall between July and October, but the coastal regions around the south China Sea and Gulf of Thailand can expect more rainfall when cyclones hit the land. 'Rainfall patterns will change. Northern countries, for example in Europe or North America, will probably receive more rainfall, but many subtropical, dry regions will likely get less rain,' said the report. 
The report also said that the monsoon season will probably start earlier and last longer. 
Scientists in developing countries are happy with the report. “The IPCC says that climate change is real and happening much more strongly than before. We are already seeing the effects of climate change in Bangladesh and across south Asia. It’s not news to us. 
Most developing countries are experiencing climate change now. They do not need the IPCC to tell them that the weather is changing,” said Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development. 
Scientists have also lowered their predictions for sea-level rises. Sea levels will probably rise an average of 40 –62 cm by 2100. But many millions of people living in the developing world’s great cities, including Lagos and Calcutta, are in danger. 
Weather disasters are also more likely in a warmer world, the report says. The number of tropical cyclones will probably not change, but they may become more intense, with stronger winds and heavier rainfall. 
Life in many developing country cities could become very difficult, especially because city temperatures are already higher than those in the countryside. Much higher temperatures could reduce the length of the growing period in some parts of Africa by up to 20%, the report said. 
The charity Oxfam said that world hunger would get worse because climate changes hurt crop production. They said the number of people at risk of hunger might increase by 10% to 20% by 2050. 
“The changing climate is already hurting the fight against hunger, and it looks like it will get worse,” said Oxfam. “A hot world is a hungry world”.",elementary,5
"The Canadian tennis player Frank Dancevic criticized the people who organize the Australian Open because they forced players to play tennis in terrible conditions. 
Dancevic collapsed during the second set of his match against France’s Benoît Paire on the uncovered court six at Melbourne Park. He said conditions were dangerous for the players. He also said the heat caused him to hallucinate: “I was dizzy from the middle of the fi rst set and then I saw Snoopy and I thought, 'Wow, Snoopy – that’s weird.'” 
“I don’t think it’s fair to anybody – to the players, to the fans, to the sport – when you see players passing out,” he added. “Passing out with heat stroke, it’s not normal. 
“I, personally, don’t think it’s fair and I know a lot of players don’t think it’s fair.” 
Other players agreed. The British number one, Andy Murray, said: “It’s de fi nitely a problem. 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 watching are collapsing. That’s not great. 
“I know the conditions at 2.30 –3pm were very, very hard. If it’s safe or not, I don’t know. There have been some problems 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. So, you know it was warm.” 
John Isner said: “It was like an oven when I open the oven and the potatoes are ready. That’s what it’s like.” 
Victoria Azarenka said, “It felt pretty hot, like you’re dancing in a frying pan or something like that.” 
Organizers said the highest temperature was 42.2C in the early evening on Tuesday but it was never hot enough to stop the matches. 
“The weather was hot and uncomfortable, but the humidity was quite low, so play could continue,” tournament director Wayne McKewen said. 
Dancevic, who said he felt dizzy from the middle of the second set, unsurprisingly lost 7 –6, 6 –3, 6 –4. “I nearly stopped 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 needed help from doctors when he collapsed during Milos Raonic’s 7 –6, 6 –1, 4 –6, 6 –2 victory over Daniel Gimeno-Traver on exposed court eight. 
China’s Peng Shuai also said the heat had made her cramp up and vomit, and someone had to help her leave the court after her 7 –5, 4 –6, 6 –3 defeat to Japan’s Kurumi Nara. 
Organizers said most matches were completed without anyone needing help from doctors. 
“Of course, there were a few players who had heat-related illness or discomfort, but none needed much help from doctors after their match,” Tim Wood, the tournament’s chief medical of fi cer, said. 
Roger Federer said that the weather was hot, but it was the same for both players. 
“It’s just a mental thing,” the Swiss said. “If you’ve trained hard enough all your 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. “Some players are used to the heat – their bodies can deal with the heat and others’ can’t,” Dancevic said. “It’s dangerous. It’s an hour and a half since my match and I still can’t pee.”",elementary,6
"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.”",advanced,7
"Loneliness has finally become a hot topic. The Office for National Statistics has found Britain to be the loneliest place in Europe. British people are less likely to have strong friendships or know their neighbours than people anywhere else in the European Union. And research at the University of Chicago has found that loneliness is twice as bad for older people’s health as obesity and almost as great a cause of death as poverty.
This is shocking but such studies do not examine the loneliness epidemic among younger adults. In 2010, the Mental Health Foundation found that loneliness was a greater concern among young people than among 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 and there are day centres and charities to help them,” says Sam Challis, of 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 and it is a known cause of suicide.
But what can young people do to prevent loneliness? One researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute points out that social media and the internet can be both a good thing 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 we see in the media,” says Challis. Comparing the perfect lives of our friends with our own lives can lead us to withdraw socially.
Meditation techniques and apps such as Headspace are trendy solutions frequently recommended for a range of mental health problems, but they’re not necessarily helpful for loneliness, as they actively encourage us to be alone with our thoughts. “It is better to address the causes of your loneliness first – what’s stopping you going out and seeing people?” says Challis.
Indeed, a study of social media at the University of Michigan in 2013 found that using technology to help you meet new people can be beneficial. And, if you are unable to go out for some reason, the internet can help you. For example, Mumsnet, an online network for parents, can help you feel less alone when bringing up young children.
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 get help with emotional and mental health problems 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 advises businesses on mental health and well-being. He 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 wasn’t close enough to colleagues for them to notice the changes in his behaviour. More openness with his employer and colleagues made his return to work easier. Office chit-chat may seem like a waste of time but it helps to protect us from the emotional and psychological effects of work strain.
“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, an organization that trains people to give and receive 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.”
If we believe recent research, 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. “But it is very important to lay the foundations to good-quality relationships earlier in life.”",intermediate,8
"1 Passing clouds 
One of the good things about flying is seeing clouds very close. They seem to be light, but they carry a lot of water – around 500 tonnes in a small cloud. And water is heavier than air. So why don’t clouds fall out of the sky like rain? They do, but they take a very long time. An average cloud would take a year to fall one metre. 
2 On cloud nine 
Most of us are happy to call clouds “fluffy ones” or “nasty black ones”, but there are more than 50 cloud types. The 50 cloud types fit into nine categories. Cloud nine is the very big cumulonimbus, so to be “on cloud nine” means that you are on top of the world or very, 
very happy. 
3 Around the rainbow 
The best place to see a rainbow is from a plane. Rainbows are made when sunlight hits raindrops. We see a bow because the Earth is in the way, but, from a plane, a rainbow is a complete circle. 
4 Mr blue sky 
Sunlight is white. It includes all the colours of the spectrum. As it passes through air, some of the light is scattered. Blue light scatters more than other colours, so the blue looks like it comes from the sky. 
5 There’s life out there 
We usually only see clouds and other planes from a flying aircraft’s window, but the air is full of bacteria – 1,800 different types of bacteria. 
6 Turbulence terror 
Even someone who flies all the time can feel sick because of turbulence. The good news is that no modern airliner has ever crashed because of these sudden and violent movements of air. People have been hurt when they are not strapped in or falling luggage may hit them – but the plane is not going to fall out of the sky. 
7 You can’t cure jet lag 
The world is divided into time zones. When you take a long flight, the difference between local time and your body’s time causes jet lag. But jet lag can be reduced if you keep food bland for 24 hours before travel, drink a lot and live on your destination time from the moment you get on the aircraft. 
8 Supersonic 747s 
Many of us have travelled faster than sound. There are many jet streams in the air around the Earth, especially on the journey from the US to Europe. A jet stream can move as fast as 250 miles per hour. If an airliner flying at 550mph enters a jet stream, the result can be that the plane flies at 800mph. That’s faster than the speed of sound. 
9 Flying through time 
Flying across time zones means that we travel through time. But this time travel is so small that crossing the Atlantic every week for 40 years would only move you 1/1,000th of a second into the future. 
10 Terrible tea 
Don’t blame the cabin attendant if your tea isn’t great. Water should be just under 100°C when you pour it on to tea leaves – but that isn’t possible on a plane. It’s impossible to get water hotter than 90°C during flight – so choose coffee. 
11 I can’t hear my food 
People often say that airline food is bland and without taste. But some of the problem may not be bad food. A plane is a noisy place and food loses some of its taste when there are loud noises. 
12 Needle in a haystack 
With modern technology, it seems strange that Malaysian flight MH370 could disappear – but finding a missing aircraft is a needle-in-a- haystack problem. The plane knows where it is but it does not send this information anywhere. The problem is not technology – the problem is that there is no law that says that planes must send this information. 
13 Volcanic fallout 
Air travel can be cancelled by volcanic activity. Ash melts in the heat of the engine, then solidifies on the rotors. It is very dangerous to ignore the volcanic ash. 
14 The wing myth 
For many years, we taught the wrong explanation for the way wings keep planes in the air. But now we know that a plane stays in the air because of Newton’s Third Law of Motion. The shape of the wing pushes air down. As the air is pushed down, the wing gets an equal and opposite push up, and this lifts the plane.",elementary,9
"Scientists have connected the brains of two rats and allowed them to share information. Researchers say this is an important step towards creating the world’s first “organic computer”. 
The US team put electronic brain devices on two rats. The devices let the animals work together on simple tasks to earn rewards, such as a drink of water. In one important demonstration of the technology, the scientists used the internet to connect the brains of two rats thousands of miles away from each other. One in North Carolina, USA, and the other in Natal, Brazil. 
The head of the research team was Miguel Nicolelis, who has made devices that allow paralyzed people to control computers and robotic arms with their thoughts. The researchers say their latest work could make it possible to connect many brains to share information. “These experiments showed that we have created a direct communication connection between brains,” Nicolelis said. “We are creating an organic computer.” 
The scientists have shown that rats can share information and respond to that information. The scientists do this by electrically connecting the rats’ brains. 
They trained the rats to press a lever when they saw a light above it. When they did the task correctly, they got some water. 
To test the animals’ ability to share brain information, they put the rats in two separate compartments. Only one compartment had a light 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 tests, the second rat responded correctly to the first rat’s brain signals and pressed the lever 70% of the time. 
Incredibly, the communication between the rats was two-way. If the rat that received the information failed the task, the first rat did not get the reward of a drink. It then seemed to change its behaviour to make the task easier for its partner. In further experiments, the rats worked together on a task where they had to tell the difference between narrow and wide openings using their whiskers. 
In the final test, the scientists connected rats on different continents and used the internet to send their brain activity. “The animals were on different continents, but they could still communicate,” said Miguel Pais-Vieira, the first author of the study. “This tells us that we could create a network of animal brains, with the animals in many different locations.” 
Nicolelis said the team is now trying to find ways of linking many animals’ brains at once to solve more difficult tasks. “We do not know what might happen when animals begin interacting as part of a 'brain-net',” he said. “In theory, you could imagine that a combination of brains could find solutions that individual brains cannot find alone.” Anders Sandberg, of Oxford University, said the work was “very important” in helping to understand how brains process information. But the possible future uses of the technology are much wider, said Sandberg. “The main reason humans control the planet is that we are very good at communicating and coordinating. Without that, although we are very clever animals, we would not control the planet.” 
“I don’t think these experiments will create very smart rats,” he added. “There’s a big difference between sharing information through the senses and being able to plan. I’m not worried about clever rats taking control of the world.” 
We know very little about how people process thoughts and how they could be sent to another person’s brain, so that will not happen any time soon. And much of what is in our minds is what Sandberg calls a “draft” of what we might do. “And we change a lot of those drafts before we do anything. Most of the time, I think it’s very good that our thoughts are not in someone else’s head.”",elementary,10
"“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.”",advanced,11
"Is this the moment when streaming goes mainstream? 
According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), only 41 million subscribers used music streaming services around the world in 2014. In the record business, it is the area that is growing the fastest but it is still quite small. Also, many subscribers have streaming as part of a mobile phone package so nobody knows if they use the service or not. Apple hopes to reach 100 million subscribers. The subscription fee would be $120 per year so Apple would earn $12 billion a year. By comparison, the entire global worth of recorded music in 2014 was just under $15 billion. Apple is good at making products go mainstream but it’s not that good.
Is this the end of downloading? 
The iTunes Store arrived in 2003 (2004 in Europe). Apple was able to persuade consumers to pay for downloads and it grew a really big business with an estimated 70% market share. Downloads were still 52% of total digital income in 2014, according to IFPI. Apple has most of this – this means it is the biggest music retailer in the world. But download earnings reached their highest point in 2013 in the UK at £283 million and fell to £249 million in 2014. 
Download sales fell in the US in 2013 so Apple bought Beats in 2014 because it wanted to move from music ownership (downloads) to music access (subscription streaming). Apple, and the record industry, cannot afford to get rid of the download market yet – so streaming and downloading will have to coexist under the Apple brand. Most people like music but don’t love it enough to pay $120 a year to listen to it. On average, people in the UK, for example, spent just £39.52 on music in 2014. Even Apple will find it very difficult to make people triple the money they spend on recorded music.
Has Apple Connect made Apple the most artist-friendly service? 
Apple Connect is somewhere in the middle of YouTube, Facebook and SoundCloud. It allows artists to post music, videos, photos and more to their profile pages. Apple has good relations with the music industry and, also, with artists. It has a good reputation among artists. This is a bit different from Spotify – artists from Radiohead’s Thom Yorke to Taylor Swift have criticized Spotify. There is probably going to be a revolution and Apple is trying to make sure it has the support of artists.
Where are the artist exclusives? 
Artist exclusives is going to be the interesting bit when Apple Music opens. It will be very important for streaming to have exclusive rights to big albums. Spotify paid a lot of money to get Led Zeppelin and Metallica exclusively. Apple already has the music of AC/DC and the Beatles for download on iTunes but it is uncertain if these two will want to move to streaming. It was an easy decision for artists to give iTunes the download exclusive on an album because most people download music using iTunes. But trying to do that in streaming is not the same thing.
Is this going to kill Spotify? 
Some people already believe that Apple Music will destroy competitors like Spotify. But it’s not that simple. Other companies have been offering music streaming for many years but Apple hasn’t – it has no experience of music streaming. The winner of this battle will not be the company with the best service; it will be the company with the most money. Apple’s competitors have an advantage but they are losing a lot of money. Spotify, for example, lost €93.1 million in 2013. But Apple is different – it started 2015 by becoming the most profitable company in business history. It had $178 billion in the bank.",elementary,12
"As soon as the children at one primary school in Stirling hear the words “daily mile”, they down their pencils and head out of the classroom to start running laps around the school field. For three-and-a-half years, all pupils at St Ninian’s Primary have walked or run a mile each day. They do so at random times during the day, apparently happily, and, despite the rise in childhood obesity across the UK, none of the children at the school are overweight. 
The daily mile has done so much to improve these children’s fitness, behaviour and concentration in lessons that scores of nursery and primary schools across Britain are following suit and getting pupils to get up from their desks and take 15 minutes to walk or run round the school or local park. 
Elaine Wyllie, headteacher of St Ninian’s, said: “I get at least two emails a day from other schools and local authorities asking how we do it. The thought of children across the country running every day because of something we’ve done is phenomenal.” 
One in ten children are obese when they start school at the age of four or five, according to figures from the Health & Social Care Information Centre, and, in the summer of 2015, a study found that schoolchildren in England are the least fit they have ever been. Primary schools have therefore been quick to note the benefits of the daily mile. It has been introduced in schools in London, Gateshead, Wales and other parts of Scotland, while others are planning to launch the initiative during the 2015-6 academic year. In Stirling alone, 30 schools have already started or are to start the daily mile. 
“It’s a common-sense approach to children’s fitness, which is free and easy. The most important thing is that the children really enjoy it; otherwise, you couldn’t sustain it. They come back in bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked, how children used to look. It’s joyous to see,” said Wyllie. At St Ninian’s, teachers take their pupils out of lessons on to a specially built circuit around the school’s playing field for their daily mile whenever it best suits that day’s timetable. Only ice or very heavy rain stop them. 
The extent of the benefits have yet to be determined but researchers from Stirling University have launched a comparative study to look for quantitative evidence of the physical, cognitive and emotional benefits of the daily mile. Dr Colin Moran, who is leading the study, said: “The children at St Ninian’s don’t seem to have problems with obesity; they seem happier and staff say they settle into lessons faster so we designed a study that would test all of these things. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence about the benefits but there aren’t any scientific facts yet.” St Ninian’s pupils will be compared with children from another school in Stirling that has yet to start the scheme. 
Kevin Clelland, a primary school teacher from Leeds, visited St Ninian’s before convincing his colleagues it was a great idea. He said: “It’s such a simple thing to do but seems to have such an amazing impact. We’re really committed to improving the fitness of our pupils beyond the two-hour statutory PE that we are expected to deliver.” His school is now constructing a track. 
Active Cheshire, a strategic body for sports and fitness in Cheshire and Warrington, is taking a group of senior figures from the local authority up to Scotland to assess the results of the daily mile. The hope is to introduce it across the 450 schools in the region if a pilot is successful. 
Paralympian, Tanni Grey-Thompson, chair of ukactive, the UK’s leading not-for-profit health body for physical activity, said: “All children need to achieve 60 active minutes every day, whether in a lesson, on the walk to school or in the playground. It’s fantastic to see initiatives like the daily mile be established, showing real leadership from the education sector to improve children’s fitness levels and their cognitive behaviour, and make a real difference to schools, teachers, parents and young people’s lives. We know sitting still kills; not sitting still helps children build skills that will stay with them for life.” 
The Scottish government is also supportive. A spokesperson said: “Learning in PE is enhanced by initiatives like the daily mile, which can encourage and support parents in fostering healthy habits with their children from a young age. We are pleased to see so many Scottish schools are taking part or planning to do so.”",advanced,13
"John Lewis’s 2015 Christmas advert shows a lonely old man who lives on the moon. 
Department store John Lewis’s Christmas ad, which, for many people, shows that the Christmas shopping season has begun, aims to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds for the charity Age UK. John Lewis will also encourage staff and customers to care for elderly people who might be alone over the holiday. 
The department store has spent £7 million on a campaign that includes the TV ad, a smartphone game and merchandise, including glow-in-the- dark pyjamas. It has also built areas that look like the surface of the moon in 11 of its stores. 
After two years of successful ads with cute animals – a bear and hare, then a penguin – this time, the story is about a young girl, Lily, who sees an old man living in a small wooden house on the moon through her telescope. The girl tries to send him a letter and a note via bow and arrow. Then, she floats him a present of a telescope tied to balloons. This helps them to make contact. 
The ad’s message is: “Show someone they’re loved this Christmas”. This is similar to Age UK’s campaign: “No one should have no one at Christmas”. Profits from three products – a mug, gift tag and card – will go to the charity. 
Rachel Swift, head of marketing at John Lewis, said that people talk about charities at Christmas and the ad makes you think about someone who lives on your street that might not see anybody. 
The campaign features the Oasis track Half the World Away sung by Norwegian singer Aurora. 
The ad cost £1 million to make. The moon scenes were shot at the Warner Bros Studios, where the Harry Potter films were made, and the specially built set was created by one of the team behind the latest Star Wars film, The Force Awakens. 
As in the last few years, John Lewis showed a short film on TV and social media using the hashtag #OnTheMoon before it showed the full advert. There will be a full moon on Christmas Day 2015 – a complete coincidence, says Swift. 
In 2014, the department store also spent £7 million on a campaign with a penguin and a young boy playing together. It had 22 million views on YouTube by the first week of January – more than the 16.6m views of Sainsbury’s ad with First World War soldiers sharing a bar of chocolate, the UK’s second most popular ad of 2014. 
Swift said that John Lewis wants to just get “something right for the company at this time of year and do something we hope customers really love.” 
Sarah Vizard, from Marketing Week, said “There are a lot more companies doing Christmas ads this year but I think a lot of those companies just show what you can buy in store. John Lewis does the emotional piece the best. I think people will think the ad is really cute.”",elementary,14
"At Addis Ababa airport, visitors see pictures of golden grains, tiny red seeds and a group of men around a giant pancake. The words say: “Teff: the best gluten-free crop!” 
Ethiopia is one of the world’s poorest countries, well known for its difficult food situation. But it is also the home of teff, a highly nutritious grain that you can now buy in 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 also amino acids. You can use the gluten-free grain instead of wheat flour in anything from bread and pasta to waffles and pizza bases. 
In Ethiopia, teff is a national obsession. It is grown by about 6.3 million farmers – fields of the crop cover more than 20% of all farmland. They make it into flour and use it to make injera, the flatbread that is basic to Ethiopian cooking. The grain is also important in many religious and cultural ceremonies. Across the country, people meet around large pieces of injera. They use it to scoop up stews and to feed one another as a sign of loyalty or friendship – a tradition known as gursha. 
Teff is now called Ethiopia’s “second gift to the world”, after coffee. 
Ethiopia’s growing middle class want more teff. This has increased the price of teff, so it is now too expensive for the poorest people. Today, most small farmers sell most of what they grow to people in Ethiopian cities. 
Teff is the most nutritionally valuable grain in the country. In urban areas, people eat up to 61kg of teff a year. In rural areas, they eat 20kg. The type of teff people eat is different, too: the rich eat the more expensive magna and white teff; poorer people usually eat less-valuable red and mixed teff. They also mix it with cheaper cereals such as sorghum and maize. 
The Ethiopian government wants to double teff production by 2015. It says that the grain could play an important role in school meals and emergency aid programmes, and help reduce malnutrition – particularly among children. 
In Ethiopia, around 20% of children under five are malnourished. 
The government does not allow the export of raw teff grain, only of injera and other processed products. But this could change: the goal is to produce enough teff for Ethiopia and for export. 
Mama Fresh is a family company that sells injera to top restaurants and hotels in the Ethiopian capital. It also exports the flatbread to Finland, Germany, Sweden and the US, mostly for Ethiopians who live there. But the company wants to double exports to America in 2014 and will soon start producing teff-based pizzas, bread and cookies. 
Regassa Feyissa, an Ethiopian agricultural scientist, says that, without careful planning, growing more teff for export may mean that farmers do not grow other important crops. 
There is not much Ethiopian teff on the international market, so farmers in the US have started planting the crop. Farmers in Europe, Israel and Australia have also experimented with growing it.",elementary,15
"Nobody knows which came first: the economic crisis in Greece or shisha, the drug that is called the “cocaine of the poor”. But everyone agrees that shisha is a killer. And it costs only €2 or less. 
“It is the worst drug. It burns your insides, it makes you aggressive and makes you go mad,” said Maria, an ex-heroin addict. “But it is cheap and it is easy to get, and everyone is taking it.” 
This drug crisis is making problems for Athens’s health authorities, who already have the problem of large financial cuts. 
Thousands of homeless Greeks, who live on the streets because of poverty and a loss of hope, are taking shisha. The drug is related to crystal meth. It is often mixed with battery acid, engine oil and even shampoo. It can make users become aggressive. And, even worse, it is easy to buy and easy to make. 
“It is a killer, but it also makes you want to kill,” Konstantinos, a drug addict, said. “You can kill without understanding that you have done it. A lot of users have died.” 
Charalampos Poulopoulos, the director of Kethea, Greece’s anti-drug centre, said shisha is an “austerity drug” – it is made by dealers who have become clever at making drugs for addicts who can no longer afford heroin and cocaine. 
“The crisis has given dealers the possibility to sell a new, cheap drug, a cocaine for the poor,” said Poulopoulos. “You can sniff or inject shisha and you can make it at home – you don’t need any special knowledge. It is extremely dangerous.” 
In all parts of Greece, there is a lot of depression, and drug and alcohol abuse. Crime has increased because austerity measures have cut the income of ordinary Greeks by 40%. Prostitution – the easiest way to pay for drugs – has also increased. 
There are more suicides and HIV infections, and drug addicts (around 25,000 people) have become more and more self- destructive. Sixty-four per cent of young people in Greece are unemployed – this is the highest youth unemployment in the EU. 
At the time when organizations such as Kethea need extra help, the Greek state has cut by a third the money it gives them. The European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund asked them to do this to help save the Greek economy. 
Since the economic crisis began in 2009, Kethea has lost 70 of its 500 staff. They get less money, but studies show that for every euro the Greek state spends on anti-drug programmes such as Kethea, it saves about €6 because there is less crime and fewer health problems. “The cuts are a huge mistake,” said Poulopoulos. 
On the streets of Athens, there is a fear that austerity not only doesn’t work – it kills.",elementary,16
"Scientists have created an “atlas of the brain” that reveals how the meanings of words are arranged across different regions of the organ. Like a colourful quilt laid over the cortex, the atlas displays in rainbow hues how individual words and the concepts they convey can be grouped together in clumps of white matter.
“Our goal was to build a giant atlas that shows how one specific aspect of language is represented in the brain, in this case semantics or the meanings of words,” said Jack Gallant, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley.
No single brain region holds one word or concept. A single brain spot is associated with a number of related words. And, each single word lights up many different brain spots. Together, they make up networks that represent the meanings of each word we use: life and love, death and taxes, clouds, Florida and bra. All light up their own networks.
Described as a “tour de force” by one researcher who was not involved in the study, the atlas demonstrates how modern imaging can transform our knowledge of how the brain performs some of its most important tasks. With further advances, the technology could have a profound impact on medicine and other fields.
“It is possible that this approach could be used to decode information about what words a person is hearing, reading or possibly even thinking,” said Alexander Huth, the first author on the study. One potential use would be a language decoder that could allow people silenced by motor neurone disease or locked-in syndrome to speak through a computer.
To create the atlas, the scientists recorded people’s brain activity while they listened to stories read out on The Moth Radio Hour, a US radio show. They then matched the transcripts of the stories with the brain activity data to show how groups of related words triggered neural responses in 50,000 to 80,000 pea-sized spots all over the cerebral cortex.
Huth used stories from The Moth Radio Hour because they are short and compelling. The more enthralling the stories, the more confident the scientists could be that the people being scanned were focusing on the words and not drifting off. Seven people listened to two hours of stories each. Per person, that amounted to hearing roughly 25,000 words – and more than 3,000different words – as they lay in the scanner. 
The atlas shows how words and related terms exercise the same regions of the brain. For example, on the left-hand side of the brain, above the ear, is one of the tiny regions that represents the word “victim”. The same region responds to “killed”, “convicted”, “murdered” and “confessed”. On the brain’s right-hand side, near the top of the head, is one of the brain spots activated by family terms: “wife”, “husband”, “children”, “parents”.
Each word is represented by more than one spot because words tend to have several meanings. One part of the brain, for example, reliably responds to the word “top”, along with other words that describe clothing. But, the word “top” activates many other regions. One of them responds to numbers and measurements, another to buildings and places. The scientists have created an interactive website where the public can explore the brain atlas.
Strikingly, the brain atlases were similar for all the participants, suggesting that their brains organized the meanings of words in the same way. The scientists only scanned five men and two women, however. All are native English speakers and two are authors of the study published in Nature. It is highly possible that people from different backgrounds and cultures will have different semantic brain atlases.
Armed with the atlas, researchers can now piece together the brain networks that represent wildly different concepts, from numbers to murder and religion. “The idea of murder is represented a lot in the brain,” Gallant said. 
Using the same data, the group has begun work on new atlases that show how the brain holds information on other aspects of language, from phonemes to syntax. A brain atlas for narrative structure has so far proved elusive, however. “Every time we come up with a set of narrative features, we get told they aren’t the right set of narrative features,” said Gallant.
Uri Hasson, a neuroscientist at Princeton University, praised the work. Unlike many studies that looked at brain activity when an isolated word or sentence was spoken, Gallant’s team had shed light on how the brain worked in a real- world scenario, he said. The next step, he added, was to create a more comprehensive and precise semantic brain atlas. Ultimately, Hasson believes it will be possible to reconstruct the words a person is thinking from their brain activity. The ethical implications are enormous. One more benign use would see brain activity used to assess whether political messages have been effectively communicated to the public. “There are so many implications and we are barely touching the surface,” he said. 
Lorraine Tyler, a cognitive neuroscientist and head of the Centre for Speech, Language and the Brain at Cambridge University, said the research was a “tour de force in its scope and methods”. But, the brain atlas in its current form does not capture fine differences in word meanings. “While this research is path-breaking in its scope, there is still a lot to learn about how semantics is represented in the brain.”",advanced,17
"Music subscription services, including Spotify and Deezer, have broken through the $1bn sales barrier worldwide, as increasing numbers of fans choose to pay for music online. 
Streaming and subscription revenues rose by more than 50% in 2013 to reach $1.1bn, helping overall sales of recorded music in Europe grow for the first time in 12 years, according to figures published in March 2014. 
There are now an estimated 450 music-rental services around the world, and, while many people still listen for free, a desire for more choice is persuading more music lovers to part with their cash. In a three-year period, the number of paying subscribers rose from 8 million to 28 million, according to the 2014 digital music report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). 
Easily accessible from smartphones and tablets, subscription services are popular with people looking to try out new music without committing to buying a download or a CD. Consumers say they are attracted by a cheap, user-friendly and legal alternative to pirated downloads. “It is now clear that music streaming and subscription is a mainstream model for our business,” said IFPI Chief Executive, Frances Moore. There are signs that, in Britain and America, streaming may soon generate more revenue for the music industry than downloads from online stores such as Apple’s iTunes. Subscription services now account for a third of all digital sales globally, with downloads making up the balance, but the IFPI data shows that the two formats are growing at different rates. 
In the US, the percentage of people claiming to use subscription and streaming rose from 19% in 2012 to 23%, while the percentage of people downloading fell from 28% to 27%. In Britain, downloaders remained static, at exactly one third, while subscribers grew from 19% to 22%. In Sweden, France and Italy, streaming is already more popular than downloading. 
Digital formats now account for 39% of all music sales, or nearly £5.9bn out of £15bn, and, while sales of CDs and vinyl declined steeply in 2013, they still contribute just over half the industry’s income. A recent crash in music sales in Japan, which accounts for one fifth of music industry sales and where physical formats remained popular for longer than elsewhere, meant sales across all formats globally fell 3.9%. 
However, vinyl continued to make a comeback in some markets. Sales increased by 32% in America and by 101% in the UK in 2013. 
The IFPI also said that One Direction were the biggest-selling artists of 2013, with 4m physical and digital sales for their Midnight Memories album. Katy Perry’s Prism was the best-selling album by a female artist, in sixth place behind Eminem, Justin Timberlake, Bruno Mars and Daft Punk. 
Consumer-technology companies have been racing to join the music-streaming trend, with Apple launching iTunes Radio and Google promoting its Play Store, with smaller players like Beats Music, created by the team behind the Beats headphones brand, also joining the fray.",advanced,18
"Music subscription services, including Spotify and Deezer, have broken through the $1bn sales barrier worldwide, as fans choose to pay for music online.
Streaming and subscription revenues rose by more than 50% in 2013 to reach $1.1bn, and sales of recorded music in Europe grew for the first time in 12 years, according to figures published in March.
While many people still listen for free, a desire for more choice is persuading more music lovers to part with their cash. In a three-year period, the number of paying subscribers rose from 8 million to 28 million, according to the 2014 digital music report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).
Easily accessible from smartphones and tablets, subscription services are popular with people who want to try out new music without buying a download or a CD. They like this cheap, user-friendly and legal alternative to pirated downloads. “It is now clear that music streaming and subscription is a mainstream model for our business,” said IFPI Chief Executive, Frances Moore.
The IFPI also said that One Direction were the biggest selling artists of 2013, with 4m physical and digital sales for their Midnight Memories album. Katy Perry’s Prism was the best-selling album by a female artist, in sixth place behind Eminem, Justin Timberlake, Bruno Mars and Daft Punk.
Consumer-technology companies are joining the music-streaming trend. Apple has its iTunes Radio and Google its Play Store. Smaller companies like Beats Music are also joining the trend.
In Britain and America, streaming may soon generate more revenue for the music industry than downloads from online stores such as Apple’s iTunes. Subscription services now account for a third of all digital sales globally, with downloads making up the rest, but the IFPI data shows that the two formats are growing at different rates.
In the US, the percentage of people using subscription services and streaming rose from 19% in 2012 to 23%, while the percentage of people downloading fell from 28% to 27%. In Britain, downloaders remained static at exactly one third, while subscribers grew from 19% to 22%. In Sweden, France and Italy, streaming is already more popular than downloading.
Digital formats now account for 39% of all music sales, or nearly £5.9bn out of £15bn, and, while sales of physical formats, such as CDs and vinyl, declined steeply in 2013, they still contribute just over half the industry’s income.
Vinyl continued to make a comeback in some markets. Sales increased by 32% in America and by 101% in the UK in 2013.",intermediate,19
"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.",advanced,20
"Is this the moment when streaming goes truly mainstream? 
According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), there were just 41m subscribers using music streaming services globally in 2014. It might be the biggest revenue growth area for the record business but it is still incredibly niche. Not only that, but a significant number of those subscribers come from bundled deals with mobile phone operators so it is debatable just how “active” its users are. Apple’s greatest conjuring trick is to take something that already exists in the market – downloads (iTunes), digital music players (the iPod) and smartphones (the iPhone) – and adapt it to make it irresistible to the mainstream consumer. Leaked information recently suggested that Apple is aiming to reach 100m subscribers, which, based on a subscription fee of $120 per year, would generate $12bn annually. To put that in context, the entire global worth of recorded music in 2014 was just under $15bn. Apple is good at mainstreaming products but it’s not that good. 
Is this the end of downloading? 
The iTunes Store arrived in 2003 (2004 in Europe) at a time when MP3 piracy seemed insurmountable. Apple managed to persuade consumers to pay for downloads and grew a huge business, which it dominated, with an estimated 70% market share. Downloads still hold the biggest share of digital income for recorded music, making up 52% of total digital income in 2014 according to IFPI numbers. Apple holds the lion’s share of this, making it the single biggest music retailer in the world. But download revenue peaked in 2013 in the UK at £283m and fell to £249m in 2014. The decline in download sales hit the US in 2013 so Apple bought Beats in 2014 for $3bn, not only to get into the premium headphone market, but also to make the transition from music ownership (downloads) to music access (subscription streaming). Apple, and the record industry, cannot afford to get rid of the download market just yet – so streaming and downloading will have to coexist under the Apple brand, one representing the future as the other gets progressively slower and sicker. The vast majority of people out there like music but don’t love it enough to pay $120 a year to listen to it; a sporadic download purchase here and there will suit them just fine. The average spend of a music buyer in the UK in 2014, for example, was just £39.52, according to research. Expecting most of them to triple their annual spend on recorded music is something that even Apple will seriously struggle with. 
Has Apple Connect made Apple the most artist-friendly service? 
Apple have previously tried to build an artist-friendly platform via iTunes. They called it Ping and it didn’t work. Apple Connect is something very different, somewhere in the middle of YouTube, Facebook and SoundCloud, letting artists post music, videos, photos and more to their profile pages. It couldn’t be any more 2015 if it tried. Apple, partly because of its scale and also partly because it treats music as “art” rather than “content”, has generally had strong relations with not just the music industry but artists themselves and, generally, it has a good reputation among artists. Compare that to Spotify, which has been criticized by artists from Radiohead’s Thom Yorke to Taylor Swift. In contrast, Apple comes across as a benevolent uncle. There is the smell of revolution in the air and Apple is making sure it’s on the right side of the battle lines when they are drawn up. 
Where are the artist exclusives? 
This is going to be the interesting bit when the service actually goes live. Getting exclusives for big albums is going to become crucial to streaming. Spotify paid a lot of money to get Led Zeppelin and Metallica exclusively. Apple will have been watching this carefully and making its own notes. It already has AC/DC and the Beatles’ catalogues exclusively for download on iTunes but it remains to be seen if it can persuade these two to make the jump into streaming. It also managed to get the surprise Beyoncé album in 2013 before anyone else so it is inevitable that it will want more like that. There is plenty of speculation about Apple looking to get exclusive rights to the new Adele album. 
Giving iTunes the download exclusive on an album was not that big a leap of faith for acts given just how much of the download market it controls but trying to do that in streaming is not the same thing. Add into this the fact that streaming now counts towards the album chart in markets like the UK and US and artists, who still see the chart as a measure of success, will not want to limit their audience by restricting themselves to one service. 
Is this going to kill Spotify? 
Some people are already saying that Apple Music will destroy rivals like Spotify. However, it’s not that simple. Apple is entering a market where others have been working and gaining experience for many years. It has a lot of catching up to do. The winner of this battle will not be the company with the best service; it will be the company with the most money. Apple’s competitors have a head start in the market but they are losing huge amounts of money. Spotify, for example, lost €93.1m in 2013. Apple, on the other hand, started 2015 by becoming the most profitable company in corporate history, with $178bn in the bank. If Apple Music loses Apple money, the company will not continue it for long but it will not stop investment without at least trying to beat the competition.",advanced,21
"DNA taken from the wisdom tooth of a European hunter-gatherer has given scientists a glimpse of modern humans before the rise of farming. The Mesolithic man, who lived in Spain around 7,000 years ago, had an unusual mix of blue eyes, black or brown hair and dark skin, according to analyses of his genetic make-up.
He was probably lactose intolerant and had more diffi culty digesting starchy foods than the farmers whose diets and lifestyles changed in the fi rst agricultural revolution.
The invention of farming brought humans and animals into much closer contact and humans probably evolved stronger immune systems to fi ght infections from the animals. But scientists may have overestimated the impact farming had on the human immune system, because tests on the hunter-gatherer’s DNA found that he already carried genes that boost the immune system. Some of these gene mutations still exist in modern Europeans today.
“Before we started this work, I had some ideas of what we were going to fi nd,” said Carles Lalueza-Fox, who led the study at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona. “Most of those ideas turned out to be completely wrong.”
The Spanish team started their work after a group of cave explorers found two skeletons in a deep and complex cave system high up in the Cantabrian Mountains of northwest Spain in 2006. The human remains, which belonged to two men in their early 30s, had been extremely well preserved by the cool environment of the cave.
Carbon dating put the remains at around 7,000 years old, before farming arrived in Europe from the Middle East. Other things were found at the site, including reindeer teeth that were strung and hung from the people’s clothing.
The scientists managed to put together one man’s entire genome from DNA found in the root of a third molar. It is the fi rst time researchers have got the complete genome of a modern European who lived before the Neolithic revolution.
The DNA brought some surprises. When Lalueza-Fox looked at the genome, he found that the man had gene variants that produce dark skin. “This guy had to be darker than any modern European, but we don’t know how dark,” the scientist said.
Another surprise was that the man had blue eyes. The results suggest that blue eye colour came fi rst in Europe and that the change to lighter skin happened throughout Mesolithic times.
On top of the scientifi c impact, artists might have to rethink their drawings of the people. “You see a lot of reconstructions of these people hunting and gathering and they look like modern Europeans with light skin. You never see a reconstruction of a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer with dark skin and blue eyes,” Lalueza-Fox said.
The Spanish team compared the genome of the hunter-gatherer to those of modern Europeans from different regions to see how they might be related. They found that the ancient DNA most closely matched the genetic make-up of people living in northern Europe, in particular Sweden and Finland.
Martin Jones, professor of archaeological science at Cambridge University, said the immunity genes were the most interesting result. There has been the idea that the move from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to farming was bad for our health. There were a number of reasons for that, particularly living closely together with other humans and animals, which meant they competed for the same water supplies, he said.",intermediate,22
"What is it like to look at the last of something? Sudan is the last male northern white rhino on the planet. If he does not mate soon with one of two female northern white rhinos at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, there will be no more rhinos like them, male or female, born anywhere. And they probably won’t mate because Sudan is 42 so he is old. There are only two other northern white rhinos in the world, both in zoos, both female.
The image seems to show that humans are gentle – armed men guard Sudan and stay with him. But, of course, it shows that humans are cruel. Sudan is in danger from poachers. The poachers kill rhinos and cut off their horns to sell them for medicine. Sudan has had his horn cut off to stop the poachers but he is still in danger.
Sudan doesn’t know how precious he is. His eye is a sad black dot in his big face as he walks around the reserve with his guards. His head is a marvellous thing. It is a majestic rectangle of strong bone, a head of pure strength. How terrible that such a powerful head can be so vulnerable.
Sudan does not look so different from the artist Albrecht Dürer ’s rhinoceros from 1515. Dürer was a Renaissance artist. He drew an exotic beast from an exotic place. In 1515, the ruler of Gujarat in India sent a live Indian rhinoceros to the king of Portugal. The king sent it to the Pope but the ship sank and it died.
Human beings – we always kill the things we love. This hasn’t changed since the Ice Age. There are beautiful pictures of European woolly rhinos in caves in France that were painted up to 30,000 years ago. These ancient relatives of Sudan were gentle and powerful, like Sudan. A woolly rhino in Chauvet Cave seems young, an animal full of life. But the same people who painted such sensitive pictures of Ice Age rhinos helped to kill them all.
Today, people love rhinos. But, at the same time, people are killing more and more rhinos. The northern white rhino is the rarest kind of African rhino. There are more southern white rhinos and black rhinos. But, in some countries, more and more people want rhino horn to use as a traditional medicine. And this increases the poaching. In 2007, 13 rhinos were killed by poachers in South Africa. In 2014, 1,215 rhinos were killed for their horns in South Africa.
The vulnerable northern white rhino has nearly been hunted to extinction – in spite of the guards and their guns. The poaching is totally out of control. The Javan rhinoceros is also nearly extinct. India has successfully protected the Indian rhinoceros but here, too, poaching is a problem. Sudan is such a majestic animal. Have we learned nothing since the Ice Age?",elementary,23
"Illegal downloading is morally wrong, and it is theft, the same as putting your hand in someone’s pocket and stealing their wallet is theft, says author Philip Pullman. In an article for magazine Index on Censorship, Pullman, who is president of the Society of Authors, strongly defends copyright laws. He criticizes internet users who think it is OK to download music or books without paying for them. 
“The technology is so dazzling that people can’t see that what they’re doing is wrong,” he writes. “It is outrageous that anyone can steal an artist’s work without punishment. It is theft, just as putting your hand in someone’s pocket and taking their wallet is theft.” 
His article comes after music industry leaders met British Prime Minister David Cameron in Downing Street to discuss the issue of web piracy. 
Pullman, writer of the His Dark Materials trilogy, says authors and musicians work in poverty for years to bring their work to the level “that gives happiness to their audiences and, when they achieve that, the possibility of making money from it is taken away from them”. He concludes: “If we want to enjoy the work that someone does, we should pay for it.” 
“Existing copyright laws don’t work in the digital age and they criminalize consumers. We need new ideas for how artists, writers and musicians can earn a living from their work.” 
Pullman is writing in the next issue of the campaign group’s magazine in a dialogue with Cathy Casserly, chief executive of Creative Commons. Casserly argues that there is a lot wrong with copyright, which was created a long time ago. She writes: “Copyright closes the door on the many ways that people can share, build upon and remix each other’s work, possibilities that we could not imagine when those laws were made.” She says artists need to think reatively about how they earn money from their work. 
Index on Censorship agrees. The magazine’s editor, Rachael Jolley, said: Illegal downloading is a very big problem. Between November 2012 and January 2013 in the UK, 280 million music tracks were digitally pirated along with 52 million TV shows, 29 million films,18 million ebooks and 7 million software or games files. 
18% of internet users aged over 12 say they have pirated items, and 9% say they are afraid they will get caught. Pullman writes in his article: “The ease and speed with which people can get music in MP3 is still very surprising to people like me who have been building up their iTunes list for some time.” 
After the Downing Street meeting, Cameron asked the Conservative MP Mike Weatherley to be his adviser on the subject. The BPI, an organization that supports music companies, said: “Mike Weatherley is a strong supporter of copyright and the artists and creative producers it’s there to protect. We hope his influence and the prime minister’s support for copyright will change how we see illegal downloading in the UK.”",elementary,24
"According to a new scientifi c study, temperature rises caused by uncontrolled global warming could be at the high end of current estimates. The scientist who led the research said that, unless emissions of greenhouse gases are reduced, the planet will heat up by a minimum of 4C by 2100. This is twice the level the world’s governments consider to be dangerous.
The research indicates that fewer clouds form as the planet warms, which means less sunlight is refl ected back into space. This forces temperatures up even higher. The way clouds affect global warming has been the biggest mystery in the study of future climate change.
Professor Steven Sherwood, at the University of New South Wales in Australia, who led the new work, said that the study broke new ground in two ways. First, it identifi ed what controls the cloud changes and, second, it rejected the lowest estimates of future global warming and favoured the higher and more damaging estimates.
“4C would be catastrophic rather than simply dangerous,” Sherwood said. “For example, it would make life diffi cult, if not impossible, in much of the tropics and would guarantee the eventual melting of the Greenland ice sheet and some of the Antarctic ice sheet”, with sea levels rising by many metres as a result.
The research reduces the uncertainty about how much warming is caused by rises in carbon emissions, according to scientists commenting on the study, published in the journal Nature. Experts at Japan’s National Institute for Environmental Studies said the explanation of how fewer clouds form as the world warms was “convincing” and agreed that this indicated future climate change would be greater than expected.
Scientists measure the sensitivity of the Earth’s climate to greenhouse gases by estimating the temperature rise that would be caused by a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere compared with pre-industrial levels – which is likely to happen within 50 years. For two decades, those estimates have run from 1.5C to 5C: a wide range. The new research narrowed that range down to between 3C and 5C, by closely examining the biggest cause of uncertainty: clouds.
Computer climate models are the only tool researchers have to predict future temperatures and it was important to make sure that the way clouds are formed was represented accurately in those models. When water evaporates from the oceans, the vapour can rise over nine miles to form rain clouds that refl ect sunlight; or, it may rise just a few miles and drift back down without forming clouds. In reality, both processes happen and climate models that included the second possibility predicted signifi cantly higher future temperatures than models that only included the nine-mile-high clouds.
“Climate sceptics like to criticize climate models for getting things wrong and we are the fi rst to admit they are not perfect,” said Sherwood. “But what we are fi nding is that the mistakes are being made by the models that predict less warming, not those that predict more.” He added: “Sceptics may also point to the ‘hiatus’ of temperatures since the end of the 20th century, but there is increasing evidence that this hiatus is not seen in other measures of the climate system and is almost certainly temporary.”
Global average air temperatures have increased quite slowly since a high point in 1998, which was caused by the ocean phenomenon El Niño. But, observations show that heat is continuing to be trapped in increasing amounts by greenhouse gases, with over 90% disappearing into the oceans. Furthermore, a study in November 2013 suggested the “pause” may be mainly an illusion – a result of the lack of temperature readings from polar regions, where warming is greatest.
Sherwood accepts his team’s work on the role of clouds cannot defi nitely rule out that future temperature rises will be at the lower end of projections. But, for that to be the case, there would need to be some major missing ingredient for which there is currently no evidence. He added that a 4C rise in global average temperatures would have a serious impact on the world and the economies of many countries if emissions were not reduced.",intermediate,25
"Cities don’t often move. But that’s exactly what Kiruna, an Arctic town in northern Sweden, has to do. It has to move or the earth will swallow it up.
“It’s a terrible choice,” says Krister Lindstedt, who works for the Swedish architect company that is moving the city. They will move this city of 23,000 people away from a gigantic iron-ore mine that is swallowing up the ground beneath its streets. “Either the mine must stop digging, and then there will be no jobs, or the city has to move.”
Kiruna was founded in 1900 by the state-owned Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara mining company (LK). The city became rich thanks to the very large amount of iron ore that is below the town. But the mine that made it rich is now going to destroy it. “The town is here because of the mine,” says Deputy Mayor Niklas Siren.
Located 145km inside the Arctic Circle, Kiruna has a very difficult climate. It has winters with no sunlight and average temperatures of -15C. But the iron ore has kept people here. Kiruna is the world’s largest underground iron-ore mine. It produces 90% of all the iron in Europe. That is enough to build more than six Eiffel Towers every day.
In 2004, the mining company told the town that it would have to move. Underground digging would soon cause buildings to crack and collapse. Ten years later, cracks are starting to appear in the ground, nearer and nearer to the town.
“The people of Kiruna have waited for ten years,” says Viktoria Walldin, a social anthropologist whoworks 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.”
At last, the city finally has a plan. Lindstedt has a plan that shows the town’s streets and squares beginning to move east along a new high street. By 2033, the whole city will be far away from the mine.
They are already building a new town square, 3km to the east, with a circular town hall planned by Danish architect Henning Larsen. They will take apart and put together again 20 other important buildings in their new home. Kiruna’s red wooden church was built in 1912 and once voted Sweden’s most beautiful building – it will be in the centre of a new park. But they will not save everything.
“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 and all that’s going to disappear.”
The project will get £320 million from the mining company to build new buildings, including a high school, fire station, community centre, library and swimming hall. But most people worry about where they will live and how they will get a house or flat.
“People here pay very low rents and have very high incomes but, in future, this will change” says Lindstedt. LK has agreed to pay the people of Kiruna the value of their homes plus 25% but many people say this is not enough to buy a new house.
If you look more closely, the plan shows that the new town does not look like the old Kiruna at all. The old town has detached houses with gardens. The White architects’ plan shows multi-storey apartment blocks around shared courtyards in long straight streets.
It is an opportunity, say the architects, for Kiruna to become a town that will attract young people. There will be new cultural places and wonderful things such as a cable car above the high street. But many of the people in Kiruna will probably not have enough money to live there.",elementary,26
"Illegal downloading is a kind of “moral squalor” and theft, as much as putting your hand in someone’s pocket and stealing their wallet is theft, says author Philip Pullman. In an article for Index on Censorship, Pullman, who is president of the Society of Authors, strongly defends copyright laws. He criticizes internet users who think it is OK to download music or books without paying for them.
“The technical brilliance is so dazzling that people can’t see the moral squalor of what they’re doing,” he writes. “It is outrageous that anyone can steal an artist’s work and get away with it. It is theft, just as putting your hand in someone’s pocket and taking their wallet is theft.”
His article comes after music industry leaders met British Prime Minister David Cameron in Downing Street to discuss the issue of web piracy.
Pullman, writer of the His Dark Materials trilogy, says authors and musicians work in poverty and obscurity for years to bring their work to the level “that gives delight to their audiences and, as soon as they achieve that, the possibility of earning a living from it is taken away from them”. He concludes: “The principle is simple, and unaltered by technology, science or magic: if we want to enjoy the work that someone does, we should pay for it.”
Pullman is writing in the next issue of the campaign group’s magazine in a dialogue with Cathy Casserly, chief executive of Creative Commons, which offers open content licences “that lets creators take copyright into their own hands”. Casserly argues that there is a lot wrong with copyright, which was created “in an analogue age”. She writes: “Copyright closes the door on the many ways that people can share, build upon and remix each other’s work, possibilities that were unimaginable when those laws were made.”
She says artists need to think creatively about how they distribute and earn money from their work, quoting the science fiction writer Cory Doctorow, who said: “My problem is not piracy, it’s obscurity.” Index on Censorship agrees. The magazine’s editor, Rachael Jolley, said: “Existing copyright laws don’t work in the digital age and risk criminalizing consumers. We need new models for how artists, writers and musicians earn a living from their work.”
The debate is a lively one and the scale of illegal downloading is enormous. Data collected by Ofcom (the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries) suggests that between November 2012 and January 2013 in the UK, 280 million music tracks were digitally pirated, along with 52 million TV shows, 29 million films, 18 million ebooks and 7 million software or games files.
Ofcom says 18% of internet users aged over 12 admit that they have recently pirated content, and 9% say they fear getting caught. Pullman writes in his article: “The ease and speed with which music can be acquired in the form of MP3 downloads is still astonishing to those of us who have been building up our iTunes list for some time.”
Following the Downing Street meeting, Cameron appointed the Conservative MP Mike Weatherley to be his adviser on the subject. A spokesman for the BPI, the record industry trade body, said: “Mike Weatherley is a strong champion of copyright and the artists and creative producers it’s there to protect. We hope his influence and the prime minister’s support for copyright will influence the approach of the UK’s intellectual property office.”",intermediate,27
"BB King was most famous for blues music but he was always interested in other types of music and different cultures. Perhaps it is too early to say he is “the last of the bluesmen” but it is hard to imagine that any future blues artist will have the influence as BB King. He influenced thousands of musicians and millions of music fans in a career that lasted 65 years.
Riley B King was born in Mississippi, the son of African-American farm workers. He learnt the guitar from a family friend and learnt to sing with a quartet of gospel singers. In his early 20s, he moved to Memphis.
He was soon playing regularly at a bar in West Memphis and he also became a disc jockey, with a show on a local radio station. He was known as “The Beale Street Blues Boy” but this was shortened to “Blues Boy King” and then to “BB”. In 1950, King began recording for Modern Records.
He had his first hit in 1952 with Three O’Clock Blues. It was number one in the R&B chart for 15 weeks; it was the first of many hits. King developed a style that was new and different but had its roots in blues history. He often praised the musicians who influenced him and he usually mentioned T-Bone Walker first. He also mentioned the earlier blues guitarists Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lonnie Johnson and the jazz players Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt. 
He once explained that his guitar technique was partly the result of his lack of skill: “I started to bend notes because I could never play in the bottleneck style. I loved that sound but just couldn’t do it.” During the 1950s, King was the leading blues artist in many series of concerts. In 1956, he played 342 concerts. In 1962, he tried to change that working pattern by signing with a major label, ABC. But the first records under that contract were not very successful with his fans or with the record company.
But his 1965 album, Live at the Regal, has become famous and influenced many younger musicians. He had more R&B hits with blues songs and, in 1969, he was near the top of the pop charts – where no blues artist had been for many years – with a song called The Thrill Is Gone.
It was a long time before he became known to a rock audience but musicians who admired him brought him to the attention of rock fans. “About a year and a half ago,” he said in 1969, “kids suddenly started saying to me, ‘You’re the greatest blues guitarist in the world.’ And I’d say, ‘Who told you that?’ And they’d say, ‘Mike Bloomfield’ or ‘Eric Clapton’. These young musicians made me popular again.”
From then on, King was well known as a leading blues artist. He went on international concert tours to Japan, Australia, China and Russia. He also gave concerts to prisoners in Chicago and at San Quentin. 
In 1990, doctors told King he had diabetes and he reduced his touring. He now had to play sitting down but his singing and playing were almost as good as ever. The celebrations for his 80th birthday, in 2005, included an award-winning album with Clapton, Mark Knopfler, Roger Daltrey, Gloria Estefan and others, tributes from Bono, Amadou Bagayoko and Elton John, and a “goodbye tour” that was not a goodbye at all.
In 2009, King received a Grammy award, for best traditional blues album, for One Kind Favor. In 2012, he performed at a concert at the White House, where the US President, Barack Obama, joined him to sing Sweet Home Chicago. King was twice married and twice divorced. He is survived by 11 children by various partners; four others died before him.",elementary,28
"A degree in Spanish got me my fi rst job as a journalist, with an international press agency in Mexico City, but it didn’t stop me from making mistakes as a young 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 offi ce, coordinating the news from areas of fi ghting in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and the rest of Central America. But, I also had to report on occasional disasters: fi res, fl oods 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. Once, when I meant to call the police, I got a Mexican grandmother out of bed at 2am because I had misunderstood a number and dialled a wrong digit. Even worse, there were too many victims 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 offi ce in Washington. “I don’t know what training you have had,” an editor shouted, “but has no one ever told you a death toll can’t go down?!”
Why are numbers in another language such a problem? It may be because of different numbering systems. 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). Different number systems can clearly cause confusion.
Some experts believe there is a link between dyscalculia – the diffi culty in understanding arithmetic – and problems learning foreign languages, particularly if languages are learnt by rote. 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 quite easy, apart from the numbers.
But, perhaps it’s also because you often hear numbers in a non-native language out of context or in isolation. The listener might have switched off from the foreign language and be unable to suddenly tune in. I talked to multilingual friends and found that many can be fl uent in French or Italian when ordering from a restaurant menu, for example, but freeze if they have to communicate numbers, especially over the phone. Numbers seem to be taxing, but no one could really say why.
In my case, my problems with numbers in a foreign language followed me from Mexico to other countries and from Spanish to German and Portuguese. But, in that fi rst 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 offi ce. With no senior English-speaking reporter in the offi ce, I had to try to reach the consulate by phone. I got the phone number wrong and I was put through to an extension elsewhere in the building. The identity of the person who took my call was unmistakable: I chatted for 15 minutes to the gunman. I didn’t persuade him to put away his gun – but my reputation as a reporter rose overnight.",intermediate,29
"The roof is plastic and the desks just old chairs, but the students inside the Chemin des Dunes school are studying hard. They want a new life in France. 
“The French language is very difficult but we try hard. If we come every day, maybe our dreams will come true,” says Kamal, a refugee from Sudan. He 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 many refugees who live in the “jungle” camp outside Calais who have applied for asylum in France. They want to learn the language of their new home. 
“I want people in the UK to know that not everyone wants to go there. There are a lot of people here who want to stay in France,” Kamal said. 
France already has more than a quarter of a million refugees. There are also 56,000 asylum seekers who are waiting to see if they can stay in France. 
While they wait for an answer, France does not give them any money or allow them to work. The wait can take many months. The jungle camp offers a free meal a day and a plastic roof over their heads. So, many people decide to live there and not work illegally because then they will not be allowed to stay in France. 
Some of the asylum seekers suggested the idea for the school at the start of the summer. 
They were bored with waiting and nervous about starting a new life in France totally unable to communicate. The school opened on 11 July. 
“We did it so people can learn French,” said Zimarco Jones, the school’s Nigerian founder. He arrived in Calais in 2013 and is still waiting to hear if he will be allowed to stay in France. “Now, we need to build another school,” he says with a grin. 
The tiny classroom can hold 30 pupils. There are 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 French lessons are the most popular. The teachers are volunteers from Calais and other places. 
“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 refugee and student. He wanted to cross the Channel because he speaks fluent English but, with language classes, he says he is happy to stay in France. 
“Anywhere there is peace, I can stay, no problem,” he says. He is already waiting at the classroom more than half an hour before his teachers arrive. 
He says he doesn’t know much about France but the classes are slowly helping him understand the country and 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, volunteered when she saw an advertisement on Facebook. “I saw these people in Calais every day and I wanted to do something for them,” she said. 
“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,” Flahaut said as she prepared for an afternoon lesson. 
The teachers and Zimarco now plan a separate classroom for around 200 women and 20 children. There are ten times more men than women in the Calais camp. Most of the women feel uncomfortable going to classes with male students they don’t know, the volunteers say. 
Zimarco has more dreams for making the camp a place to live, not just survive. He wants to start a football team for migrants and dreams of changing the camp name. He hates “the jungle” because he says it sounds like the residents aren’t people. 
“We have a discotheque, a house, a mosque, a school, shops,” he says. “We are not animals.”",elementary,30
"The age of the big British summer music festival, including Glastonbury, is drawing to a close, according to the leading rock promoter and manager Harvey Goldsmith.
Goldsmith has produced and worked with most of the western world’s biggest music stars, from the Who, the Rolling Stones and Queen to Madonna, Bob Dylan and Luciano Pavarotti. He says the biggest problem is a serious lack of major new bands to follow on from the old ones.
“The age of the festival peaked about two years ago,” he said, speaking at the Hay Festival of Literature and Arts in Wales. “There are too many festivals and there are not enough big acts to headline them. That is a big, big problem in our industry. And we are not producing a new generation of these kind of acts – like the Rolling Stones, Muse, even the Arctic Monkeys – that can headline.”
There were about 900 music festival events in the UK between May and September 2014, he said, and there is no way they can all continue. “There is going to be a growth in events where it isn’t just music but with poetry or books or magic shows. There will be lots of small combination festivals that give something extra – not people standing around in a big field unable to go to the toilet because they might miss the band.”
Clearly, the way music is delivered has changed, he said. “People don’t seem to want to listen to an album any more. And, most rock bands built their reputation on albums – they might take three albums to become really good at their art, to become great, but young people don’t want that.”
Goldsmith, 69, also revealed that he is working with Robin de Levita, the Dutch producer of the Who’s 1970s rock musical Tommy, at a new 1,100-seat theatre in Wembley, London, where the first stage adaptation of the teen book and movie series The Hunger Games will be performed in June 2016.
Talking at Hay, Goldsmith also revealed some of the secrets from his long career in the music industry. He said that Keith Moon put dynamite down a Sydney hotel room toilet to unblock it. And, he said that John Lennon had stage fright just before an appearance at Madison Square Garden in 1974 – he was pulled, vomiting, out of his dressing room and pushed out on stage. “It’s bizarre how common that is among artists. It’s odd how afraid they get but, as soon as the first chord is hit, they’re fine,” he said.
He also gave the answer to a long-running rock ’n’ roll mystery: why Elvis Presley never performed outside North America. Presley’s long-time manager, Colonel Tom Parker, admitted to him, he said, that the real reason why Goldsmith’s attempts to bring the singer to London had failed was Parker’s own uncertain immigration status.
“He explained that it was because he was an illegal Dutch immigrant. He didn’t want to risk leaving the US – it was him, not Elvis,” said Goldsmith.
And, his ultimate rock ’n’ roll performer? “Freddie Mercury had to be our most powerful stage performer, the best live performer we’ve ever had. At Live Aid, he went out and saw that audience and just grabbed it.”
But, nobody has found the next Queen yet, he said. “We’re not producing a new generation of this kind of act. Coldplay is probably the last one and that was ten years ago.
“So, with no big acts to headline, there are no big shows. Glastonbury has got to the point where it can’t find any more big acts and that’s the pinnacle of the festivals. They are really over.”",intermediate,31
"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?”",advanced,32
"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.”",advanced,33
"Writing in the journal Nature, former president of the Royal Institute of Navigation Roger McKinlay argues that our reliance on GPS (global positioning system) technology is misplaced and could be eroding our innate way-finding abilities. “If we do not cherish them, our natural navigation abilities will deteriorate as we rely ever more on smart devices,” he wrote. 
McKinlay believes huge investment will be needed before navigation systems will be good enough to allow technologies such as autonomous vehicles to take off. In the meantime, he argues, we need better research into systems for navigation while children should be encouraged to learn how to find their way around by more traditional means. “Schools should teach navigation and map reading as life skills,” he wrote. 
According to Ofcom (the Office of Communications), around 66% of adults in the UK owned a smartphone in 2015, up from 39% in 2012, making GPS technology widely available. But McKinlay, a satellite communication and navigation consultant, believes that we should be wary of leaving our navigational needs to our devices. “Navigation is a use-it-or-lose-it skill,” he wrote. 
While few scientific studies have explored the issue, research from 2009 supports the notion. “What we did was to look at a set of current London taxi drivers and a set of London taxi drivers that had been retired for about four years,” said neuroscientist Dr Hugo Spiers, head of the Spatial Cognition Group at University College London, who is an author of the study. The results showed that the retired taxi drivers performed worse on navigation tests than those still behind the wheel. “We were able to show that their abilities did drop away if they weren’t using their knowledge on that particular test.” 
Spiers also believes there is a danger in relying on technologies like GPS but he is quick to point out that the biggest risk lies in users being unwittingly led into perilous situations. Among the fatalities blamed on satnavs (satellite navigation devices) was the death of a driver who, in 2010, plunged into a reservoir in Spain. “There is a genuine potential for risk in relying on a satnav,” said Spiers. “But the actual health risk of not using your brain effectively is not known.” 
The way in which navigational technology is used could also affect its impact on our own abilities, says Spiers. While audio instructions to drivers remove the need to think about navigation, he says, the use of smartphone apps as digital maps is very different. “In the old days, you had to print out or take an A to Z map in your pocket – what we are doing now is just using computer- aided information and you are having to think really quite hard about where you are going and interact with this device,” he said. “The modern technology isn’t just dumbing us down completely.” 
McKinlay remains convinced that navigation technologies have a long way to go before futuristic scenarios involving driverless cars and smart cities become a reality. “For really critical applications – safety applications like landing aircraft or navigating aircraft – GPS is still not good enough,” he said. 
Though Spiers believes the development of artificial intelligence based on machine learning could lead to a new wave of navigational aids, McKinlay remains sceptical. “We will see ever- smarter machines which are very, very task specific, but the big breakthrough will be when they are able to tune in to what you might be thinking and what you might be wanting to achieve,” he said. 
Ultimately, McKinlay believes, it’s essential that humans remain able to take control of their navigation. “Do you really want to encourage people to get to a point where, when it disappears or when the battery goes flat, they are in total shock and can do nothing?” he said. “Technology isn’t magic – it is just a tool.”",advanced,34
"The bestselling book on Amazon in the US is a colouring books for adults by Scottish illustrator Johanna Basford. 
Basford’s pictures of animals and plants in Secret Garden have sold more than 1.4 million copies around the world and her next book, Enchanted Forest , has sold 226,000 copies already. The books have celebrity fans like Zooey Deschanel, who shared a link about the book with her Facebook followers, and the South Korean pop star Kim Ki-Bum, who posted an image on Instagram for his 1.6 million followers. 
“It’s been crazy. The last few weeks have been madness, but fantastic madness,” said Eleanor Blatherwick, head of sales and marketing at the books’ publisher, Laurence King. “We knew the books would be beautiful but we didn’t realize they would be such a big success.” and calm”. 
And it is not just Basford’s books that adults want to colour in. In the UK, Richard Merritt’s Art Therapy Colouring Book is in fourth place on Amazon’s bestseller lists, Millie Marotta’s Animal Kingdom – detailed pictures of animals to colour – is in seventh place and a mindfulness colouring book is in ninth place. Basford’s books are in second and eighth place – so half of Amazon. co.uk’s top ten is filled by colouring books for adults. 
Independent UK publisher Michael O’Mara has sold around 340,000 adult colouring books. Ana McLaughlin works for them. She says the craze has happened because they are telling people that the books will help them to relax. “The first book we did was in 2012, Creative Colouring for Grown-Ups . It sold well but it was in 2014 that adult colouring books became really popular with Art Therapy . We tell people they are anti-stress books so people are allowed to enjoy something they thought was childish before,” she said. 
The Mindfulness Colouring Book says that it is filled with beautiful scenes and intricate, sophisticated patterns. This makes you relax “as you fill these pages with colour”. The book suggests that people “take a few minutes, wherever you are, and colour your way to peace 
“I think it is really relaxing to unplug,” said Basford. “And it’s creative. For many people, a blank sheet of paper is very daunting; with a colouring book you just need to bring the colour. Also, people do it because they feel nostalgia for their childhoods. So many people have said to me that they used to do secret colouring in when their kids were in bed. Now, people don’t feel silly. These are books for adults. The art in my books is super intricate.” The illustrator, who lives in Aberdeenshire, is creating a third book. 
“The pictures are all over Twitter and Instagram. People are really proud of them – they are so intricate,” she said. “People send us pictures of them,” said McLaughlin.",elementary,35
"Maria is sitting on a black plastic chair in a community centre on a cold Tuesday afternoon waiting for someone to call her number. She is number 34.
When it’s her turn, Maria goes to pick up a brown paper bag filled with essentials including pasta, eggs and cornflakes, and can choose between butternut squash or carrots as this week’s vegetables.
Maria is the 34th “client” so far today at East Hampton Food Pantry, just streets away from some of the most expensive houses in the world.
Each day at this time of year, more than 400 families collect their weekly food parcel from the food pantry. This food helps them survive the cold, dark Long Island winter.
The Hamptons are historic oceanfront towns and villages 100 miles from Manhattan. In the summertime, they are a billionaires’ playground. But, in early September, when the rich and famous shut up their mansions and go back to Manhattan or Beverly Hills, the glamour ends and the gritty reality of life begins for the mostly immigrant community who live here all year.
“The people who come here are rich and famous but we who live here are not,” says Maria, who works 14-hour days in the summer cleaning mansions but often has no work at all in the winter.
Maria laughs when asked if she has enough money. “There is no work in the winter, only in the summertime,” says Maria, who is from Latin America, like many of the workers in the Hamptons. “Here, lots of people live in a single room because they can’t pay the rent.”
She says some families with up to five children have to live in basements and still pay more than $1,000 a month in rent. “People come here looking for work but, in the winter, there is nothing.”
Lots of her friends can’t pay for heating or medication and many would go hungry if the East Hampton Food Pantry didn’t exist, she says. It is just one of several food pantries in the town.
Vicki Littman is chairperson of the East Hampton Food Pantry, which provided more than 31,000 food parcels in 2015. She says there are more and more people coming to the food pantry.
Littman says that, when she talks to the people who come for the summer about the food pantries, they are always shocked because they know only the glamorous side of the Hamptons where there are big parties and the beaches and mansions.
“But, what people don’t realize is that there is that service industry. It’s the landscapers, the nannies, the waitresses – they all rely on what they earn in the summer to survive the winter.”
Littman says the town has lost too many people who do important jobs – such as teachers, police officers and even doctors and dentists – because they can’t afford to live in the community.
Housing is the biggest cost in the Hamptons. Larry Cantwell, who has lived in East Hampton all his life, says homes regularly change hands for more than $25m. “Finding your first home is a challenge in an area like this,” Cantwell says. “If you can find a home to buy anywhere in East Hampton for $500,000, you’re very lucky.”
Cantwell says more than half the town’s homes are empty for most of the year – this causes the population to go from 80,000 in August to 10,000 in the winter months.
“There’s certainly a lot of wealth here but almost all of that wealth is in second homes only used in the summer,” says Cantwell, the son of a fisherman father and a house-cleaner mother. “But, the rest of us live here year round.
“There are famous and very wealthy people but also hard-working and poor people who struggle to get by. You’ve got to remember that this community used to be a farming and fishing community of people who lived off the land and the water – a real working-class community.”
Eddie Vallone, 22, says, “People see the Hamptons as some sort of rich town but there are a lot of problems here, especially drugs. It’s hard to grasp – ‘OK, the summer is ending. What am I going to do for the winter?’” Vallone says. “I want to work but there’s no work to do.”
Vallone, who works cleaning pools and doing odd jobs on luxury estates, says that, if he saves well, his summer earnings can last until November. “But, work doesn’t start again until May or the beginning of June.”",intermediate,36
"he 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.",advanced,37
"The huge fortunes made by the world’s richest 100 billionaires are making inequality worse and stopping the world from being able to reduce poverty, says Oxfam. 
Oxfam said the world could end poverty several times over if the richest 100 billionaires would give away the money they made in 2012. 
The charity said that the $240bn made in 2012 by the richest 100 billionaires would be enough to end extreme poverty four times over. 
It is unusual for charities to attack the wealthy, because they are usually seen as a source of money. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are among a group of 40 US billionaires who have said they will give much of their money to aid projects, but there is little information about how much money they give each year. 
Russian, Middle Eastern and Chinese billionaires do not give away money to charity in the same way that US billionaires do. 
In the report, the charity asks world leaders to end income extremes and reduce inequality. 
The report said that the richest 1% of people have increased their incomes by 60% in the past 20 years. 
Barbara Stocking, Oxfam’s Chief Executive, said: “We can no longer pretend that wealth for a few people will benefit many people – too often the opposite is true.” 
The report said the problem affected all parts of the world. “In the UK, inequality is returning to levels not seen since the nineteenth century. In China, the top 10% now earn nearly 60% of the income. Chinese inequality levels are now similar to those in South Africa, which is now the most unequal country on Earth.” 
In the US, the share of national income that goes to the top 1% of people has doubled since 1980 from 10% to 20%, the report says. 
The richest 1% are estimated to cause 10,000 times more pollution than the average US citizen. 
Oxfam said world leaders should learn from countries such as Brazil, which has grown quickly and reduced inequality at the same time. 
Stocking said that world leaders should agree to reduce inequality to the levels seen in 1990. 
She said closing tax havens, which hold as much as $31 trillion, or as much as a third of all global wealth, could collect $189bn in additional taxes.",elementary,38
"Rare mountain gorillas live in the Virunga National Park in DR Congo. The country could earn $400 million a year from tourism, hydropower and carbon credits, said a WWF report. But a British company want to look for oil there. 
If they look for oil at the UNESCO World Heritage Site that crosses the equator, as the Congolese government and exploration firm SOCO International hope, it could lead to terrible pollution and conflict, says the WWF. 
SOCO say that they would look for oil in a part of the park called Block V, and that their work would not affect the gorillas. 
SOCO Chairman Rui de Sousa said that SOCO knows about the environmental importance of the Virunga National Park. He also said that oil companies have a central role in today’s global energy supply and that a successful oil project could help a whole country. 
But Raymond Lumbuenamo, country director for WWF Democratic Republic of the Congo, based in Kinshassa, said that security in and around the park would get worse if SOCO started looking for oil. 
“Security is already bad. The UN is involved with fighting units and the M23 rebel force is inside the park. Oil would be a curse. It always makes conflict worse. The park might become like the Niger Delta. Developing Virunga for oil will not make anything better.” 
Many people live in the park – over 350 people per square kilometre. Oil would not create many jobs, and many more people would come looking for work, Lumbuenamo said. 
One danger is that another eruption of one of the volcanoes in the park could damage oil company buildings and machines and lead to oil spills in the lakes. “Virunga’s rich natural resources are for the Congolese people, not for foreign oil companies,” Lumbuenamo said. 
But Raymond accepted that, although the gorillas were safe now, the park would probably not be able to make $400 million. “It would be difficult to make the kind of money that the report talks of.” 
The WWF report says that ecosystems in the park could support fishing and ecotourism, and play an important role in providing water and stopping soil erosion. 
The park is Africa’s oldest and most diverse. It is home to over 3,000 different kinds of animals. “Virunga is a valuable asset to DR Congo,” the report says. “Plans to look for oil put Virunga’s future in danger,” it says.",elementary,39
"runchy, 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.",advanced,40
"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?”",advanced,41
"The vice-president of Google has warned that digitized material from blogs, tweets, pictures, videos and official documents such as emails could be lost forever because the programs we need to view them will no longer exist. Our 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. He said that we might become a “forgotten generation or even a forgotten century” because of “bit rot”, where old computer files become useless junk. 
Cerf said we should develop digital methods to preserve old software and hardware to read old files. “So much of the information about our daily lives is in digital form, like our interactions by email, people’s tweets and all of the world wide web. So it’s clear that we could lose a lot of our history,” he said. “If we want to keep it, we need to make sure that people can still see the digital objects we create today in the future,” he added. 
What is ’bit rot’ and is Vint Cerf right to be worried? His warning highlights an irony about modern technology: we digitize music, photos, letters and other documents so that they survive for centuries but the programs and hardware people will need to read those files don’t survive. 
“We are throwing all of our data into an information black hole. We digitize things because we think we will preserve them. But what we don’t understand is that, if we don’t do something, those digital versions may not be any better than the things that we digitized. In fact, they may be worse,” Cerf says. “If there are photos you really care about, print them out.” 
Ancient civilizations did not have these problems because people wrote histories down and we need only eyes to read them. To study today’s culture, future historians will have to read PDFs, Word documents and hundreds of other file types, using special software and sometimes hardware, too. 
The problem is already here. In the 1980s, it was normal to save documents on floppy disks and buy computer games on cassettes. Even if the disks and cassettes are in good condition, we can now only find the equipment to view them in museums. 
Cerf warns that we will also lose important political and historical documents because of bit rot. In 2005, American historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote a book about Abraham Lincoln. She went to libraries around the US and found the paper letters of the people involved. “In today’s world, those letters would be emails and it will be almost impossible to find them one hundred years from now,” said Cerf. 
He admits that historians will try to preserve important material. But he says that people often don’t understand the importance of documents until hundreds of years later. Historians have learned how Archimedes thought about infinity in 3BC because they found his writings hidden under the words of a thirteenth-century book. “We’ve been surprised by what we’ve learned from objects that have been preserved by accident,” he said. 
Researchers in Pittsburgh are trying to find a solution to bit rot. They are creating a computer that can read old files. 
Inventing new technology helps but it is only part of the solution. It could be even more difficult to get the legal permissions to copy and store software before it dies. “To do this properly, we might need to think about things like copyright. We’re talking about preserving documents for hundreds to thousands of years,” said Cerf.",elementary,42
"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.",advanced,43
"Two mothers in South Africa have found out that they are raising each other ’s daughters after someone switched them at birth by mistake in a hospital in 2010.
One of the women wants to get her biological child back; the other refuses to hand back the girl she has raised as her own daughter. 
Henk Strydom, a lawyer for one of the mothers, said the switch was a tragedy that will probably not have a happy ending.
Both mothers gave birth at the Tambo Memorial Hospital in Boksburg, east of Johannesburg, on the same day in 2010.
In 2013, one of the mothers, who is 33 and unemployed, wanted her ex-partner to pay maintenance for her daughter. The man said he was not the father. Strydom says, “A DNA test was done. They found that it was not his baby and not her baby. She was devastated. She didn’t know what to do.”
She met the other mother and now they go to joint counselling sessions, organized by the hospital. Here, both mothers met their biological daughters. 
Strydom said about the mother: “You can see it’s not easy for her. She has to care for a child that is not hers on her own while her child is with someone else.”
The woman became unhappy and asked the children’s court to give her custody of her biological child, but the other mother refused.
“It’s a tragedy. She wants the baby back, but it’s four years later: you can understand that the other mother doesn’t want to give up her baby, ” Strydom said.
The High Court in Pretoria has asked the University of Pretoria’s Centre for Child Law to find out what will be best for the children.
Strydom added: “Whatever happens, someone won’t be happy. ”
Karabo Ngidi, a lawyer with the centre, said: “We must do what is best for the children. Biology is important but it is not the only important thing.”
It is not the first time babies have been switched by mistake in South Africa. In 1995, two mothers were paid damages after their sons, born in 1989, were switched by mistake at the Johannesburg hospital where they were born.",elementary,44
"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.",advanced,45
"It began with a bogus scallop, but a menu scandal that has affected some of Japan’s top hotels and department stores now threatens the international reputation of the country’s food.
Since one luxury hotel chain admitted lying about ingredients on its menus, Japanese media have written stories of similar incidents in restaurants run by well-known hotels and department stores.
The story 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, which affected an estimated 78,000 diners.
One of the worst menu misdemeanours was a red salmon ‘caviar’ dish that was actually the less luxurious eggs of the flying fish.
The hotel group’s president, Hiroshi Desaki, went on television to announce a 20% pay cut for himself and 10% for other executives but this did not make consumers any less angry.
Days later, Desaki resigned, saying that the hotel group had “betrayed our customers.” One of the hotel’s head chefs later declined a medal of honour he was going to receive from the government.
The company has so far refunded 20 million yen to more than 10,000 consumers. The final bill is expected to reach 110 million yen.
Consumers who believed they had eaten expensive kuruma shrimps were told they had in fact eaten the much cheaper black tiger version.
The scandal started when a diner complained in a blogpost that a ‘scallop’ dish he had ordered at the Prince Hotel in Tokyo contained a similar, but cheaper, type of shellfish.
The hotel started an investigation and as a result corrected 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 top ingredients.
The Hotel Okura chain – whose guests have included Barack Obama – said they had also injected beef with fat to make it juicier and incorrectly described 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; shop-bought chocolate cream that the menu said was home-made; imported beef sold as expensive wagyu.
Even the government’s top spokesman, Yoshihide Suga, commented on the scandal. “This inappropriate labelling has resulted in the loss of trust among consumers,” he told reporters.
The fraudulent menu scandal has exploded at just the wrong time. Japan is trying to persuade South Korea and other countries to lift a ban on food imports that began after the Fukushima nuclear accident. And UNESCO is considering a request to add Japanese cuisine to its cultural heritage list.
One local newspaper had the headline, “Japan’s proud food culture in tears,” while the newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun said it was “shocked by the industry’s lack of morals”.
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’ preferences, and, when they couldn’t get the ingredients on the menu, hotels just used food from different places,” Hiroshi Tomozawa, a hotel and restaurant consultant, told Kyodo News.
The industry’s biggest problem will come from Japan’s demanding consumers. In 2009, 72% of diners in Japan said that, when they were choosing from a menu, where the food is from was the most important thing for them, followed by the amount of calories and other nutritional details.",intermediate,46
"t 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.”",advanced,47
"The view from the visitors’ centre in the Doñana National Park in southern Spain is a bird- watcher ’s dream: 200,000 hectares of wetlands vital for the birds of western Europe. Many of Britain’s most loved migratory birds rest here every year on their migrations from Africa. Doñana is also home to some of Europe’s rarest birds, including the Spanish imperial eagle.
It is a beautiful landscape but it is under threat. In 1998, almost two billion gallons of toxic water, full of acid and waste metals, poured into the park from the Los Frailes mine 45km away. They collected more than 25,000 kilos of dead fish afterwards and nearly 2,000 adult birds, chicks, eggs and nests were killed or destroyed.
It was Spain’s worst environmental disaster and the clean-up cost €90 million. Spain realized that Doñana is the nation’s most important natural site, so the country decided to spend an extra €360 million on restoring the landscape to its original wetland state.
It has been an expensive process. And Doñana is still under threat from the pressures of modern life. There are plans to build an oil pipeline through Doñana and there is also an idea to build new hotels and golf courses, which would use a lot of local water. Sand and soil washed from nearby farms is also blocking the channels that cross the park.
But, the biggest shock has been the recent decision of the Andalucían government to reopen the Frailes mine that nearly destroyed Doñana in 1998. “This is Europe’s most important bird sanctuary, ” says Laurence Rose of the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds). “Doñana already faces a lot of threats but now they want to bring back the cause of the disaster 16 years ago. It is extremely worrying.”
If you look at the state of the local economy, you quickly see why the government has made this decision. The crash of Spain’s banks in 2008 had a very bad effect on the region. Unemployment in some parts of Andalucía is now more than 30%. If they reopen the mine, it would create more than 1,000 jobs.
“There are riches here, riches that the local inhabitants badly need,” said energy spokesman Vicente Fernández Guerrero. “We think mining is a good way to make it possible to allow local people to continue to live in the area. This is a mining area. People have mined metals here since Roman times.”
Fernández said that the mine licence would only allow modern mining techniques, which do not create poisonous wet waste. “They will use the best technology in the world here,” Fernández said. “They will not use liquid. We will not allow that.”
Some people agree with the idea, but a lot of people disagree with it. Carlos Dávila, who works for the Spanish Ornithological Society in Doñana, was also alarmed at the idea. “This is a very, very bad idea,” he said. “They say the new mine will be safe, but they said it was safe in 1998 and look what happened. We got the worst ecological disaster in the history of Spain.”
Almost every visitor at a local restaurant had a camera and telescopic lens or a pair of binoculars. Lots of tourists come to Doñana because of the birdlife. This is not surprising for this is a truly special place. A big sky hangs over this flat but dramatic landscape. Birds of every shape and size fill the air and sometimes the road. At one point on my visit, a stork calmly stood in front of our car until it felt ready to fly off.
“The trouble is that Spain does not have the public resources it had 16 years ago. A repeat of the disaster today would have a much, much more damaging impact,” said Rose. Dávila agrees. “After the disaster, Spain realized that it had a place of real ecological importance and did a lot to clean it up and protect it,” he added. “Now, it seems we have forgotten that lesson. It is very depressing.”",elementary,48
"Back in 2005, when BlackBerry brought instant messaging to the mobile phone, the company was just entering its boom times. While the iPhone was still just an idea, BlackBerry’s innovations ensured its smartphone was one of Canada’s biggest exports.
Six years later, in the summer of 2011, when there were riots in London and other UK cities, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) was so effective at mobilizing the rioters that politicians wanted the service to be temporarily shut down. But, two years later, it is the users themselves who are pulling the plug.
Demand for BlackBerry phones is falling. Dozens of alternatives have sprung up to take its place, from Facebook’s and Apple’s instant messaging applications to independent apps such as WhatsApp and Kik (which is also Canadian). They are free to download and use, and they use the internet to swap text messages, pictures, voice clips, ‘stickers’ and even videos between most types of phones.
In an attempt to keep its customers, BBM has been released on Android and Apple phones. Despite the competition from other apps, the response has been extraordinary, with more than 20 million downloads. But, despite this interest, many people believe BBM’s wider release will not save the service. “The move to bring BlackBerry to the iPhone is four or five years too late,” says James Gooderson, an 18-year-old student who blogs on technology. “WhatsApp has made BlackBerrys unnecessary for young people.”
BBM says it has 80 million monthly users after its upgrade, but WhatsApp has 300 million. Other services show BBM’s limitations: unlike Skype and Viber, it does not yet offer video or voice calls; unlike Path, it does not do location sharing; there is no video sharing, as on iMessage; and the stickers (a more sophisticated version of the smiley face), adored by kids all over the world, are also absent. Even the contacts and calendar sharing that BBM made possible on BlackBerry phones are not on the Apple and Android versions.
Messaging is moving from verbal to visual. Photos uploaded to Instagram get instant comments and Snapchat’s pictures, which selfdelete after ten seconds, have opened a world of other possibilities. Like BBM, all of these services are free for any phone with an internet connection. But as recently as 2011, BBM was so powerful it helped to start a revolution in Egypt; and at the time of the London riots, it was a more immediate source of news than the television screen.
“We could see on our BlackBerry messages where the rioters were going next; TV news would catch up four hours later,” said Jean- Pierre Moore, 28. He manages a youth club in Stockwell, south London, an area with some of the highest levels of crime and poverty in Britain. Moore mainly communicates on an iPad now. He does not agree with the idea that a shutdown of BBM would have stopped the looting. “The social networking wasn’t the reason,” he says.
Nearly 80% of young smartphone owners regularly use a social networking application but two-thirds use more than one. Among 16- to 24-year-olds, 60% use Facebook every day, but 46% use alternatives. “It’s a much more complex, multifaceted environment,” says Benedict Evans, a digital media specialist. “All of these apps use your smartphone – they plug into your phone book and your photo library. Apps rise and fall like fireworks. Some, like Instagram, last; others just disappear.”
Thirteen-year-old Bennett has three phones. He keeps his BlackBerry for messaging, uses an iPhone to play games, and makes phone calls on an Android phone. His friends are still on BBM. At the touch of a few buttons, a single BlackBerry message can be sent to the phone owner’s entire contacts book – several hundred people, in some cases; on WhatsApp, the limit for a broadcast message is 50. But, for Bennett, Instagram is now a major social network. “Instagram is Facebook without parents,” he says. “Facebook has been taken over by the older generation. When I saw my mum on Facebook, I deleted my account.”
The low cost of buying and communicating on a BlackBerry is still an advantage. Unlimited BBM messages are available to anyone with a secondhand phone and a £7-a-month deal from a telecoms company. But people no longer trust the privacy of BBM. Part of the attraction to business people, revolutionaries, demonstrators and rioters was a belief that encrypted words sent over the company’s secure servers could not be traced back to their writers. Arrests and prosecutions after the riots put an end to that belief.
Across town from Stockwell, outside the gates of a private school in the rich district of South Kensington, the older pupils all have Apple logos on their phones. They all use WhatsApp. For many, BBM is a distant memory. “I still have a Blackberry, but I’m the only one,” says a teenager standing with a circle of friends. And how does that make him feel? “Isolated,” he replies.",intermediate,49