{"text":"1 Flappy Bird \nBe careful what you wish for, especially if you want to invent something new. Recently, Dong Nguyen, the designer of the mobile game Flappy Bird, pulled it from app stores, saying its success \u2013 it had been downloaded more than 50 million times, and was making him around \u00a330,000 in advertising revenue each day \u2013 had ruined his simple life. He took to his Twitter account to say: \u201cI cannot take this anymore.\u201d \nOK, so regretting making Flappy Bird isn\u2019t quite the same as regretting making a ri\ufb02e, but Nguyen is just the latest in a long line of inventors who wish they hadn\u2019t created a monster. \n2 The labradoodle \nThe labradoodle isn\u2019t a monster \u2013 it\u2019s adorable, obviously. But what\u2019s monstrous is the way crossbreed dogs have been bred and marketed since the labradoodle\u2019s inventor, Wally Conron, \ufb01rst created the breed in the 1980s. \u201cI\u2019ve done a lot of damage,\u201d he told the Associated Press. \u201cI\u2019ve created a lot of problems. There are a lot of unhealthy and abandoned dogs out there.\u201d Conron came up with the labradoodle when he was working for the Royal Guide Dog Association of Australia to provide a dog for a blind woman whose husband was allergic to dog hair. What he didn\u2019t expect was that the labradoodle \u2013 and its other poodle-cross variants, many of which have health problems \u2013 would become so popular. \n3 The AK-47 \nSix months before his death in December 2013, Mikhail Kalashnikov, the designer of the assault ri\ufb02e, wrote to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church: \u201cMy spiritual torment is unbearable. One and the same question: if my ri \ufb02 e killed people, does that mean that I, Mikhail Kalashnikov, 93 years of age, the son of a peasant, Christian and Orthodox by faith, am responsible for people\u2019s deaths, even if they were enemies?\u201d \n4 Electronic tagging \nThe electronic tag was originally conceived in the 1960s as a way of tracking former prisoners\u2019 attendance at schools and workplaces, and rewarding them for good behaviour. Its inventors, Bob Gable and his brother Kirkland, were later horri \ufb01 ed that the tag had become a form of control and punishment. \u201cIt\u2019s not pleasant,\u201d Kirkland Gable told the Guardian in 2010, \u201cbut I\u2019m not in control of the universe. I have to realize there are some things out of my control.\u201d \n5 Pepper spray \nAfter police sprayed peaceful protesters with pepper spray at a University of California campus in 2011, one of the scientists who helped develop it in the 80s denounced its use. \u201cI have never seen such an inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents,\u201d Kamran Loghman told The New York Times. \n6 The of\ufb01ce cubicle \nIn the late 60s, a new form of of\ufb01ce was launched, designed to give workers privacy and increase productivity by providing more work space. Instead, it became a way for companies to cram employees into tighter spaces, a visual shorthand for uniformity and soulless work. Its inventor, Bob Propst, said in 1997, \u201cthe cubiclizing of people in modern corporations is monolithic insanity.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"The last time she performed, we did not have mobile phones. Now, 35 years later, as she performs again, singer Kate Bush sees a very different world. \nThese days, most concerts are now lit up with phones and tablets, but Bush does not want her fans to watch her shows through a screen. \nIn August, before her concerts at the Hammersmith Apollo in London, Bush asked her fans to put down their mobile phones at her gigs. \nBush wrote on her website: \u201cI have a request for all of you who are coming to the shows. We have chosen a theatre, not a large venue or stadium. Please do not take photos or videos during the shows. \n\u201cI very much want to have contact with you as an audience, not with iPhones, iPads or cameras.\u201d \nBush is not the first singer or musician to say she doesn\u2019t like phones at concerts. Roger Daltrey from The Who recently said it was \u201cweird\u201d that people looked at their screen and not the artist on stage. \nHe said: \u201cI feel sorry for them, I really feel sorry for them. Looking at life through a screen and not being in the moment totally \u2013 if you\u2019re doing that, you\u2019re 50% there, right? It\u2019s weird.\u201d \nIn 2013, Beyonc\u00e9 told a fan, \u201cYou can\u2019t even sing because you\u2019re too busy filming. Put that damn camera down!\u201d \nRecently, Dutch football fans at PSV Eindhoven protested against the introduction of wi-fi in their stadium. They held up banners that said \u201cNo wi-fi. Support the team,\u201d and \u201cYou can sit at home.\u201d Manchester United have also told fans to leave their \u201clarge electronic devices\u201d at home. \nSinger Jarvis Cocker said, \u201cIt seems stupid to have something happening in front of you and look at it on a screen that\u2019s smaller than a cigarette packet.\u201d \nEven in the world of classical music, one of the world\u2019s top pianists surprised the audience in June 2013 when he left the stage because a fan was filming his performance on a smartphone. Krystian Zimerman returned moments later and said: \u201cThe destruction of music because of YouTube is enormous.\u201d \nBut Sam Watt says that filming at concerts makes the experience even better. He works for Vyclone, a phone app that puts together many videos uploaded by fans to create one long video of a show. \n\u201cFans filming is now part of the concert experience \u2013 that is a just a fact. We take the videos that people are filming at concerts and mix them together with everybody else who was filming. The result is a really fantastic video,\u201d he said. \n\u201cWe think that filming at concerts adds to the experience, and I think that, if Kate Bush came round for a cup of tea, we could have a really interesting discussion about this,\u201d he added. \u201cPeople are going to film and they want those memories \u2013 you\u2019ve got to accept it.\u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Noise from ships may disturb animals such as killer whales and dolphins much more than we thought before. New research shows that underwater noise could stop these animals communicating and make it more difficult for them to find food. It is well known that noise from ships disturbs large whales. But, US researchers have found noise also disturbs smaller sea creatures such as killer whales, also known as orcas. Dolphins and porpoises may have the same problems. \n\u201cThe main problem is that even a small increase in sound may make it more difficult for whales to find food using echo,\u201d said Scott Veirs, who led the research. \u201cThat\u2019s worrying because their food, a kind of salmon, is already quite scarce. Hearing a salmon\u2019s click is probably one of the most difficult things a killer whale does. It is harder to hear that click if there\u2019s a lot of noise around you.\u201d\nThe researchers used underwater microphones to measure the noise made by about 1,600 ships as they passed through Haro Strait, in Washington State, USA. The two-year study recorded the sound made by 12 different types of ship, including cruise ships, container ships and military ships, that passed through the strait about 20 times a day.\nSome ships are quieter than others but the average noise next to all the ships was 173 underwater decibels, the same as 111 decibels through the air \u2013 about the sound of a loud rock concert. Whales are not usually right next to ships and so would hear noise of about 60 to 90 decibels \u2013 around the level of a vacuum cleaner.\nVeirs said scientists already knew about the effect of underwater noise on large whales. But, the new research shows the danger to smaller whales, dolphins and porpoises. \u201cWe think that ships make low-frequency noise, like the sound of lorries or trains,\u201d he said. \u201cMost noise is at that low frequency but there is more background noise in the high frequencies, too. This might be causing a big problem that we need to study more.\u201d\nLots of underwater noise can cause many problems. Whales may have to stay closer together to hear each other. And, if they cannot find food easily, they will need to use their extra blubber. This is a problem because this blubber often contains manmade pollutants that are poisonous to whales if they get into their bodies.\nVeirs said ships that pass near whales need to be quieter. \u201cIt should be easy to reduce noise pollution,\u201d he said. \u201cMilitary ships are much quieter and there could be simple ways of using that technology on normal ships. Another way to reduce noise is to slow down. Reducing speed by six knots could decrease noise by half.\u201d\nSome whale species are safer now because there is less whaling but other types of whale are still in danger for many different reasons. The US has recently protected nearly 40,000 square miles of the Atlantic to save a species of whale with just 500 individuals left.\nIn Europe, killer whales have dangerously high levels of illegal chemicals in their blubber. Scientists are still trying to find out if pollutants caused the deaths of five whales that were found on beaches on the east coast of Britain in January 2016. And, around the coast of Australia, whales are in danger from oil and gas drilling, as well as Japan\u2019s recent decision to start whaling again in the seas of Antarctica.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"The brand and logo of Apple have been named the most valuable in the world \u2013 worth nearly $119bn, or more than the entire gross domestic product of Morocco, Ecuador or Oman. \nThe Silicon Valley firm, already the world\u2019s biggest company \u2013 with a stock market valuation of $591bn \u2013 has seen its brand value increase by 21% in 12 months, according to the closely followed Interbrand Best Global Brands annual report. \nApple, which is recognized the world over by its simple \u201cApple with a bite missing\u201d emblem, led a surge of technology companies in the 2014 report, which has pushed more traditionally valuable brands \u2013 such as Coca-Cola, McDonald\u2019s and Gillette \u2013 down the table. \nGoogle\u2019s brand value rose by 15% to $107bn to take second place, followed by Coca-Cola, up 3% to $81.5bn, IBM ($72.2bn) and Microsoft ($45.5bn). \nFacebook is the biggest riser in the chart, increasing its brand value by 86% to $14.3bn and taking 29th place in the table, ahead of longstanding global corporate names such as Volkswagen, Kellogg\u2019s and Ford. \nJez Frampton, chief executive of Interbrand, which is part of global advertising group Omnicom, said: \u201cBenefitting immensely from the rise of digital and, later, mobile technology, savvy brands like Apple grew stronger. New category- killers like Google, Amazon and Facebook have reset customer expectations and significantly raised the bar for brand experiences.\u201d \nApple, which former Chief Executive Steve Jobs founded in his Los Altos garage in 1976, only appeared in the top ten of the Interbrand annual study in 2011. \nIts logo, created by advertising executive Rob Janoff in 1977, was designed with a bite taken out of it to avoid confusion with a cherry. \u201cOne of the deep mysteries to me is our logo, the symbol of lust and knowledge, bitten into, all crossed with the colours of the rainbow in the wrong order. You couldn\u2019t dream of a more appropriate logo: lust, knowledge, hope and anarchy,\u201d Janoff said. \nGraham Hayles, Interbrand\u2019s chief marketing officer, said it was \u201cnot out of kilter\u201d that Apple\u2019s brand could account for a fifth of the company\u2019s entire market value. \u201cApple makes a lot of money because it has a very strong brand,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is a very strong correlation between branding and profitability.\u201d \nHayles said Interbrand, which has been carrying out the annual study since 2000, calculates brand value by examining companies\u2019 financial performance, consumers\u2019 \u201cbrand allegiance\u201d and \u201cbrand-strength analysis \u201d. \nWhile many technology companies rose up the chart, there were big fallers, too. Finnish mobile- phone company Nokia dropped 41 places to 98th at $4.1bn, just ahead of Nintendo in 100th place (down 33). \u201cThey\u2019re both only just in the chart now,\u201d Hayles said. \u201cIt shows the importance of getting innovation right. If you don\u2019t keep pace, it is very penalizing.\u201d \nA Chinese company has made it into the top 100 for the first time, with mobile-phone and broadband firm Huawei entering the rankings in 94th place with a brand value of $4.3bn. Huawei has been partly banned by the US and Australian governments due to fears that its equipment could be used by the Chinese for cyber-espionage. \nMost of the brands in the top 100 are US-owned, the highest-placed non-US brands being South Korea\u2019s Samsung (6th), Japan\u2019s Toyota (8th) and Germany\u2019s Mercedes-Benz (10th). The highest- placed British brands are HSBC (33rd), Shell (65th) and Burberry (73rd). \nOther fashion brands in the top 100 include Boss, Prada and Ralph Lauren. Designer label Louis Vuitton is the top-ranked fashion name, in 19th position, with a value of $23bn, just ahead of high-street clothing chain H&M, with a brand value of $21bn and ranked 21. \nSports brand Nike, ranked 22 with a brand valued at nearly $20bn, is rated way ahead of rival Adidas, at 59 in the top 100 with a value of $7bn. \nFrampton said consumers\u2019 ability to interact with and criticize brands on Twitter and other social media means companies must react faster to retain and improve their brands\u2019 reputations. \n\u201cThe customer, empowered by social media in the 'age of experience', now has more control than ever,\u201d he said. \u201cIn this world of two-way conversations, advocacy, influence and engagement are the new rules for brand-building. \n\u201cCustomers expect seamless interactions, responsiveness, 24\/7 accessibility, customization options and high levels of personalization,\u201d he said. \u201cIn a sense, they increasingly expect brands to know them.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nCoal will probably rival oil as the worlds biggest source of energy in the next five years, with possible disastrous consequences for the climate, says the worlds leading authority on energy economics.\nOne of the biggest factors behind the rise in coal use has been the massive increase in the use of shale gas in the US.\nNew research from the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows that coal consumption is increasing all over the world  even in countries and regions with carbon-cutting targets  except in the US, where shale gas is now more popular than coal. The decline of coal consumption in the US has helped to cut prices for coal globally. This has made it more attractive, even in Europe where coal use was supposed to be discouraged by the Emissions Trading Scheme.\nMaria van der Hoeven, Executive Director of the IEA, said that coal consumption continues to grow each year and, if no changes are made, coal will catch oil within a decade.\nCoal is available in large amounts and found in most regions of the world, unlike conventional oil and gas, and can be cheaply extracted. According to the IEA, China and India will drive world coal use in the coming five years, with India likely to overtake the US as the worlds second biggest consumer. China is the biggest coal importer, and Indonesia the biggest exporter.\nAccording to the IEAs Medium-Term Coal Market Report the world will burn 1.2bn more tonnes of coal per year by 2017 compared with today.\nWith the highest carbon emissions of any major fossil fuel, coal is a huge contributor to climate change, particularly when burned in old-fashioned, inefficient power stations. When these are not equipped with special scrubbing equipment to remove chemicals, coal can also produce sulphur emissions  the leading cause of acid rain  and mercury and soot-particle pollution.\nVan der Hoeven said that, without a high carbon price to discourage the growth in coal use and encourage cleaner technologies such as renewable power, only competition from lower-priced gas could reduce demand for coal. This has happened in the US, due to the extraordinary increase in the production of shale gas in that market in the past five years.\nShe said: The US experience suggests that a more efficient gas market can reduce coal use, carbon dioxide emissions and consumers electricity bills. Europe, China and other regions should take note.\nIf something isnt done, the world faces an increased risk of climate change as a result of this fast-increasing consumption of the highest carbon fossil fuel.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"They are the darkness seekers \u2013 and they are growing in number. On Black Fell, looking down on Northumberland\u2019s beautiful Kielder Water reservoir, a group of people wait in a car park next to a strange wooden building with a minimalist design beamed down from the future. This is Kielder Observatory, the centre of Britain\u2019s nascent astrotourism industry. And those waiting outside were the lucky ones. Many more had applied for a night of stargazing at the observatory but numbers are strictly limited. \nInside, next to a woodburner and under dimmed lights, the observatory\u2019s founder and lead astronomer, Gary Fildes, a former bricklayer with Tarzan hair, delivers a pep talk to his colleagues and volunteers. The team discusses the prospect of seeing the northern lights but Fildes is doubtful. Instead, they decide to train their powerful telescopes on Jupiter and Venus and later to pick out stars such as Capella and Betelgeuse. An additional attraction is the appearance of the International Space Station. \n\u201cRemember,\u201d Fildes tells his team, \u201cit\u2019s about interaction, it\u2019s about entertainment, it\u2019s about inspiring people.\u201d He puts on some music. Pink Floyd, the Jam, the Pogues. \u201cBy 9.30, the sky is going to be sexy,\u201d Fildes says. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be epic.\u201d \nFildes, 49, is at the forefront of the UK\u2019s burgeoning astrotourism industry. The pivotal moment for Northumberland came in 2013 when the entire national park housing Hadrian\u2019s Wall, along with Kielder Water and Forest Park, some 1,500 sq km, was awarded Dark Sky Park status, the only one in England. Dark Sky Parks are rare. The 2013 Star Count revealed that only 5% of the UK population can see more than 31 stars on a good night. \nThe Tucson, Arizona-based International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) confers the status only on places that take major steps to avoid light pollution. Recipients must also prove their night skies are sufficiently dark. In Northumberland Dark Sky Park, as the area was rebadged, it is so dark that Venus casts a shadow on the Earth. \nDuncan Wise, visitor development officer for the Northumberland National Park Authority, helped to spearhead the campaign for dark-sky status after the Council for the Protection of Rural England found it was one of Britain\u2019s most tranquil places. \u201cWe tend to look at landscape as everything up to the horizon,\u201d Wise said. \u201cBut what about what\u2019s above it?\u201d Wise and others spent years drawing up their submission to the IDA, collecting reams of light readings and forming an alliance of local councils, parks\u2019 bodies and community groups to produce an exterior lighting master plan that influences the construction of new developments in the area. \nTheir efforts have been vindicated. Many of the 1.5 million who visit Northumberland each year are now aware of its Dark Sky status. \u201cWe get a lot of people coming here to see the sky now,\u201d says the man at the car-hire firm in Newcastle. \u201cThey come in autumn and winter, when it\u2019s darkest. Good for the B&Bs as they get business all year round now.\u201d Local hoteliers now issue guests with night-vision torches and put out deckchairs at night. Those who have acquired some knowledge of astronomy can receive a badge confirming that their hotels are \u201cDark Sky Friendly\u201d. \nWise acknowledges that Northumberland needs to do more to capitalize on its scarce resource and believes the region needs a couple more observatories to ensure that visitors will see what they came for. A \u00a314m national landscape discovery centre, which he describes as the north\u2019s answer to the Eden Project, will have an observatory when it is completed in a couple of years. \nFildes has grand designs. He is planning Britain\u2019s first \u201castrovillage\u201d, one that would house the largest public observatory in the world and boast a 100-seat auditorium, a 100-seat planetarium, a one-metre aperture telescope, and radiomagnetic and solar telescopes. The multimillion-pound project would feature a hotel and draw in 100,000 people a year, four times the number currently able to use the observatory. Fildes is cryptic about his backers but believes the astrovillage will be a reality by 2018. \nHowever, Northumberland faces competition. Galloway Forest Park in Scotland also has Dark Sky Park status. Since Exmoor was designated Europe\u2019s first International Dark Sky Reserve \u2013 one notch below Dark Sky Park \u2013 in 2011, a range of local businesses offering stargazing breaks and safaris has sprung up. The UK will have to go some way to eclipse northern Chile, which boasts more than a dozen tourist observatories and has some of the clearest skies in the world. The Teide National Park in Tenerife is also becoming a major astrotourism destination. \nSo, what is driving the desire to look upwards? The media have helped. TV presenters like Brian Cox have attracted a new generation of stargazers. \u201cBrian Cox has made astronomy accessible,\u201d says Wise. \u201cIt\u2019s no longer seen as the province of professors in studies with brass telescopes.\u201d Technology has also played a part. Apps such as Stellarium now turn smartphones into pocket-size planetariums. Ultimately, though, Fildes believes people are starting to appreciate what lies above. \u201cIf you had to build a visitor attraction from scratch, what could be better than the universe?\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Scientists have put a false memory in the brains of mice in an experiment. They hopethe results of the experiment will help to explain why people \u201cremember\u201d things that never happened.\nFalse memories are sometimes a problem with eyewitness statements in courts of law.\nEyewitnesses often give evidence that leads to guilty verdicts, but later those verdicts may be changed when DNA or some other evidence is used.\nSusumu Tonagawa, a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and his team wanted to study how these false memories form in the human brain. They put memories in the brains of mice by changing individual neurons.\nIn the experiment, Tonagawa\u2019s team put the mice in a box and allowed them to explore it.\nAs they explored it, their brain cells created a memory. The next day, they put the same mice in a second box and gave them a small electric shock. This scared the mice. At the same time, the researchers shone light into the mouse brains to bring back their memories of the first box. That way, the mice associated fear of the electric shock with the memory of the first box.\nIn the final part of the experiment, the team put the mice back in the first box. The mice froze because they were scared. However, they had not received the shock in the first box and had no reason to be afraid.\nA similar thing may happen when powerful false memories are created in humans. \u201cHumans are very imaginative animals,\u201d said Tonagawa. \u201cSo, just like our mouse, it is quite possible we can associate what we have in our mind with bad or good events. In other words, there could be a false association of what you have in your mind rather than what is happening to you.\u201d\nHe added: \u201cOur study showed that the false memory and the real memory use very similar, almost identical, brain mechanisms. It is difficult to tell the difference between them. We hope our future experiments will show legal experts how unreliable memory can be.\u201d\nChris French, of the University of London, is a researcher in false memories in people. He said that the results of the experiments were an important first step in understanding false memories. He added that memory researchers have always known that memory does not work like a video camera, recording all the details of anything we experience. Instead, we build a memory from small pieces of memory of the event, as well as information from other places.\nHe warned that the false memories created in the mice in the experiments were far simpler than the complex false memories people have, such as false memories of childhood sexual abuse, abduction by aliens, or \u201cpast lives\u201d. These complex false memories involve many parts of the brain. French says that it will be a long time before we understand how our brains make these memories.\nThe mouse models created by the MIT team will help scientists ask more complex questions about memories in people. \u201cNow that we can change the contents of memories in the brain, we can begin asking questions that used to be philosophical questions,\u201d said Steve Ramirez, who works with Tonagawa at MIT. \u201cCan we create false memories? What about false memories for more than just places \u2013 false memories for objects, food or other mice? These used to be sci-fi questions but we can now research them in the lab.\u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Benjamin Carle is 96.9% made in France, right down to his underpants and socks. Unfortunately, six Ikea forks, a Chinese guitar and unsourced wall paint stopped him being declared a 100% economic patriot, but nobody is perfect. \nCarle, 26, set out, in 2013, to see if it was possible to live using only French-made products for ten months as part of a television documentary. \nThe idea was triggered by the Minister for Economic Renewal Arnaud Montebourg\u2019s call for the public to buy French to save the country\u2019s industrial production sector. \nThe experiment cost Carle his smartphone, television, refrigerator (all made in China); his spectacles (Italian); his underpants (Moroccan); morning coffee (Guatemalan) and his adored David Bowie music (British). \nFortunately, his long-suffering girlfriend, Ana\u00efs, and cat, Loon, (both French) stuck with him. \n\u201cPoliticians say all sorts of things and expect us to go along with it. I wanted to see if it was possible and feasible to do what the minister was asking us to do; to hold him to account for his words,\u201d Carle told the Guardian over a non-French coffee in a Parisian caf\u00e9 after finishing his documentary. \nHe set just three rules: eat only foods produced in France, eliminate contact with foreign-made goods and do so on \u20ac1,800 a month (above the minimum wage of \u20ac1,430 to cover the extra expense of living in Paris). \nThe journalist was shocked to find out at the start of the experiment that only 4.5% of the contents of his flat were made nationally \u2013 and that the rest would have to go, including the lightbulbs (China) and green beans (Kenya). \nThe removal men left his home almost bare. \nLeft without a refrigerator (none are made in France) or nail clippers, he was forced to chill his food on the window ledge and saw at his toenails with a penknife. \nHis foreign-made clothes, down to his underwear, were replaced with more expensive alternatives: French-produced underpants (\u20ac26), socks (\u20ac9), polo shirt (\u20ac75), espadrille sandals ( \u20ac26), but no jeans as none are produced in France. \nDuring the experiment, Carle scoured supermarket shelves for 100% French-made products, learned to cook seasonal fruit and vegetables grown in France, proudly brushed his teeth with the last toothbrush made in France by a company in Picardie employing 29 people and hand-washed his smalls until he found the last French-made washing machine (which, being top opening, would not fit under the kitchen counter). \nGoing out with friends was problematic \u2013 no American films, no Belgian beer, no sushi or pizza. Staying home, with no sofa for the first few months and no television, meant listening to crooner Michel Sardou and reading French novels. French wine was, of course, allowed and French-Canadian singer C\u00e9line Dion, but not, according to his advisers, French bands such as Daft Punk, who sing in English. \nUnable to use his British-made bicycle or even a French car after discovering the only affordable Peugeot, Renault and Citro\u00ebn models are mostly made overseas, he invested in a fug-emitting orange Mobylette moped. \nThe last things to go were the computer, replaced by a Qooq, a recipe tablet that connects \u2013 slowly \u2013 to the internet and the iPhone, swapped for an old Sagem mobile. \nThe documentary shows Carle \u2013 realizing he is addicted to his iPhone \u2013 smashing it with a brand-new French-made Tefal saucepan, while his girlfriend shrieks: \u201cAre you crazy? Those are new pans!\u201d \nCarle tells viewers his aim is to \u201csave the French economy. After all, I like Mission Impossible\u201d. He admits the experiment was part serious and part jest. At one point, he consults a French language expert to check if he should be using \u201ccool\u201d and other Anglicisms \u2013 he was advised to swap it for the nearest French equivalent: \u201cchouette\u201d. \nOn discovering France makes no refrigerators (apart from wine coolers) or televisions, but is big in aeroplane seats and windmills, he sighs and says: \u201cGreat. Nothing that will fit into my apartment.\u201d \nAt the end of the experiment, Carle takes out a bank loan to refurnish his home and clothe himself. A special \u201cauditor\u201d declares him 96.9% \u201cmade in France\u201d and Montebourg visits to present him with a medal. \nCarle\u2019s conclusion: \u201cIt\u2019s not entirely possible or even desirable to live 100% made in France, particularly in terms of new technology. But that wasn\u2019t the point. \n\u201cThis wasn\u2019t about French nationalism or patriotism. It was trying to show that we should reflect about the way we consume and make different choices, and that applies in all countries. If we want to save jobs and industries, wherever we are, we might think about supporting them. \n\u201cA T-shirt is more expensive in France but I can be sure it has been produced by workers who are correctly paid and have good working conditions. I cannot be sure about a cheaper T-shirt produced in Asia or Morocco.\u201d \nHe added: \u201cIt\u2019s hypocrisy to go around blaming capitalists for a country\u2019s economic decline when people could be doing more as consumers.\u201d \nCarle says he hopes to continue supporting French industry and producers, but not 100%. \u201cIt is a full-time job just finding the stuff,\u201d he said. \nThe first thing he did when the experiment ended was invite his friends around for the evening to enjoy \u201ca plate of cheese and listen to the David Bowie album Aladdin Sane\u201d. \n\u201cIt was difficult not being able to invite people around because there was nowhere to sit ... but I\u2019d choose the Bowie over a sofa any day.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"The Virunga National Park, home to rare mountain gorillas but targeted for oil exploration by a British company, could earn trouble-torn DR Congo $400m a year from tourism, hydropower and carbon credits, said a WWF report. \nBut, if the UNESCO World Heritage Site that straddles the equator is exploited for oil, as the Congolese government and exploration firm SOCO International are hoping, it could lead to devastating pollution and permanent conflict in an already unstable region, says the conservation body. \nSOCO International is the only company seeking to explore inside the boundaries of the Virunga park. SOCO insist that their operations in Congo would be confined to an area in the park known as Block V, and would not affect the gorillas. \nSOCO Chairman Rui de Sousa said: \u201cDespite the views of WWF, SOCO is extremely sensitive to the environmental significance of the Virunga National Park. It is irrefutable that oil companies still have a central role in today\u2019s global energy supply and a successful oil project has the potential to transform the economic and social well-being of a whole country.\u201d\nHe added: \u201cThe park has sadly been in decline for many years, officially falling below the standards required for a World Heritage Site. The potential for development just might be the catalyst that reverses this trend.\u201d \nHowever, Raymond Lumbuenamo, country director for WWF Democratic Republic of the Congo, based in Kinshassa, said that security in and around the park would deteriorate further if SOCO went ahead with its exploration plans. \n\u201cThe security situation is already bad. The UN is involved with fighting units and the M23 rebel force is inside the park. Oil would be a curse. It always increases conflict. It would attract human sabotage. The park might become like the Niger Delta. Developing Virunga for oil will not make anything better. \n\u201cThe population there is already very dense, with over 350 people per square kilometre. When you take part of the land (for oil), you put more pressure on the rest. Oil would not provide many jobs; people would flood in looking for work,\u201d he said. \nOne fear is that the area is seismically active and another eruption of one of the volcanoes in the park could damage oil company infrastructure and lead to oil spills in the lakes. \u201cVirunga\u2019s rich natural resources are for the benefit of the Congolese people, not for foreign oil prospectors to drain away. Our country\u2019s future depends on sustainable economic development,\u201d said Lumbuenamo. \n\u201cFor me, choosing the conservation option is the best option. Once you have started drilling for oil, there\u2019s no turning back,\u201d he said. \nBut Lumbuenamo accepted that, while the gorillas were safe at present, the chances of the park generating its potential of $400m a year were remote. \u201cIt would be difficult to make the kind of money that the report talks of. Virunga used to be a very peaceful place and can be again. The security situation right now is bad. The UN is involved with fighting units. It\u2019s not as quiet as it used to be.\u201d \nAccording to the WWF report, ecosystems in the park could support hydropower generation, fishing and ecotourism, and play an important role in providing secure water supplies, regulating climate and preventing soil erosion. \nThe park, Africa\u2019s oldest and most diverse, is home to over 3,000 different kinds of animals, but is now heavily populated with desperately poor people, many of whom fled there after the Rwanda massacre in 1994. \n\u201cIn all, the park could support in the region of 45,000 permanent jobs. In addition, people around the world could get an immense value from simply knowing that the park is well managed and is safe for future generations,\u201d says the report. \n\u201cVirunga represents a valuable asset to DR Congo and contributes to Africa\u2019s heritage as the oldest and most biodiverse park on the continent,\u201d the report continues. \u201cPlans to explore for oil and exploit oil reserves put Virunga\u2019s potential value at risk,\u201d it says. \n\u201cThis is where we draw the line. Oil companies are standing on the doorstep of one of the world\u2019s most precious and fragile places, but we will not rest until Virunga is safe from this potential environmental disaster,\u201d said Lasse Gustavsson, executive director of WWF International. \u201cVirunga has snow fields and lava fields, but it should not have oil fields.\u201d \nThe UNESCO World Heritage Committee called for the cancellation of all Virunga oil permits and appealed to concession holders Total SA and SOCO International plc not to undertake exploration in World Heritage Sites. Total has committed to respecting Virunga\u2019s current boundary, leaving UK-based SOCO as the only oil company with plans to explore inside the park.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Two mothers in South Africa have discovered they are raising each other\u2019s daughters after they were mistakenly switched at birth in a hospital in 2010. \nBut, while one of the women wants to correct the error and reclaim her biological child, the other is refusing to give back the girl she has raised as her own, posing a huge legal dilemma. \nHenk Strydom, a lawyer for one of the mothers, who cannot be identi\ufb01ed because of a court order, described the inadvertent swap as a travesty and tragedy that is unlikely to have a happy ending. \nBoth mothers gave birth at the Tambo Memorial Hospital in Boksburg, east of Johannesburg, on the same day in 2010. \u201cNobody suspected anything,\u201d Strydom said. \nBut, in 2013, one of the mothers, who is 33 and unemployed, sued her ex-partner for maintenance for her daughter. Strydom continued: \u201cThe man denied he was the father. A DNA test was done and it was found it was not his baby and not her baby. She was devastated. She didn\u2019t know what to do.\u201d \nEventually, she met the other mother and, since December 2013, they have been attending joint counselling sessions, arranged by the hospital. This has included meeting their biological daughters. \nStrydom said of his client: \u201cShe said there are resemblances to herself. She conveyed to me that it was traumatic. You can see it\u2019s 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.\u201d \nThe woman reportedly became unhappy with the process and approached the children\u2019s court in a bid to gain custody of her biological child, but the other mother refused. Strydom agreed to represent the woman, who has one elder child, pro bono. \n\u201cIt\u2019s a tragedy. She wants the baby back but it seems the other mother is reluctant. It\u2019s four years later: you can understand she doesn\u2019t want to give up her baby.\u201d \nThe High Court in Pretoria has appointed the University of Pretoria\u2019s Centre for Child Law to investigate what will now be in the best interests of the children, which is the guiding principle under South African law. It must report back within 90 days. \nStrydom added: \u201cYour guess is as good as mine what the court may decide. It\u2019s a travesty. How do you rectify it after four years? The longer you wait, the more traumatic it will be. But, whatever happens, someone won\u2019t be happy.\u201d \nHe said at this point, he and his client do not want to sue the hospital or government health department, which is currently helping with the case and providing counselling. \nThe Centre for Child Law will now interview the mothers and fathers, as well as any other person with a \u201csigni\ufb01cant relationship\u201d with either of the girls. The children and mothers will undergo \u201cfull and thorough\u201d clinical assessments and may be seen by a psychologist. \nKarabo Ngidi, a lawyer with the centre, said \u201cWhat\u2019s going to happen must be in the best interests of the children. Biology is an important aspect but not the only one.\u201d \nThe families are of Zulu ethnicity and so Zulu tradition, culture and customary law will be a factor, she added. It is also still possible the ex- partner of the mother taking legal action could be the biological father of the girl who was switched. \nIt is not the \ufb01rst child-swap case to come to light in South Africa. In 1995, two mothers were awarded damages after their sons, born in 1989, were accidentally switched at the Johannesburg hospital where they were born. \nIn 2009, in Oregon in the United States, Dee Ann Angell and Kay Rene Reed discovered that they had been mistakenly mixed up at birth in 1953 when a nurse brought them back from bathing. In 2013, in Japan, a 60-year-old man swapped at birth from his rich parents to a poor family was given compensation. He grew up on welfare and became a truck driver, whereas his biological siblings \u2013 and the boy brought up in his place \u2013 attended private secondary schools and universities. \nBruce Laing, a clinical psychologist in Johannesburg, said the long-term effects of a baby swap could be \u201cprofound\u201d, \u201cterrifying\u201d and \u201cincredibly traumatizing\u201d. He told The Times of South Africa: \u201cAn increasingly complicated situation is that some resentment towards a child that is not yours might occur. The parents might always be thinking 'What if?'\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"In 2005, BlackBerry brought instant messaging to the mobile phone and the company was just entering its period of success. Then, the iPhone was still just an idea and BlackBerry\u2019s innovations made its smartphone one of Canada\u2019s biggest exports. \nSix years later, in the summer of 2011, there were riots in London and other UK cities. Rioters used BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) and politicians wanted the service to shut down. But, two years later, the users themselves are leaving BBM. \nFewer and fewer people want BlackBerry phones. There are now many alternative products, from Facebook\u2019s and Apple\u2019s 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. \nBBM is trying to keep its customers and you can now use it on Android and Apple phones. There are many other apps people can use, but lots of people want to use the BBM app \u2013 more than 20 million people downloaded it. But many people believe BBM will not survive. \u201cThe move to bring BlackBerry to the iPhone is four or five years too late,\u201d says James Gooderson, a technology blogger. \u201cWhatsApp has made BlackBerrys unnecessary for young people.\u201d \nBBM says it has 80 million monthly users after its upgrade, but WhatsApp has 300 million. Other services show BBM\u2019s weaknesses: Skype and Viber have video or voice calls, but BBM doesn\u2019t; Path does location sharing, but BBM doesn\u2019t; there is no video sharing, as on iMessage; and the stickers (a more sophisticated version of the smiley face), that kids around the world adore, are also absent. Even the contacts and calendar sharing that BBM made possible on BlackBerry phones are not on the Apple and Android versions. \nMessaging is now becoming visual. Photos that are uploaded to Instagram get instant comments and Snapchat\u2019s pictures have opened a world of other possibilities. Like BBM, all of these services are free for any phone with an internet connection. But, in 2011, BBM was so powerful that it helped to start a revolution in Egypt; and at the time of the London riots, people used BBM, not their televisions, to find out quickly what was happening. \nNearly 80% of young smartphone owners regularly use a social networking application but two-thirds use more than one. 60% of 16- to 24-year-olds use Facebook every day, but 46% use alternatives. \u201cIt\u2019s much more complex,\u201d says Benedict Evans, a digital media specialist. \u201cAll of these apps use your smartphone. Apps rise and fall like fireworks. Some, like Instagram, last; others just disappear.\u201d \nThirteen-year-old Bennett has three phones. He keeps his BlackBerry for messaging, he uses an iPhone to play games, and he makes phone calls on an Android phone. His friends are still on BBM. At the touch of a few buttons, you can send a single BlackBerry message to several hundred people; on WhatsApp, the limit is 50. But, for Bennett, Instagram is now a major social network. \u201cInstagram is Facebook without parents,\u201d he says. \u201cFacebook is now for older people.\u201d The low cost of buying and using a BlackBerry is still an advantage. Anyone with a second-hand phone and a \u00a37-a-month deal from a telecoms company can use unlimited BBM messages. But people no longer trust the privacy of BBM. Business people, revolutionaries, demonstrators and rioters used to believe that their messages were secret. The arrests that followed the riots showed that wasn\u2019t true. \nIn the rich London district of South Kensington, the older pupils at one school all have Apple phones. They all use WhatsApp. For many, BBM is a distant memory. \u201cI still have a Blackberry, but I\u2019m the only one,\u201d says one teenager. And how does that make him feel? \u201cIsolated,\u201d he says.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"An atmosphere of melancholy and changing times pervades the opening to the final series of Downton Abbey. The year is 1925 and there are already the first rumblings of the economic storms that will blight the end of the decade. The neighbours are selling up their own stately home, while Lord Grantham seeks to cut back on servants after declaring that under-butlers are no longer affordable. \nBut at the real Downton Abbey, Highclere Castle \u2013 a stately home owned by George \u201cGeordie\u201d Herbert, 8th Earl of Carnarvon \u2013 the financial outlook has rarely been brighter. According to Lady Fiona Carnarvon, the huge global success of Downton has funded a rolling programme of building repairs aimed at safeguarding Highclere for the next generation. \n\u201cIt\u2019s been an amazing magic carpet ride for all of us,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s given us a wonderful marketing platform, an international profile. I\u2019m hugely grateful. My husband and I love the house, and the people here. Now, without doubt, it is loved by millions of other people.\u201d \nCurrently, only the ground and first floors of Highclere, on the borders of Hampshire, are used. But, a restoration project of derelict tower rooms has begun that will eventually allow visitors to climb up into the tower to an exhibition showcasing the work of the architect of the Houses of Parliament, Sir Charles Barry, who rebuilt the house between 1839 and 1842. \nWhen the Downton Abbey producers first approached Highclere in 2009, the family faced a near \u00a312m repair bill, with urgent work priced at \u00a31.8m. But, by 2012, the Downton effect had begun to take the pressure off. Lord Carnarvon said then: \u201cIt was just after the banking crisis and it was gloom in all directions. We had been doing corporate functions but it all became pretty sparse after that. Then, Downton came along and it became a major tourist attraction.\u201d \nVisitor numbers doubled, to 1,200 a day, as Downton Abbey, scripted by Julian Fellowes, came to be screened around the world after becoming a hit in the UK in 2010 and, then, in the US. It is now broadcast in 250 countries. The formerly somewhat basic ticketing policy has become a computerized advance booking system, helping to guarantee foreign visitors admission. The accounts of Highclere Enterprises for 2014-15 show current assets have almost trebled to around \u00a31m since 2012. Gareth Neame, the executive producer for the series, said: \u201cI think Downton Abbey secured Highclere\u2019s future.\u201d \nPeter Fincham, ITV\u2019s director of television, recalls the moment when Highclere was booked. \u201cI thought, 'So what?', because I had never heard of Highclere Castle. One stately home looks much the same as another. How wrong I was. The castle has been one enormous character as well.\u201d \nThe Downton tourists are part of a growing phenomenon. VisitBritain estimates that nearly 30% of foreign visitors, or nearly nine million people, include castles and historic houses on their itineraries. Almost half of potential visitors to Britain now say they want to indulge in \u201cset jetting \u201d, visiting places featured in films or on TV. More than a million embark on a tour of historic buildings each year, spending in excess of \u00a31bn. From the biggest emerging tourist markets, 51% of Brazilians, 42% of Russians and Chinese, and 35% of Indian visitors are likely to include a visit to a site of interest in their trips. VisitBritain\u2019s director, Patricia Yates, said: \u201cThe links between tourism, films and TV are potent ones.\u201d She added that period dramas have also raised the popularity of regions outside of London. \nNeame is now an ambassador for the GREAT Britain campaign, which is backed by government departments and the British Council, using it to promote the UK around the world. Events include special Downton -themed receptions at British embassies. \nNeame said: \u201cThey approached me because of the reach. A lot of people here think of it as soapy entertainment. In other parts of the world, people revere our actors, our writing and production talent. It is something I am passionate about; I am a really strong believer in soft power. We are not nearly as proud of our achievements as we should be. \n\u201cDownton Abbey is iconic for expressing Britishness. Really, it is a fantasy world, based in a particular time in history. It\u2019s the first TV period drama that has really leapt out of the screen and become part of popular culture.\u201d \nLady Carnarvon is still keen to emphasize that the long-term future of Highclere is not necessarily secure. \u201cThe bottom line is quite thin,\u201d she said. \u201cThe programme has allowed us to spend faster on the buildings, have the follies restored.\u201d \nIn the pipeline is a Tutankhamun centenary event in 2022, 100 years after the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, together with Howard Carter, discovered the tomb that revolutionized our understanding of Egyptology. Another opportunity to keep Highclere in the public mind is the 300th anniversary of the birth of Lancelot \u201cCapability\u201d Brown, who designed the grounds. \n\u201cWhat you do is never sit on your laurels. Every single day, don\u2019t take anything for granted,\u201d said Lady Carnarvon. \u201cFor all these great houses, you have to invest in them. And, there has been a deficit since the 1930s. Perhaps, in the past, an estate and house defined and supported the family and their lifestyle but, today, it is quite the reverse: the challenge is how Geordie and I seek to support and look after Highclere. \n\u201cFrom my point of view, I\u2019ve tried to persuade people it is fun and have specific events they can engage with, not just a wander around a dusty house. We have to compete with attractions like the London Dungeon.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nThe High Court in London has ruled that three elderly Kenyans detained and tortured during the Mau Mau rebellion have the right to sue. Now the British government is afraid that thousands of legal claims may follow, from people who were imprisoned and who say they were treated badly during the final days of the British Empire.\nThe governments lawyers said that too much time had passed since the seven-year insurgency in the 1950s and it was no longer possible to hold a fair trial, but the court rejected these claims. In 2011 the same judge rejected the governments claim that the three claimants should sue the Kenyan government because it had inherited Britains legal responsibilities on independence in 1963.\nHuman rights activists in Kenya estimate more than 5,000 of the 70,000 people detained by the British colonial authorities are still alive. Many may bring claims against the British government. The ruling may also make it possible for victims of colonial atrocities in other parts of the world to sue.\nThe Foreign Office said that the ruling had potentially significant legal implications, and said it was planning to appeal. The normal time limit for bringing a civil action is three to six years, a spokesman said. In this case, that period has been extended to over 50 years despite the fact that the key decision makers are dead and unable to give their view of what happened.\nThe historic victory for Paulo Muoka Nzili, 85, Wambugu Wa Nyingi, 84, and Jane Muthoni Mara, 73, was the result of a three-year battle in the courts. Their lawyers said they had suffered unspeakable acts of brutality. In the Kenyan capital Nairobi, Nyingi and Mara, heard the news by mobile phone. They had been sitting silently with their supporters in a garden and reacted with joy when the word came, hugging, dancing and raising their hands to the sky to pray.\nNyingi, who was detained for about nine years, beaten unconscious and still has the scars, said: For me  I just wanted the truth to be out. Even the children of my children should know what happened. What should happen is that people should be compensated so they can begin to forgive the British government. Mara said: Im very happy and my heart is clean. When she was asked what she would tell her four children, she said simply: I will tell them I won.\nThe judge said in 2011 that there was ample evidence  that there may have been systematic torture of detainees. On Friday he ruled that a fair trial was possible, and highlighted the fact that thousands of secret files from the colonial era appeared in 2011.\nThe British governments lawyers tried to have the claims rejected but they accepted that all three of the elderly Kenyans were tortured by the colonial authorities. The claimants lawyer said: The British government has admitted that these three Kenyans were brutally tortured but they have been trying to avoid any legal responsibility. There will undoubtedly be victims of colonial torture from Malaya to the Yemen, from Cyprus to Palestine, who will be reading this judgment with great care.\nA number of veterans of the insurgency in Cyprus in the 1950s watched the case closely. One has already met the Mau Mau claimants lawyers. Any Cypriot claimants could rely not only on British documents, but also on the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva. Those files are kept secret for 40 years, and then opened to public examination. The Red Cross documented hundreds of torture cases in Cyprus.\nThere may also be claims from Malaysia, where large numbers of people were detained during the 12-year war with communist insurgents and their supporters that began in 1948. Relatives of 24 unarmed rubber plantation workers who were killed by British troops are currently fighting through the British courts for a public inquiry. Many former prisoners of the British in Aden may also have claims against the British government, although Aden is now part of Yemen, and British lawyers may have problems making contact with possible clients there.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Health warnings covering nearly two-thirds of cigarette packs and a ban on menthol cigarettes across the EU have come a step nearer following a vote in the European Parliament. Menthol and other flavours will be banned from 2022, but, in a blow to the UK government, MEPs decided that most electronic cigarettes, increasingly popular as alternatives to tobacco products, need not be regulated in the same way as medicines. \nHealth officials and the e-cigarette industry in Britain are seeking to clarify what this mean \u2013 for instance, whether companies in the fast-expanding market face the same bans on sponsorship and promotion at sports events as tobacco firms. \nThe Department of Health would not comment on the advertising issue until officials had studied the MEPs\u2019 decisions. But, in a statement, the DH said: \u201cWe are very pleased to see the move towards tougher action on tobacco, with Europe-wide controls banning flavoured cigarettes and the introduction of stricter rules on front-of-pack health warnings. \u201cHowever, we are disappointed with the decision to reject the proposal to regulate nicotine-containing products (NCPs), including e-cigarettes, as medicines. We believe these products need to be regulated as medicines and will continue to make this point during further negotiations. \n\u201cFigures show smoking levels in England are at their lowest since records began \u2013 19.5 per cent \u2013 but we are determined to further reduce rates of smoking and believe this important step will help.\u201d \nThe UK e-cigarette industry, which broadly welcomed the parliament\u2019s vote, said it was already in talks with the Advertising Standards Authority, but added that it would not be \u201csensible, proportionate, reasonable or useful\u201d to ban all advertising. \nMEPs decided e-cigarettes should only be regulated as medical products if manufacturers claimed they could prevent tobacco smoking \u2013 a decision criticized by the government\u2019s main medicines regulator. \nThey want to put the products, used by an estimated 1.3 million people in Britain by 2014, on the same legal basis as gums, patches and mouth sprays aimed at helping smokers to quit, but the industry says the expensive process of licensing would help force alternatives to tobacco off the shelves. \nThe MEPs voted to put health warnings on 65% of each cigarette pack, as opposed to a proposed 75%. At present, the warnings cover at least 30% on the front and 40% on the back. The UK government has delayed a decision on whether to follow Australia by introducing standardized packaging until there is evidence that such measures cut tobacco use. \nThe MEPs\u2019 votes in the first reading of the draft tobacco directive, which could become law in 2014, will be followed by negotiations with the EU Council of Ministers. \nThe Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority had already invited manufacturers to cooperate by opting for voluntary regulation in June 2013 in advance of what it still hopes will be compulsory across Europe. \u201cThe legislative process is still not complete and there will be further negotiation. The UK continues to believe that medicinal regulation of NCPs is the best way to deliver a benefit to public health,\u201d said a spokesman. \nLinda McAvan, Labour MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber and spokesperson on tobacco issues for the parliament\u2019s Socialists & Democrats group, said: \u201cWe know that it is children, not adults, who start smoking. And, despite the downward trend in most member states of adult smokers, the World Health Organization figures show worrying upward trends in a number of our member states of young smokers. \n\u201cWe need to stop tobacco companies targeting young people with an array of gimmicky products and we need to make sure that cigarette packs carry effective warnings.\u201d \nMartin Callanan, the Conservative MEP for North East England, said: \u201cForcing e-cigs off the shelves would have been totally crazy. These are products that have helped countless people stop smoking more harmful cigarettes and yet some MEPs wanted to make them harder to manufacture than ordinary tobacco.\u201d \nKatherine Devlin, president of ECITA, the e-cigarette industry association, said \u201cthe really important\u201d decision by MEPs not to support medicines regulation meant that was now off the table. \nBritish American Tobacco claimed the larger health warnings demanded by MEPs went \u201cwell beyond\u201d what was needed to inform consumers of health risks from smoking, while a ban on mentholated cigarettes would increase demand for black-market goods.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nWhat surprised researchers was not how hard people found the challenge but how far they would go to avoid it. The task? To sit in a chair and do nothing but think.\nSome found it so unbearable that they took the safe but alarming opportunity to give themselves mild electric shocks to break the tedium.\nTwo-thirds of men pressed a button that gave them a painful shock during a 15-minute period of solitude.\nUnder the same conditions, a quarter of women pressed the shock button. The difference, scientists suspect, is that men are typically more sensation-seeking than women.\nThe report from psychologists at Virginia and Harvard Universities tries to answer the question of why most of us  nd it so hard to do nothing.\nIn more than 11 separate studies, the researchers showed that people hated being left to think, regardless of their age, education, income or the amount of time they spent on smartphones or social media.\nTimothy Wilson, who led the work, said the  ndings were not necessarily due to the pace of modern life or the spread of mobile devices and social media. Instead, those things might be popular because of our constant need to do something rather than nothing.\nIn the  rst experiments, students were taken  alone, without phones, books or anything to write with  into a room and told to think. The only rules were that they had to stay seated and not fall asleep. They were told that they would have six to 15 minutes alone.\nThe students were questioned when the time was up. On average, they did not enjoy the experience. They struggled to concentrate. Their minds wandered even with nothing to distract them.\nIn case the unfamiliar setting reduced the ability to think, the researchers did the experiment again with people at home.\nThey got similar results. In fact, people found the experience even more miserable and cheated by getting up from their chair or checking their phones.\nTo see if the effect was found only in students, the scientists tested more than 100 other people, aged 18 to 77, from a church and a farmers market. They also disliked being left to their thoughts.\nBut, the most surprising result was yet to come. To check whether people might actually prefer something bad to nothing at all, the students were given the option of giving themselves a mild electric shock.\nThey had been asked earlier to say how unpleasant the shocks were, compared to other options, such as looking at pictures of cockroaches or hearing the sound of a knife rubbing against a bottle.\nAll the students chosen for the test said they would pay to avoid mild electric shocks.\nTo the researchers surprise, 12 of 18 men gave themselves up to four electric shocks and six of 24 women did the same.\nThe scientists said that the most surprising thing was that being alone with their thoughts was so hard for many people that they gave themselves an electric shock  something the participants had earlier said they would pay to avoid.\nJessica Andrews-Hanna at the University of Colorado said many students would probably give themselves an electric shock to cheer up a tedious lecture. But, she says we need to know more about the motivation of the shockers in Wilsons study.\nImagine  a person is told to sit in a chair with wires attached to their skin and a button that will deliver a harmless but uncomfortable shock, and they are told to just sit there with their thoughts, she said.\nAs they sit there, their mind starts to wander and it naturally goes to that shock  was it really that bad?","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"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 \u2013 the sound of war getting closer to Syria\u2019s capital. But just over two years into the Syrian crisis \u2013 the longest and bloodiest of the Arab uprisings \u2013 ignoring the sound of death and destruction nearby has become the new normal for Damascenes. \nOver 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 \u2013 smoke rising between the minarets of a nearby Ottoman-era mosque. No one seemed to notice. \n\u201cActually you do get used to it after a while,\u201d said George, an IT technician from a village on the coast. \u201cBut you never know exactly what they are hitting.\u201d That usually becomes clear later from video clips posted by opposition media outlets on YouTube. \nThe sinister background noise is doubly disturbing because the government tries so hard to preserve a jaunty air of business as usual. \u201cAs you can see, everything here is fine but we have to hit the terrorists, these extremists,\u201d an army officer announced. An official, whose route home has come under attack from rebels in Daraya, said: \u201cIf I was afraid, I would just shut my door and stay inside. I have to work and I am not afraid. If I don\u2019t defend my country, who will?\u201d \nOrdinary 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 \u2013 and perhaps to danger too. \u201cIn the beginning, when there started to be explosions, I used to have nightmares,\u201d she reflected. \u201cNow I can sleep through anything.\u201d \nAnd, 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 \u2013 Muhammad al-Sufi and Manal al-Tahan \u2013 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. \nThat 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\u2019ath Party headquarters in Mazraa. The crater is still visible, marked by an enormous patch of fresh asphalt on the main road going north. \u201cI live nearby but luckily I wasn\u2019t there,\u201d recalled Munir, a university lecturer. \nMortar 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. \nSecurity measures have intensified since the devastating bombing of the national security crisis cell in July 2012, when four of Assad\u2019s most senior aides were killed. Concrete blast barriers \u2013 often painted in the Syrian flag\u2019s black, red and white \u2013 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. \u201cThe regime did manage to set up a ring of steel round Damascus,\u201d a foreign diplomat said. \u201cBut for whatever reason the perimeter is starting to be punctured and that brings home the reality of the war.\u201d \nAll this means that moving around has become difficult, unpredictable and time-consuming \u2013 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 \u2013 vital to stop future bombers. Only drivers with an official security clearance can use special fast lanes to avoid the wait. \nIt is hard, however, to avoid the question on everyone\u2019s mind: will there be a battle for Damascus \u2013 the world\u2019s oldest continually inhabited city, as the guidebooks say \u2013 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 \u2013 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. \nOne view is that the fight for Syria\u2019s capital is coming, but not quite yet \u2013 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.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Police and intelligence agencies around the world have, for almost 100 years, used the polygraph, a lie-detector test, to help catch criminals and spies. \nBut, now, researchers in Britain and the Netherlands have developed a new method, which is correct (in tests) over 70% of the time. Police stations around the world might begin using this new method within ten years. It doesn\u2019t monitor movements in the face, talking too much or waving arms \u2013 all signs that someone is lying. The new method monitors movements in the whole body, which can show that the person is feeling guilty. \nThe polygraph is often used in the US in criminal cases and by the FBI and CIA but is much less popular in Europe. Many people do not believe that it is reliable. \nThe basic idea behind the new method is that liars fidget more and that an all-body motion suit \u2013 the kind used in films to create computer-generated characters \u2013 will record this. \nThe new method is over 70% reliable \u2013 the polygraph is only 55% reliable. In some tests, the success rate of the new method was more than 80%. \nRoss Anderson, one of the research team, said: \u201cGuilty people fidget more and we can now measure this.\u201d \nThe polygraph was created in 1921 by policeman John Larson. It records changes in pulse, blood pressure, sweating and breathing to find out if someone is lying. \nIn movies, the polygraph is always correct but, in 1998, the US Supreme Court decided that there was no agreement that the polygraph was reliable. The US National Academy of Scientists said the same thing in 2003. \nThe tests Anderson and his colleagues did involved 180 students and employees at Lancaster University. Half of the people were told to tell the truth and half to lie. \nThe researchers interviewed some of the people about a computer game called Never End that they played for seven minutes. Others lied about playing it. \nThe second test involved a lost wallet with \u00a35 inside. Some people had to bring the wallet to a lost-and-found box. Others hid it and lied about it. \nThe new body-suit method was correct 82.2% of the time. Researchers monitored how much the people moved their arms and legs, to decide if they were telling the truth or lying. \nAll-body suits are expensive \u2013 they cost about \u00a330,000 \u2013 and they can be uncomfortable, so Anderson and his colleagues are now looking at cheaper alternatives. These include using motion-sensing technology from computer games, such as the Kinect devices developed by Microsoft for the Xbox console.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"1 Passing clouds \nOne of the pleasures of flying is seeing clouds close up. Even though they seem insubstantial they carry a considerable weight of water \u2013 around 500 tonnes in a small cumulus cloud. And water is denser than air. So why don\u2019t clouds fall out of the sky like rain? They do. But the droplets take a long time to sink. An average cloud would take a year to fall one metre. \n2 On cloud nine \nMost of us are happy to label clouds \u201cfluffy ones\u201d or \u201cnasty black ones \u201d, but meteorologists identify more than 50 cloud types based on shape and altitude. These fit into categories given numbers from one to nine. Cloud nine is the vast, towering cumulonimbus, so to be \u201con cloud nine\u201d implies being on top of the world. \n3 Around the rainbow \nThere\u2019s no better place to see a rainbow than from a plane. Rainbows are produced when sunlight hits raindrops. We see a bow because the Earth gets in the way, but, from a plane, a rainbow is a complete circle. When passing over clouds, the plane\u2019s shadow appears neatly in the centre of the effect. \n4 Mr blue sky \nSunlight is white, containing all the colours of the spectrum but, as it passes through air, some of the light is scattered when it interacts with the gas molecules. Blue light scatters more than the lower-energy colours, so the blue appears to come from the sky. \n5 There\u2019s life out there \nApart from clouds and other planes, we don\u2019t expect to see much directly outside a flying aircraft\u2019s window, but the air is seething with bacterial life \u2013 as many as 1,800 different types of bacteria have been detected over cities and they can reach twice the cruising height of a plane. \n6 Turbulence terror \nEven the most experienced flyer can be turned green by turbulence. The outcome can be anything from repeated bumping to sudden, dramatic plunges. The good news for nervous flyers is that no modern airliner has ever been brought down by turbulence. People have been injured and occasionally killed when they are not strapped in, or get struck by poorly secured luggage \u2013 but the plane is not going to be knocked out of the sky. \n7 In-flight radiation \nWhen body scanners were introduced at airports there were radiation scares but the level produced is the same as passengers receive in one minute of flight. The Earth is constantly bombarded by cosmic rays, natural radiation from space that has more impact at altitude. \n8 You can\u2019t cure jet lag \nThe world is divided into time zones. The result is that long-haul travel results in a difference between local time and your body\u2019s time, causing jet lag. However, its effects can be minimized by keeping food bland for 24 hours before travel, drinking plenty of fluids and living on your destination time from the moment you reach the aircraft. \n9 Supersonic 747s \nMany of us have travelled faster than sound. There are a number of jet streams in the upper atmosphere, notably on the journey from the US to Europe, where a temperature inversion causes a corridor of air to move as fast as 250mph. If an airliner with an airspeed of 550mph enters a jet stream, the result can be to fly at 800mph, above sound\u2019s 740mph. \n10 Flying through time \nTime zones provide an artificial journey through time \u2013 but special relativity means that a flight involves actual time travel. It\u2019s so minimal, though, that crossing the Atlantic weekly for 40 years would only move you 1\/1,000th of a second into the future. \n11 Terrible tea \nDon\u2019t blame the cabin attendant if your tea isn\u2019t great. Water should be just under 100\u00b0C when it is poured on to tea leaves \u2013 but that isn\u2019t possible on a plane. It\u2019s impossible to get water beyond 90\u00b0C during flight \u2013 so choose coffee. \n12 I can\u2019t hear my food \nAirline food has a reputation for being bland and tasteless. Some of the problem may not be poor catering, though. A plane is a noisy environment and there is evidence that food loses some of its savour when we are exposed to loud noises. \n13 Needle in a haystack \nWith modern technology, it seems strange that Malaysian flight MH370 could disappear without a trace \u2013 yet, finding a missing aircraft is a needle- in-a-haystack problem. The plane knows its location, both from GPS and inertial tracking, but this information is not relayed elsewhere in real time. That would be perfectly possible. Ocean- going ships have had tracking since the 1980s \u2013 the limitation is not technology but a lack of legislation requiring it. \n14 Volcanic fallout \nAir travel can be cancelled by volcanic activity. Glass-like ash particles melt in the heat of the engine, then solidify on the rotors. A clear-skies policy in an ash cloud may be inconvenient \u2013 but the risks of ignoring the ash are clear. \n15 The wing myth \nFor many years, we taught the wrong explanation for the way wings keep planes in the air. In fact, almost all a plane\u2019s lift comes from Newton\u2019s Third Law of Motion. The wing is shaped to push air downwards. As the air is pushed down, the wing gets an equal and opposite push upwards, lifting the plane. \n16 Forget electric planes \nWhen we see ultra-light, experimental, electric planes, it\u2019s easy to assume there will soon be clean, green, electric airliners, but it won\u2019t happen any time soon. Aircraft fuel packs in a remarkable amount of energy. Batteries are much less efficient. To provide the same energy as a tonne of fuel would take 100 tonnes of batteries \u2013 and a 747 uses 150 to 200 tonnes of fuel. Unless battery technology is made vastly more efficient, electric airliners won\u2019t get off the ground. \n17 Beware the vortex \nPilots often wait a long time to get clearance. This is to allow the air to settle after a previous take-off, as a plane\u2019s wingtips generate vortices in the air, which can take two or three minutes to disperse. If the following aircraft set off immediately, the rapidly moving air would make the plane difficult to handle. The delay gives the air time to recover from the miniature whirlwinds caused by the preceding plane. \n18 The doors aren\u2019t locked \nIn practice, the doors on a plane don\u2019t need to be locked. If you watch an aircraft door being opened, it swings in an unusual way. It first has to be opened inwards before manoeuvring it out of the way. Once the plane has taken off, a significant pressure difference soon builds up between the inside of the plane and the outside. This differential forces the door into place. To open it, you would have to pull against the air pressure, well beyond the capabilities of human muscles.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"When the Taliban sent a gunman to shoot Malala Yousafzai in October 2012 as she rode home on a bus after school, they made clear their intention: to silence the teenager and kill off her campaign for girls\u2019 education. \nNine months and countless surgical operations later, she stood up at the United Nations on her 16th birthday on Friday to deliver a defiant riposte. \u201cThey thought that the bullet would silence us. But they failed,\u201d she said. \nAs 16th birthdays go, it was among the more unusual. Instead of blowing out candles on a cake, Malala sat in one of the main council chambers at the United Nations in the central seat usually reserved for world leaders. \nShe listened quietly as Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, described her as \u201cour hero, our champion\u201d; and as the former British prime minister and now UN education envoy, Gordon Brown, uttered what he called \u201cthe words the Taliban never wanted her to hear: happy 16th birthday, Malala \u201d. \nThe event, dubbed Malala Day, was the culmination of an extraordinary four years for the girl from Mingora, in the troubled Swat valley of Pakistan. She was thrust into the public glare after she wrote a blog for the BBC Urdu service describing her experiences struggling to get an education under the rising power of Taliban militants. \nBy 11, she was showing exceptional determination, calling personally on the US special representative to Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, to use his influence to combat the Taliban\u2019s drive against education for girls. By 14, she was on the radar of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who put her forward for the International Children\u2019s Peace Prize, and, by 15, she became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize nominee in history. \nBut such dizzying global attention came at a price. Death threats followed her growing recognition, and, on 9 October 2012, following a meeting of Pakistani Taliban leaders, the gunman was dispatched to remove what they called the \u201csymbol of infidels and obscenity \u201d. \nMultiple operations in Pakistan and the UK followed the attack on the bus, including the fitting of a titanium plate on her left forehead and a cochlear implant to restore her hearing. She now lives with her family in Birmingham and does what the Taliban tried to stop her doing: goes to school every day. \u201cI am not against anyone,\u201d she said in the UN chamber, having taken this day out from the classroom. \u201cNeither am I here to speak in terms of personal revenge against the Taliban or any other terrorist group.\u201d \nMalala responded to the violence of the Taliban with her own countervailing force: words against bullets. \u201cI do not even hate the Talib who shot me. Even if there is a gun in my hand and he stands in front of me, I would not shoot him.\u201d \nShe spoke confidently, with only an injured eye and a slightly drooping left side of her face to hint at such fresh traumas. There was one other unstated allusion to the horror of her past: she wore a white shawl belonging to a woman who was also targeted by extremists but who, unlike Malala, did not survive to tell the tale: Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan. \n\u201cThe extremists are afraid of books and pens,\u201d the teenager continued. \u201cThe power of education frightens them. They are afraid of women. The power of the voice of women frightens them.\u201d \nShe cited the attack in June on a hospital in Quetta, capital of Baluchistan, and killings of female teachers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. \u201cThat is why they are blasting schools every day \u2013 because they were and they are afraid of change, afraid of the equality that we will bring to our society.\u201d \nAnd she gave her own opposing interpretation of Islam to the Taliban\u2019s. \u201cThey think that God is a tiny, little conservative being who would send girls to hell just because of going to school. The terrorists are misusing the name of Islam and Pashtun society for their own personal benefits. Islam is a religion of peace, humanity and brotherhood. Islam says that it is not only each child\u2019s right to get education, rather it is their duty and responsibility.\u201d \nSuch ability to articulate what normally remains unarticulated \u2013 to give voice to young people normally silenced \u2013 has generated its own response. The \u201cStand with Malala\u201d petition, calling for education for the 57 million children around the world who do not go to school, has attracted more than four million signatures \u2013 more than a million having been added shortly after Malala\u2019s speech. \nAt the start of her speech, Malala said: \u201cI don\u2019t know where to begin my speech. I don\u2019t know what people would be expecting me to say.\u201d She need not have worried.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"It was not so much how hard people found the challenge but how far they would go to avoid it that left researchers gobsmacked. The task? To sit in a chair and do nothing but think. \nSo unbearable did some find it that they took up the safe but alarming opportunity to give themselves mild electric shocks in an attempt to break the tedium. \nTwo-thirds of men pressed a button to deliver a painful jolt during a 15-minute spell of solitude. \nUnder the same conditions, a quarter of women pressed the shock button. The difference, scientists suspect, is that men tend to be more sensation-seeking than women. \nThe report from psychologists at Virginia and Harvard Universities is one of a surprising few to tackle the question of why most of us find it so hard to do nothing. \nIn more than 11 separate studies, the researchers showed that people hated being left to think, regardless of their age, education, income or the amount of time they spent using smartphones or social media. \nTimothy Wilson, who led the work, said the findings were not necessarily a reflection of the pace of modern life or the spread of mobile devices and social media. Instead, those things might be popular because of our constant urge to do something rather than nothing. \nThe first run of experiments began with students being ushered \u2013 alone, without phones, books or anything to write with \u2013 into an unadorned room and told to think. The only rules were they had to stay seated and not fall asleep. They were informed \u2013 specifically or vaguely \u2013 that they would have six to 15 minutes alone. \nThe students were questioned when the time was up. On average, they did not enjoy the experience. They struggled to concentrate. Their minds wandered even with nothing to distract them. Even giving them time to think about what to think about did not help. \nIn case the unfamiliar setting hampered the ability to think, the researchers ran the experiment again with people at home. \nThey got much the same results, only people found the experience even more miserable and cheated by getting up from their chair or checking their phones. \nTo see if the effect was found only in students, the scientists recruited more than 100 people, aged 18 to 77, from a church and a farmers\u2019 market. They, too, disliked being left to their thoughts. \nBut, the most staggering result was yet to come. To check whether people might actually prefer something bad to nothing at all, the students were given the option of administering a mild electric shock. \nThey had been asked earlier to rate how unpleasant the shocks were, alongside other options, such as looking at pictures of cockroaches or hearing the sound of a knife rubbing against a bottle. \nAll the students picked for the test said they would pay to avoid mild electric shocks after receiving a demonstration. \nTo the researchers\u2019 surprise, 12 of 18 men gave themselves up to four electric shocks, as did six of 24 women. \n\u201cWhat is striking is that simply being alone with their thoughts was apparently so aversive that it drove many participants to self-administer an electric shock that they had earlier said they would pay to avoid,\u201d the scientists write in Science  \nJessica Andrews-Hanna at the University of Colorado said many students would probably zap themselves to cheer up a tedious lecture. But, she says more needs to be known about the motivation of the shockers in Wilson\u2019s study. \n\u201cImagine the setup \u2013 a person is told to sit in a chair with wires attached to their skin and a button that will deliver a harmless but uncomfortable shock, and they are told to just sit there and entertain themselves with their thoughts,\u201d she said. \n\u201cAs they sit there, strapped to this machine, their mind starts to wander and it naturally goes to that shock \u2013 was it really that bad? \n\u201cWhat are the experimenters really interested in? Perhaps this is a case where curiosity killed the cat.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nThe day began with more police dawn raids on the Baur Au Lac hotel in Zurich and ended with 16 football officials being charged with corruption in the US, including five current or former members of FIFAs executive committee. They included the former Brazilian federation chief Ricardo Teixeira and his successor, Marco Polo Del Nero, who recently stepped down from the FIFA executive committee.\nThey were among 16 individuals accused of fraud and other offences by the US Department of Justice as it gave details of a series of kickback schemes in a new 240-page indictment. Twentyseven defendants have now been charged by the US, including former FIFA executive committee members. The betrayal of trust here is outrageous, the US Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, said. The scale of corruption is completely unacceptable.\nSwiss police arrested the president of the South American football confederation, the Paraguayan Juan ngel 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 led to the downfall of Sepp Blatter. Webbs predecessor, the controversial Jack Warner, was also arrested in May.\nThe Swiss Federal Office of Justice said of the latest arrests: They are 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.\nEleven current and former members of FIFAs executive committee have now been charged in the investigation, which alleges $200m in bribes, mainly as kickbacks from TV and marketing contracts but also FIFAs development programmes.\nThe message from this announcement should be clear to every 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 FIFA ex-president Joo Havelange, was charged alongside Del Nero and his predecessor Jos Maria Marin, who was charged in May.\nFourteen men had been charged in May 2015. Days later, Blatter won a fifth term as president but then agreed to step down as the crisis grew. He was then provisionally suspended together with the UEFA President, Michel Platini, over an alleged 1.3m 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.\nAmong 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; the former Peruvian football federation president, Manuel Burga; and Bolivias football president, Carlos Chaves, already jailed in his own country.\nLynch said: The Department of Justice is committed to ending the rampant corruption we have described in 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 insult to international principles that this behaviour represents.\nThe acting FIFA President, Issa Hayatou, refused to comment on the detail of the latest arrests. But he said 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 predecessor when he claimed the current crisis was the fault of a few bad individuals.\nFIFA 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.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"The world shares him and London claims him but Stratford-upon-Avon is going to spend 2016 celebrating William Shakespeare as their man. He was born in the Warwickshire market town in 1564 and died there 400 years ago.\nStratford was important to Shakespeare all his life, says Paul Edmondson, the head of learning and research at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. \u201cPeople often think Shakespeare left Stratford and his family, went to London to earn his fortune and only came back to die,\u201d he said. \u201cBut Stratford is where he bought land and houses, where he kept his library, where he lived and read and thought. We are going to spend the year re-emphasizing the importance of Shakespeare, the man of Stratford.\u201d The anniversary of the death of the man from Stratford, the most famous and the most performed playwright in the world, will be celebrated across Britain and the world. There will be performances of Macbeth in Singapore and Romeo and Juliet in Brussels. Shakespeare\u2019s Globe is completing the first world tour in the history of theatre. During the tour, it has taken Hamlet to every country except North Korea. In London, they are also creating a 37-screen pop-up cinema, one screen to show each of Shakespeare\u2019s plays.\nThe National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and almost every other theatre production company in the country will celebrate the anniversary. There will be traditional and experimental performances of the plays. There will also be hundreds of lectures, international conferences, films, concerts, operas and major exhibitions.\nShakespeare was famous in his own lifetime but there is little documentary evidence about Shakespeare\u2019s life and times. His plays survived because his friends and actors collected together every bit of every play they could find and made the First Folio, published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare\u2019s death.\nThe actor Mark Rylance has called the First Folio his favourite book in the world and most of the surviving First Folios will be on display \u2013 including those that belong to the British and Bodleian libraries, and a copy recently discovered in France. Some of the most precious documents will be shown in an exhibition in London. \nThe exhibition, By Me, William Shakespeare, will include his will, documents from the time when Shakespeare and other actors dismantled a theatre on the north side of the Thames and rebuilt it as the Globe on the South Bank, and details of payments for performances for James I and Queen Anne. The director of the Globe Theatre recently said as a joke that Shakespeare was a true London man. But people in Stratford believe that the town made and educated Shakespeare. They are rebuilding his old school room and will open it as a visitor attraction. Shakespeare bought New Place, the second best house in the town, where he died in 1616 on 23 April, the same day as his birth. \u201cYou don\u2019t buy a house like New Place and not live there,\u201d Paul Edmondson said. \u201cThe general public and many academics have underestimated the importance of Stratford to Shakespeare. \u201d\nEdmondson believes that, after Shakespeare bought the house in 1597, all his thinking time was spent there. He says the late plays were planned in his library and probably written there.\nShakespeare\u2019s house was demolished 300 years ago. Another house was built in the same place. That house was destroyed in 1759 by a bad- tempered priest, Francis Gastrell, in an argument about taxes. He also cut down Shakespeare\u2019s mulberry tree, under which the writer sat and worked, because he didn\u2019t like all the tourists looking into his garden.\nThe house has never been rebuilt but they have found Shakespeare\u2019s kitchen in the cellars. The area where the house was will be on display for the anniversary, with the foundations marked and the garden restored. \u201cWithout Stratford,\u201d Edmondson said, \u201cthere would have been no Shakespeare. \u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nSome people call it the hotel of mum and dad. 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, it found that 20% were paying nothing at all.\nYoung adults are squeezed by low wages and high rents, 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. Recent research showed half of tenants were unable to save a penny towards a deposit, while a quarter could only save 100 or less each month. Mortgages are cheaper than ever before thanks to record low interest rates but the best deals are still only given to people with large deposits.\nAs a result of this, young adults are increasingly returning to the family home to save money and parents who cannot afford to offer their children a large sum of money seem happy 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.\nMichael 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 dont really want to move out to rent as its more than a mortgage but you need such a big deposit to get a mortgage so its a vicious circle.\nHe 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. He admits that, instead of saving, he spends his spare money on golf and holidays. You need so much money that I will have to save for the foreseeable future, he said. Because its been so difficult, Ive been going on holiday and enjoying it.\nSue Green, of Saga, a business that sells insurance to people over 50, said the majority of parents may not have planned to have their children living with them in their 20s or 30s. Most will be more than happy to have them in the family home rent-free because it might help their kids get on the property ladder sooner, she said. Children who dont pay rent may contribute in other ways like buying groceries, family takeaways or doing odd jobs around the home.\nAngus Hanton, of the Intergenerational Foundation thinktank, 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 reduction in average incomes of about 20% since the 2008 downturn. Rents and car insurance have never been so high and mortgage lending rules are now stricter for the young but not for older buy-to-let investors, who squeeze out the young, he said. 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 help them so they can afford to build lives of their own.\nJenna Gavin, 29, lives in Southport, Merseyside, in the family home where she grew up. 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 not including bills, which would use a lot of her earnings. I dont want to rent  I dont want to spend all that money and have nothing at the end, she said. Ive looked at buying and seen mortgage advisers but I just cant borrow enough to get on the property ladder.\nGavin is trying to save for a deposit. Its difficult to save enough money  even a 5% deposit is such a lot of money and I would like to have a bigger deposit, 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 buy food and I do things around the house.\nGavin 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 dont see that happening, as its next year. But, hopefully, in a couple of years, Ill move out.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Glastonbury Festival wants to fight a war against plastic water bottles. They plan to become the world\u2019s most environmentally friendly outdoor music event. \nEach year, disposable bottles leave the Somerset festival site covered in plastic. About one million plastic bottles are used during the festival. \nThe festival organizers will give stainless-steel reusable bottles to all band members. Thousands more bottles will go on sale to festival-goers to stop them using plastic bottles. Organizers have asked the 140,000 festival-goers to bring reusable bottles that they can fill at 400 drinking water taps across the site. \nLucy Smith, Glastonbury\u2019s green issues organizer, said: \u201cWe have amazing water quality in the UK but everyone drinks bottled water.\u201d \nThere is currently 150 million tonnes of plastic rubbish around the planet and oceans, poisoning ecosystems and killing wildlife. \nThe festival organizers hope to make Glastonbury the world\u2019s greenest music festival. They want to be like America\u2019s Burning Man festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, where people have to take away everything that they take to the festival. \nOrganizers have also asked Glastonbury festival-goers to travel to the site on public transport or to share a car with friends. \u201cWe want to be as environmentally friendly as we can,\u201d said Smith. \nPlastic water bottles can take hundreds or even thousands of years to completely biodegrade. Millions of barrels of oil are used to make plastic bottles and transporting mineral water across the planet produces even more carbon emissions. \nAround 13 billion plastic water bottles are sold in the UK every year, but only one in five is recycled. \nSmith said that festival-goers should not buy bottled water; they should use the water on tap, which comes from big underground reservoirs. The charity WaterAid will also set up water kiosks around the site. They will sell reusable bottles and cups and offer free refills. \nOrganizers say that almost half of all the rubbish left at the site was recycled in 2013. They also say that there will be 15,000 bins for recycling across the festival site in 2014.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Organic food has more of the antioxidant compounds linked to better health than regular food, and lower levels of toxic metals and pesticides, according to the most comprehensive scientific analysis to date. The international team behind the work suggests that switching to organic fruit and vegetables could give the same benefits as adding one or two portions of the recommended 'five a day'. \nThe team, led by Professor Carlo Leifert at Newcastle University, concludes that there are \u201cstatistically significant, meaningful\u201d differences, with a range of antioxidants being \u201csubstantially higher\u201d \u2013 between 19% and 69% \u2013 in organic food. It is the first study to demonstrate clear and wide-ranging differences between organic and conventional fruits, vegetables and cereals. \nThe researchers say the increased levels of antioxidants are equivalent to \u201cone to two of the five portions of fruits and vegetables recommended to be consumed daily and would therefore be significant and meaningful in terms of human nutrition, if information linking these compounds to the health benefits associated with increased fruit, vegetable and wholegrain consumption is confirmed\u201d. \nThe findings will add to the controversy over organic food and whether it is better for people, with one expert saying that the findings were exaggerated. Tom Sanders, a professor of nutrition at King\u2019s College London, said the research did show some differences. \u201cBut the question is are they within natural variation? And are they nutritionally relevant? I am not convinced.\u201d He said Leifert\u2019s work had caused controversy in the past. \u201cLeifert has had a lot of disagreements with a lot of people.\u201d Sanders added the research showed organic cereals have less protein than conventional crops. \nThe results of the research are based on an analysis of 343 peer-reviewed studies from around the world \u2013 more than ever before \u2013 which examine differences between organic and conventional fruit, vegetables and cereals. \u201cThe crucially important thing about this research is that it shatters the myth that how we farm does not affect the quality of the food we eat,\u201d said Helen Browning, chief executive of the Soil Association, which campaigns for organic farming. \nPlants produce many of their antioxidant compounds to fight back against pest attacks, so the higher levels in organic crops may result from their lack of protection by chemical sprays. But, the scientists say other reasons may be important, such as organic varieties being bred for toughness and not being overfed with artificial fertilizers. \nLeifert and his colleagues conclude that many antioxidants \u201chave previously been linked to a reduced risk of chronic diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases and certain cancers\u201d. But, they also note that no long-term studies showing health benefits from a broad organic diet have yet been conducted. The researchers found much higher levels of cadmium, a toxic metal, in conventional crops. Pesticide residues were found on conventional crops four times more often than on organic food. The research was funded by the EU and an organic farming charity. \nThe research is certain to be criticized: the inclusion of so many studies in the analysis could mean poor-quality work skews the results, although the team did \u201csensitivity analyses\u201d and found that excluding weaker work did not significantly change the outcome. Also, the higher levels of cadmium and pesticides in conventional produce were still well below regulatory limits. But, the researchers say cadmium accumulates over time in the body and that some people may wish to avoid this, and that pesticide limits are set individually, not for the cocktail of chemicals used on crops. \nA further criticism is that the differences seen may result from different climates, soil types and crop varieties, and not from organic farming, though the researchers argue that combining many studies should average out these other differences. The greatest criticism, however, will be over the suggestions of potential health benefits. The most recent major analysis, which took in 223 studies in 2012, found little evidence. \u201cThe published literature lacks strong evidence that organic foods are significantly more nutritious than conventional foods,\u201d it found. \nThis was also the conclusion of earlier, smaller studies published in 2009 in a scientific journal and by the UK Food Standards Agency, though the latter considered just 11 studies. The 2012 study did note that eating organic food might help people avoid pesticide residues. Sanders said he was not persuaded by the new work. \u201cYou are not going to be better nourished if you eat organic food,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat is most important is what you eat, not whether it\u2019s organic or conventional. It\u2019s whether you eat fruit and vegetables at all. People are buying into a lifestyle system. They get an assurance it is not being grown with chemicals and is not grown by big business.\u201d \nOpinion polls show healthy eating (55%) and avoiding chemical residues (53%) are key reasons cited by shoppers for buying organic produce. But, many also say care for the environment (44%) and animal welfare (31%) are important, as is taste (35%). Browning said: \u201cThis research backs up what people think about organic food. In other countries, there have long been much higher levels of support and acceptance of the benefits of organic food and farming. We hope these findings will bring the UK into line with the rest of Europe.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"A recent report says that the wealthiest people in India will become four times richer by 2018 \u2013 hundreds of thousands of new entrepreneurs and inheritors will become multimillionaires. In India, at the moment, business people are beginning to be confident again in the world\u2019s biggest democracy. \nEconomic growth has been weak in recent years in India. The cost of basic foods has risen and the value of the Indian currency has fallen. The economy has not been good but there are now nearly a sixth more Indians with more than $3.75 million than in 2013, the report says. \u201cCities are mushrooming, the middle class is growing, there are lots more opportunities and Indian politics have improved a lot in recent months,\u201d according to Murali Balaraman, a co-author of the report. \nThe richest people in India have money and houses that are worth a trillion dollars. This is about a fifth of the total wealth in the country. By 2018, that total will probably reach $4 trillion, the report says, and there will be three times more multimillionaires. \nNew rich people are buying lots of luxury things. \u201cThey really want to show or talk about their wealth and buying luxury things is a nice way to do it,\u201d Balaraman said. Abhay Gupta, who works for the company Luxury Connect, said that more and more people will want to buy luxury things and experiences. \u201cThere is a huge class of people who want to copy very wealthy people,\u201d he said. \nCars are very popular things to buy, the report says. In 2009, wealthy Indians bought Indian SUVs to impress their friends but now they buy foreign cars. Mercedes sold 47% more cars in India in 2013. BMW has launched a new $200,000 model in Delhi. \nBut companies sell fewer luxury cars because of India\u2019s terrible transport system. Lamborghini\u2019s Chief Executive, Stephan Winkelmann, said, in 2013, that the traffic and roads in India \u201care not so suitable\u201d for the $450,000 sports cars. In India, Lamborghini sells two models: the Gallardo and the Aventador, which has a maximum speed of 217 miles per hour. Winkelmann said Lamborghini\u2019s Indian customers were much younger than European customers. In India, a normal buyer is in his 30s. But the most popular investments are still houses \u2013 mainly in India \u2013 and jewellery. \nIndia\u2019s super-rich have often surprised people around the world with their very high spending. Mukesh Ambani, India\u2019s wealthiest man, has built the world\u2019s most expensive home in Mumbai, the business capital. The 27-storey tower has helicopter pads, indoor cinemas and more than 600 people who work there. It is worth $1 billion. \nThe three-day wedding of the niece of Lakshmi Mittal, the steel tycoon who lives in the UK and has $16 billion, cost $80 million. Hundreds of guests flew to Barcelona for the wedding and party, which was in a museum in the city. \nBut people who buy luxury things are becoming more and more difficult to satisfy, the report says. One super-rich person bought nine boxes of Japanese whisky that cost more than over $750 a bottle for a wedding party. The attraction of the imported whisky was that no one who came to the wedding would be able to find the same drink in India. Another super-rich person bought identical pairs of Louis Vuitton bags, then cut up half of them to make clothes that would match her bags. \nEven the traditional Indian wedding is changing. Traditionally, people send presents such as silver plates, dried fruit or sweets with wedding invitations. But, now, rich people prefer to send gifts by top western designers. \u201cThese days, it\u2019s Rolex watches and Louis Vuitton bags,\u201d says Gupta. \nAlmost half the new multimillionaires live in small cities and many of them give a lot of money to charity. Co-author Balaraman says that more rich people will not create more social problems because a wide gap in wealth is an \u201caccepted norm\u201d in India. \u201cPeople know that someone is rich and someone is poor and they carry on with their lives,\u201d he explains.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Serial dater Emmanuel Limal was tired of meeting women who weren\u2019t ready to start a family, or at least wouldn\u2019t admit that they were. The 43-year-old actor, originally from France, had spent 20 years living in Copenhagen and looking for love in the hope of raising children. He recently took his quest online but was dismayed by the results. \n\u201cI got frustrated with everyone trying to sell themselves as really active, always travelling or with a long list of hobbies, but no mention of children,\u201d Limal said. \u201cOn some sites, there was an option to click, saying: 'I\u2019d like kids someday,' but you would read the person\u2019s profile and think: 'You will never have time!' If someone\u2019s going to the gym eight times a week and travelling every month, they are not putting a family first.\u201d \nLimal has a six-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, but coming from a big family \u2013 his father is one of 11 \u2013 he has always wanted more children. \u201cI couldn\u2019t seem to meet anyone willing to prioritize starting a family and struggled with when to mention wanting kids any time I met someone new. It\u2019s the ultimate dating taboo,\u201d he said. \u201cThen one day I read a profile from a 38-year-old who said she knew it was 'really bad to admit' but she wanted children. And I just thought: 'You shouldn\u2019t be ashamed of this.'\u201d \nLimal remortgaged his apartment to fund the setting up of Babyklar.nu \u2013 or 'baby-ready now' in English. It functions like a normal dating site but every potential dater is asked to be honest about their wish to start a family soon. \u201cWe ask people if they are OK with someone who already has children as well as wanting another baby,\u201d Limal said. \u201cBut we don\u2019t make them specify how many children they\u2019d like. That would be a bit too much like grocery shopping online.\u201d \nThe response to the site has been overwhelming, he said. \u201cWe had 50 sign-ups an hour when we launched in June and we are already hearing from couples who have met through the site and are now together. I\u2019m fully expecting the first Babyklar.nu baby by next summer.\u201d More men have signed up than women (53% to 47%), with testimonials such as \u201cIt\u2019s so lovely to be able to say this out loud\u201d and \u201cI finally dare to be honest about what I want.\u201d \nThe site has come at an opportune time for the country of five million people. Danes are not having enough babies, according to a report from the Copenhagen hospital Rigshospitalet, and the current rate of 1.7 children per family is not enough to maintain Denmark\u2019s population. The usual suspects are being blamed for the new low \u2013 women leaving it \u201ctoo late\u201d and couples cohabiting and waiting to start families. \n\u201cNow, I hope, men and women who want to start a family but haven\u2019t met the right person yet will have another option,\u201d says Limal. He\u2019s keen to point out that this isn\u2019t just about baby farming: \u201cI want this to be about children and love. My goal is to pair up people who really want a family and a partner \u2013 and who\u2019ll stay together. I\u2019m a romantic at heart.\u201d \nThere are plans to roll out the site in France and the UK later in 2013, but for now it is the Danes who are reaping the benefits. \u201cDanes have no problem having children before marriage so things can move fast and, because the country\u2019s so small, a Jutlander can date a Copenhagener without too much travel,\u201d Limal said. What\u2019s more, Limal has finally found love. \u201cI\u2019ve met a nice woman and she wants a baby too \u2013 so we shall see.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Like veins carrying the lifeblood of a city, a subway system teems with billions of inhabitants: the bacteria of Swiss cheese and kimchi, of bubonic plague and drug-proof bugs and of human skin. Now, for the first time, scientists have started to catalogue and map the bacteria coursing through a city\u2019s subway \u2013 and they have found a wealth of curious results. \nDr Christopher Mason, a geneticist at Weill Cornell Medical College, led a team that, for 18 months, swabbed the New York City subway system for the microscopic life forms that cover its turnstiles, seats, ticket booths and stations. In what Mason called \u201cthe first city-scale genetic profile ever\u201d, his team found meningitis at Times Square, a trace of anthrax on the handhold of a train carriage and bacteria that cause bubonic plague on a rubbish bin and ticket machine at stations in uptown Manhattan. \nIn research published in the journal Cell Systems, the team strongly downplayed the findings of plague and anthrax, noting the extremely small trace of the latter, that rats likely carried the former and that no one has fallen ill with plague in or around New York for years. \n\u201cThe results do not suggest that plague or anthrax is prevalent,\u201d the study says. \u201cNor do they suggest that New York residents are at risk.\u201d \nIn fact, most of the bacteria identified by the team are either harmless to humans or beneficial in the city\u2019s thriving world of microorganisms, many of which process toxic hazards and waste in the same way that bacteria inside every human help with digestion and bodily functions. \nSome of the results were expected, Mason said, including some bacteria associated with fecal matter, which he said \u201cshould be a gentle reminder for people to wash their hands\u201d. He also said that many bacteria of the same genus as those \u201cthat are beneficial and helpful, like the one used for making cheese,\u201d also turned up around New York. \nBacteria appeared to reflect the eating habits of various neighbourhoods. All around the subway, bacteria associated with cheeses \u2013 brie, cheddar, parmesan and the mozzarella of ubiquitous New York pizza \u2013 turned up. The distinctive bacteria of Swiss cheese were more localized to midtown Manhattan and the financial district, and the bacteria used to ferment cabbage for kimchi and sauerkraut showed up in the financial district and Bay Ridge. The computer also identified cucumber DNA all over the city, Mason said. \nBacteria associated with illness and infections were extremely common. Species that cause diarrhoea and nausea, both benign and bad E.coli (mostly benign), and the bacteria that can cause skin infections and urinary-tract infections were common all over the city. The species that produces tetanus appeared in Soho and bacteria that cause dysentery appeared at a station in the Bronx and another in Harlem. \nWith more than 1,000 samples collected at all of New York\u2019s 466 open subway stations, Mason and his team ran the organic materials through a DNA sequencer and, then, through a supercomputer armed with genetic databases. They identified 15,152 distinct species, nearly half of which were bacteria. \nThe good news, the researchers wrote, is that these \u201cpotentially infectious agents\u201d are not spreading sickness or disease throughout New York but rather seem to be \u201cnormal co-habitants\u201d and \u201cmay even be essential\u201d. They \u201crepresent a normal, 'healthy' metagenome profile of a city\u201d. \nIn short, the researchers conclude, the subway and city are about as safe as everyone thought. \nMason said people should not be concerned about getting urinary-tract infections from subway seats. \u201cYou should wash your hands,\u201d he said, \u201cand probably get some sleep and eat salads and go to the gym, and that\u2019s about the same today as it was yesterday.\u201d \n\u201cIf anything,\u201d he added, \u201cI\u2019ve become much more confident riding the subway.\u201d \nMany findings made sense: heavily trafficked stations like Grand Central and Times Square had more bacteria and more diversity among them; the subway was most enriched for bacteria associated with skin. The Bronx, with its diverse neighbourhoods and stations, had the greatest diversity of bacteria; Staten Island, with just three stops, had the lowest. \nThe researchers found marine bacteria at South Ferry, a station that flooded during Hurricane Sandy \u2013 but they were surprised to note the species included some normally associated with Antarctica and fish. \nThe next steps, Mason said, are studies of other cities, which have begun in Paris, S\u00e3o Paolo and Shanghai, and continued studies of New York, for instance to see how the microbiome changes with the seasons. He said he hoped the research would provide \u201ca baseline\u201d of research for health officials and geneticists, and could help health officials to be better prepared to prevent and track diseases and pathogens.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nThe Canadian tennis player Frank Dancevic slammed Australian Open organizers for forcing players to compete in inhumane conditions. He collapsed on court as temperatures rose to 41C.\nDancevic collapsed during the second set of his fi rst-round match against Frances Benot Paire on the uncovered court six at Melbourne Park and passed out for a minute. He said conditions were dangerous for the players. He also said the heat had 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  thats weird.\nI think its inhumane. I dont think its fair to anybody  to the players, to the fans, to the sport  when you see players pulling out of matches, passing out, he added. Ive played fi ve set matches all my life and being out there for a set and a half and passing out with heat stroke, its not normal.\nHaving players with so many problems and complaining to the tournament that its too hot to play; I, personally, dont think its fair and I know a lot of players dont think its fair.\nOther players agreed. The British number one, Andy Murray, said: Its defi nitely something that you have to look at. As much as its easy to say the conditions are safe, it only takes one bad thing to happen. And it looks terrible for the whole sport when people are collapsing, ball kids are collapsing, people in the stands are collapsing. Thats not great.\nI know when I went out before the match, the conditions at 2.303pm were very, very tough. Whether its safe or not, I dont know. There have been some problems in other sports with players having heart attacks.\nCaroline Wozniacki said: I put the water bottle down on the court and it started melting a little bit underneath the plastic. So, you know it was warm.\nJohn Isner said: It was like an oven when I open the oven and the potatoes are done. Thats what its like.\nThe defending champion Victoria Azarenka said, It felt pretty hot, like youre dancing in a frying pan or something like that.\nUnder a change to the rules for 2014, the decision on whether to stop matches at the tournament is now at the discretion of the tournament director, Wayne McKewen.\nOrganizers said temperatures peaked at 42.2C in the early evening on Tuesday and conditions had never reached the point where the matches would be stopped.\nWhile conditions were hot and uncomfortable, the relatively low level of humidity ensured play would continue, McKewen said in a statement.\nDancevic, who said he had felt dizzy from the middle of the second set, started playing again after medical attention but, unsurprisingly, lost 76, 63, 64. I was really close to stopping completely, he said. I wasnt really running too much towards the end. I wasnt tired; I just felt my body temperature was too high.\nA ball boy had earlier required medical attention after collapsing during Milos Raonics 76, 61, 46, 62 victory over Daniel Gimeno-Traver on the equally exposed court eight and the tournament started only allowing the ball boys to work for 45 minute periods. Chinas Peng Shuai also said the heat had made her cramp up and vomit, and she had to be helped from the court after her 75, 46, 63 defeat to Japans Kurumi Nara.\nOffi cials played down health risks  they said the majority of matches were completed without anyone needing medical attention.\nOf course, there were a few players who experienced heat-related illness or discomfort, but none required signifi cant medical treatment after they had completed their match, Tim Wood, the tournaments chief medical offi cer, said.\nRoger Federer said that, although conditions were tough, they were the same for both players. Its just a mental thing, the Swiss said. If youve trained hard enough your entire life, or the last few weeks, and you believe you can do it and come through it, theres no reason. If you cant deal with it, you throw in the towel.\nDancevic disagreed. Some players are used to the heat  their bodies can genetically handle the heat and others cant, he said. Its dangerous. Its an hour and a half since my match and I still cant pee.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nA mirror that sends heat into cold space has been designed by scientists to replace air-conditioning units that keep buildings cool on Earth.\nResearchers believe the mirror could slash the amount of energy used to control air temperatures in business premises and shopping centres because they wont need to use cooling systems.\nAround 15% of the energy used by buildings in the USgoesonairconditioningbuttheresearchers say that, in some cases, the mirror could completely offset the need for extra cooling.\nIn a rooftop comparison in Stanford, California, scientists found that a roof that had been painted black reached 60C more than the air temperature in sunlight and aluminium reached 40C more. However, the mirror was up to 5C cooler than the surrounding air temperature.\nIf you cover signi cant parts of the roof with this mirror, you can see how much power it can save. You can signi cantly offset the electricity used for air conditioning, said Shanhui Fan, an expert in the study of light at Stanford University, who led the development of the mirror. In some situations, you will be able to completely offset the air conditioning.\nBuildings warm up in a number of different ways. Hot-water boilers and cooking areas release heat into their immediate surroundings. In hot countries, warm air comes in through doors and windows. Then, there is visible light and infrared radiation from the sun, which also heat up buildings.\nThe Stanford mirror was designed to re ect 97% of the visible light that falls on it. But, more importantly, it works as a thermal radiator. When the mirror is warmed up, it releases heat at a speci c wavelength of infrared light that passes easily through the atmosphere and out into space.\nTo make anything cool, you need what engineers call a heat sink: somewhere to put unwanted heat. The heat sink has to be cooler than the object that needs cooling or it will not do its job. For example, a bucket of ice will cool a bottle of wine because it becomes a sink for heat in the liquid. The Stanford mirror relies on the best heat sink: the universe itself.\nThe mirror is built from several layers of very thin materials. The  rst layer is re ective silver. On top of this are layers of silicon dioxide and hafnium oxide. These layers turn the mirror into a thermal radiator. When silicon dioxide heats up, it radiates the heat as infrared light at a wavelength of around ten micrometres and the heat passes straight out to space. The total thickness of the mirror is around two micrometres or two thousandths of a millimetre.\nThe cold darkness of the universe can be used as a renewable thermodynamic resource, even during the hottest hours of the day, the scientists write in Nature. In tests, the mirror had a cooling power of 40 watts per square metre at outside temperatures.\n Writinginthejournal,Fansaysthatthecostofthe mirrors is between $20 and $70 per square metre. He calculates an annual electricity saving of 100MWh on a three-storey building.\nFan said that the mirror could cool buildings but he said that the mirrors would not slow down global warming. Roof space is only a small portion of the Earths surface so the mirror is not a solution to the problem of global warming. But our mirror will help limit greenhouse gas emissions by reducing electricity consumption, he said.\nIm really excited by the potential it has, said Marin Solja__i__, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. You could use this on buildings and spend much less money on air conditioning or maybe you wouldnt need it at all. You could put it on top of shopping malls. Im really excited by the potential it has, said Marin Solja__i__, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. You could use this on buildings and spend much less money on air conditioning or maybe you wouldnt need it at all. You could put it on top of shopping malls. Im really excited by the potential it has, said Marin Solja__i__, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. You could use this on buildings and spend much less money on air conditioning or maybe you wouldnt need it at all. You could put it on top of shopping malls.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Wales will become the first country in the UK that will assume that people agree to donate their organs, if they haven\u2019t opted out. \nThe Welsh Assembly voted to accept the opt-out scheme, which will allow hospitals to assume that people who die want to donate, if they have not registered an objection. \n\u201cThis is a very big day for Wales and, most importantly, for the 226 people in Wales who are waiting for an organ transplant,\u201d said the Welsh Health Minister, Mark Drakeford. \n\u201cI am proud that Wales will be the first nation in the UK to take this step. We have shown we are ready to take action to increase organ donation and to give hope to those people who wait every week for a transplant. \n\u201cWhen family members know that organ donation is what the dead person wanted, they usually agree to the donation. The new law will make clearer people\u2019s wishes about organ donation and so it will increase the number of donations.\u201d \nThe issue is controversial, but the government says they will protect the dead person\u2019s and the family\u2019s wishes. Relatives will have a \u201cclear right of objection\u201d, which will give them the chance to show that their relative did not want to be an organ donor. \nWales has acted because it does \u201cnot have enough organs for people who need them,\u201d said Drakeford. \u201cAbout one person every week dies in Wales while on a waiting list. \n\u201cAbout a third of the people who live in Wales are on the organ donor register, but more than two-thirds of people say they are happy to be organ donors. That other third is people who don\u2019t find the time to put their names on the register.\u201d \nThe new law would apply to anybody over 18 who has lived in Wales for at least the year before his or her death. Donated organs would not only go to people in need of a transplant in Wales but to anybody in the UK. \nDoctors are delighted at the scheme. Big efforts have been made in recent years to increase the number of those who carry an organ donation card, with a lot of success. Hospitals have also become better at organizing transplants \u2013 for example, they have important discussions with relatives when no one knows what the wishes of the dead person were. But the increase in numbers of organs is still not enough. \nSome religious groups strongly oppose the scheme. Members of the Muslim Council of Wales and the South Wales Jewish Representative Council are not happy, while the Archbishop of Wales, Barry Morgan, said that \u201cdonation ought to be a gift of love, of generosity. If organs can be taken unless someone has explicitly registered an objection, that\u2019s not an expression of love. It\u2019s more a medical use of a body.\u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Nelson Mandela, the towering figure of Africa\u2019s struggle for freedom and a hero to millions around the world, has died at the age of 95. \nSouth Africa\u2019s first black president died in the company of his family at home in Johannesburg after years of declining health, which had caused him to withdraw from public life. \nThe news was announced to the country by the current president, Jacob Zuma, who, in a sombre televised address, said Mandela had \u201cdeparted\u201d around 8.50pm local time and was at peace. \n\u201cThis is the moment of our deepest sorrow,\u201d Zuma said. \u201cOur nation has lost its greatest son. What made Nelson Mandela great was precisely what made him human. We saw in him what we seek in ourselves. \n\u201cFellow South Africans, Nelson Mandela brought us together and it is together that we will bid him farewell.\u201d \nZuma announced that Mandela would receive a state funeral and ordered that flags fly at half-mast. \nArchbishop Desmond Tutu led a memorial service in Cape Town, where he called for South Africa to become as a nation what Mandela had been as a man. \nBarack Obama led tributes from world leaders, referring to Mandela by his clan name \u2013 Madiba. The US president said: \u201cThrough his fierce dignity and unbending will to sacrifice his own freedom for the freedom of others, Madiba transformed South Africa \u2013 and moved all of us. \n\u201cHis journey from a prisoner to a president embodied the promise that human beings \u2013 and countries \u2013 can change for the better. His commitment to transfer power and reconcile with those who jailed him set an example that all humanity should aspire to, whether in the lives of nations or our own personal lives.\u201d \nUK prime minister David Cameron said, \u201cA great light has gone out in the world,\u201d and described Mandela as \u201ca hero of our time\u201d. \nFW de Klerk \u2013 the South African president who freed Mandela, shared the Nobel Peace Prize with him in 1993 and paved the way for him to become South Africa\u2019s first post-apartheid head of state \u2013 said the news was deeply saddening for South Africa and the world. \n\u201cHe lived reconciliation. He was a great unifier,\u201d de Klerk said. \nPeople gathered in the streets of South Africa to celebrate Mandela\u2019s life. \nIn Soweto, people gathered to sing and dance near the house where he once lived. They formed a circle in the middle of Vilakazi Street and sang songs from the anti-apartheid struggle. Some people were draped in South African flags and the green, yellow and black colours of Mandela\u2019s party, the African National Congress (ANC). Mandela\u2019s death sends South Africa deep into mourning and self-reflection, nearly 20 years after he led the country from racial apartheid to inclusive democracy. \nBut his passing will also be keenly felt by people around the world, who revered Mandela as one of history\u2019s last great statesmen, and a moral paragon comparable with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Martin Luther King. It was his act of forgiveness, after spending 27 years in prison, 18 of them on Robben Island, that will assure his place in history. With South Africa facing possible civil war, Mandela sought reconciliation with the white minority to build a new democracy. \nHe led the ANC to victory in the country\u2019s first multiracial election in 1994. He then voluntarily stepped down after one term. \nBorn Rolihlahla Dalibhunga in a small village in the Eastern Cape on 18 July, 1918, Mandela was given his English name, Nelson, by a teacher at his school. \nHe joined the ANC in 1943 and became a co-founder of its youth league. In 1952, he started South Africa\u2019s first black law firm with his partner, Oliver Tambo. \nMandela was a charming, charismatic figure with a passion for boxing and an eye for women. He once said: \u201cI can\u2019t help it if the ladies take note of me. I am not going to protest.\u201d \nWhen the ANC was banned in 1960, Mandela went underground. After the Sharpeville massacre, in which 69 black protesters were shot dead by police, he took the difficult decision to launch an armed struggle. He was arrested and eventually charged with sabotage and attempting to overthrow the government. \nConducting his own defence in the Rivonia trial in 1964, he said: \u201cI have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. \n\u201cIt is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.\u201d \nHe escaped the death penalty but was sentenced to life in prison, a huge blow to the ANC, which had to regroup to continue the struggle. But unrest grew in townships and international pressure on the apartheid regime slowly tightened. \nFinally, in 1990, FW de Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC and Mandela was released from prison amid scenes of jubilation witnessed around the world. \nHis presidency rode a wave of tremendous global goodwill but was not without its difficulties. After leaving frontline politics in 1999, he admitted he should have moved sooner against the spread of HIV and Aids in South Africa. \nArchbishop Desmond Tutu, who headed the truth and reconciliation committee after the fall of apartheid, said: \u201cHe transcended race and class in his personal actions, through his warmth and through his willingness to listen and to empathize with others. And he restored others\u2019 faith in Africa and Africans.\u201d \nMandela continued to make occasional appearances at ANC events and attended the inauguration of the current president, Jacob Zuma. His 91st birthday was marked by the first annual \u201cMandela Day\u201d in his honour. \nMarried three times, he had six children, 17 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nFelix Baumgartner stood at the edge of space above New Mexico and 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.\nTen terrifying minutes later, the Austrian landed back on Earth. He had reached speeds of up to 725 miles per hour, and broken three world records, including becoming the worlds first supersonic skydiver by breaking the sound barrier at Mach 1.24. We love you Felix, cheered the control room. Baumgartner raised his arms in a victory salute.\nHe was wearing a specially designed survival suit to protect him against the enormous pressure changes during the jump. Without it, his blood would have boiled and his lungs might have exploded. Baumgartner later told a press conference that all he could think about was getting back alive, but he added: Sometimes you have to go up really high to see how small you are.\nHis other two records were for the highest altitude manned balloon flight and the highest altitude skydive. The jump happened on a sunny morning in good weather. Baumgartner was carried up into clear skies by a gigantic balloon  it measured 30 million square cubic feet and its skin was one-tenth the thickness of a sandwich bag. At the bottom of the balloon was a capsule, where Baumgartner sat in his suit.\nAs he reached the correct height, Baumgartner went through a checklist of 40 things with his mentor Joe Kittinger. Kittinger was the previous holder of the highest altitude manned balloon flight.\nBaumgartner had a problem with his visor. This is very serious, Joe, he told Kitttinger. Sometimes its getting foggy when I breathe out. But they decided to go ahead, watched by a record 8 million people live on YouTube.\nAfter a two-and-a-half-hour journey up, during which the curvature of the Earth became visible and the skies gradually turned black, the descent was much quicker. Three cameras, which were attached to Baumgartners suit, recorded his free-fall of just over four minutes and then the parachute opening.\nThe success of the mission, and of the suit, means that astronauts might be able to survive a high-altitude disaster, like on the space shuttle Columbia in 2003, by jumping out of their craft. Baumgartners top medical man in the stunt was Dr Jonathan Clark, whose wife Laurel Clark died in the Columbia accident. Clark is now working to help astronauts survive high-altitude disasters.\nBaumgartner has a reputation for daring stunts. 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 jump  one from 71,000 feet and a second from 97,000 feet. But nothing can compare with his jump above the town of Roswell, a place famous for its UFO sightings.\nHe was trying to break five different records: the first human to ever break the sound barrier in free-fall; the highest free-fall altitude jump; the highest manned balloon flight; the longest free-fall; and his jump platform is believed to be the largest manned balloon in history. The stunt was planned for seven years, was sponsored by Red Bull drinks, and beat two of Kittingers records: before, the retired US air force colonel held the high altitude and speed records for parachuting. Kittinger jumped from a balloon 19 miles above the planet in 1960 and gave advice to Baumgartner during the ascent.\nAsked after the jump what he wanted to do next, Baumgartner said: I want to inspire a generation. Id 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 was when he was standing outside the capsule on top of the world. He added: The most beautiful moment was when I was standing on the landing area and Mike Todd [the life support engineer who dressed Baumgartner in his suit] appeared and he had a smile on his face like a little kid.\nBaumgartner said that he felt like Todds 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 theyve got one in Felix Baumgartner.\nThis will be the last jump, Baumgartner said. He has promised to settle down and enjoy life with his girlfriend, Nicole Oetl, flying helicopters on rescue missions in the US and Austria.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"On one day in August, one in seven people on Earth, 1 billion people, used Facebook, according to founder Mark Zuckerberg. In ten years, the social network has changed people\u2019s relationships, privacy, their businesses, news media, helped to end unfair governments and even changed the meaning of common words. \n\u201cA more open and connected world is a better world,\u201d wrote Zuckerberg. \nThese are just some of the ways his company changed everything \u2013 for better or worse.\n1. Facebook has changed the definition of \u201cfriend\u201d \n\u201cTo friend\u201d is now a verb. In real life, it is difficult to end a friendship but, on Facebook, it is easy to \u201cunfriend\u201d someone. \u201cTo unfriend\u201d is a word invented  to describe ending contact with a Facebook friend. The meanings of the words \u201cshare\u201d and \u201clike\u201d are the same but Facebook has made the words more important to us. \nSchool and university reunions are unnecessary  \u2013 you already know whose job is going well and you\u2019ve seen pictures of your schoolfriends\u2019 babies. You won\u2019t be surprised if you see an ex in the street with a new girlfriend or boyfriend: you already know they\u2019re with someone else because you\u2019ve seen the romantic selfies. \nIn real life, some friends are more important than others but, on Facebook, all friends have the same importance. A classmate from university who you haven\u2019t seen for 15 years, a friend-of-a-friend from a party or a colleague you\u2019ve never spoken to \u2013 they are all Facebook friends in the same way as your best friend, or your husband or wife, or your mum. It doesn\u2019t mean we see them the same way. Professor Robin Dunbar is famous for his research that says a person can only have about 150 people in their social group. Facebook hasn\u2019t changed that yet, he believes. But Dunbar says he fears it is so easy to end friendships on Facebook that, one day, people may not need to learn to get on with each other.\n2 We care less about privacy\nMost young people are happy to give Facebook their personal details. Ninety-one per cent post a photo of themselves, 71% post the city or town where they live, more than half give email addresses and a fifth give their phone number.\nMore than 80% list their interests, which allows companies to try to sell things to them. But most young users limit who can see their profiles \u2013 60% allow friends only.\n3 Facebook has created millions of jobs \u2013 but not in its own offices\nMichael Tinmouth has worked with companies such as Vodafone and Microsoft. He says, \u201cThanks to Facebook, companies have a better understanding of their customers than ever before. The data available is extraordinary. You know who your customers are and who they are friends with and what they think about your company.\u201d\nAnd advertisers pay a lot for that. Facebook earned $3.32 billion from advertising.\nFacebook can also be dangerous for companies. Suddenly, customers don\u2019t simply complain on the phone or on a small internet forum \u2013 angry customers can post their complaints for hundreds of their friends to see or even on the company\u2019s own page. \n4 Facebook has been the tool to organize revolutions\nOrganizing demonstrations has been revolutionized by Facebook. Manchester University\u2019s Olga Onuch found that half of all the Euromaidan protesters in Ukraine had got their information from Facebook.\nMany people told Onuch that they needed Facebook to read the truth about what was happening \u2013 they don\u2019t trust traditional media.\n5 Facebook makes news, breaks news and decides what is news\nAbout 71% of 18- to 24-year-olds and 63% of all users say they get news from the internet. About a third of Facebook users post about politics and government. \nMost people will first read an item of news on Facebook or other social media, mostly on mobiles.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"A car with a maximum speed of 25 miles per hour, two seats and no pedals or steering wheel does not sound very interesting. But Google, in the US, shocked the car and taxi industries when it unveiled the latest version of its driverless car. \nGoogle has begun testing the electric car at its headquarters in Mountain View, California. The car does not have all the normal car controls, such as foot pedals. Instead, it has a smartphone app that calls it and tells it the destination, and a STOP button between the two seats in case the passengers need to override the computer. \nThe company is building about 100 prototypes for a two-year test. The company\u2019s co-founder, Sergey Brin, said that the vehicle was still just a prototype. He says that they want to change the world for people who do not find it easy to travel around. \nTalking about the car, he said, \u201cYou\u2019re just sitting there; no steering wheel, no pedals. For me, it was very relaxing. About ten seconds after getting into the car, I forgot I was there. I found it really fun.\u201d \nGoogle says that the aim of the project is to improve safety. They say that the car is made with foam at the front and a plastic windscreen, so \u201cit should be far safer than any other car for pedestrians\u201d. \nThe cars have been built specially by a company in Detroit. Google will now test the cars, which are not yet for sale. \nThere need to be detailed scans of the roads before the cars can drive on them, because they cannot collect and process enough information in real time. \nSo far, there are detailed maps of about 2,000 miles of California\u2019s roads, but California has more than 170,000 miles of roads. \nGoogle says it wants to license the technology to traditional car makers when they have improved it. \nBut the idea that driverless cars will replace taxis with human drivers has alarmed some people. \nDennis Conyon from the UK National Taxi Association said that taxi drivers will become unemployed. \nLondon has about 22,000 black taxis and Conyon thinks that the total number of people who drive taxis in the UK is about 100,000. \nOther car makers, including Volvo, Ford and Mercedes, are going to make vehicles that will be different from Google\u2019s version because they will have driver controls. \nBut Chris Urmson, director of the driverless car project at Google, said that the new prototypes do not have a steering wheel or brakes because a human passenger might not be able to take control in an emergency. He said that it was simpler just to have an emergency stop button. \nUrmson said: \u201cThe vehicles will be very basic. But they will take you where you want to go at the push of a button. And, that\u2019s an important step towards improving road safety and helping millions of people travel around more easily.\u201d \nSo far, the Google versions of the driverless cars have driven 700,000 miles without an accident caused by the computer. The company says that thousands of people die each year on the roads and that about 80% of crashes are caused by human mistakes.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Clay Cockrell is sitting in his office opposite the Trump International Hotel and Tower. In front of the tower is Central Park, where Cockrell holds his popular walk and talk therapy sessions.\nCockrell is a former Wall Street worker who is now a therapist. He spends large parts of his days walking in Central Park or the Battery Park in downtown Manhattan near Wall Street, talking to some of New York\u2019s wealthiest people.\n\u201cMany of the very wealthy \u2013 the 1% of the 1% \u2013 feel that their problems are really not problems. But they are,\u201d he says.\nSo, what problems do America\u2019s 1% have? \u201cThere is guilt that they are rich,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is the feeling that they have to hide that they are rich. And, then, there is the isolation \u2013 being in the 1% can be lonely.\u201d\nCounsellors say that things have become worse since the financial crisis in 2008. People now talk about the gap between rich and poor more because of groups like Occupy Wall Street.\n\u201cOccupy Wall Street had some important things to say about the gap between rich and poor but it was negative about the 1%,\u201d said Jamie Traeger-Muney, a wealth psychologist. The media, she said, makes the rich \u201cfeel like they need to hide or feel ashamed\u201d.\n\u201cSometimes, I am shocked by things that people say. You would never talk about another group of people in the way that it seems perfectly normal to talk about wealthy people.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s really isolating to have a lot of money. People\u2019s reaction to you can be scary,\u201d said Barbara Nusbaum, an expert in money psychology. \u201cWe are all taught not to talk about money. It\u2019s not polite to talk about money. But it\u2019s harder to talk about being rich than it is to talk about being poor. People don\u2019t mind if you say \u2018I am broke. Things are hard.\u2019 You can\u2019t say \u2018I have a ton of money.\u2019 You have to keep a lot of your life private.\u201d\nAs a result, Cockrell says, the rich hang out with other rich Americans who understand them and their problems.\nIn the US, over the last 30 years, the number of very wealthy people has grown. In 2014, the number of US households with $1m or more \u2013 excluding the value of their main home \u2013 was 10.1 million. There were 1.3 million households worth $5 million and 142,000 worth $25 million or more.\nSince the 2008 financial crisis, the gap between the rich and the poor has grown and the situation \u201chas gotten worse for the wealthy\u201d, Cockrell said. The main reason? Not knowing if your friends are friends with you or with your money.\n\u201cSomeone else who is also a billionaire \u2013 they don\u2019t want anything from you. Never being able to trust your friendships with other people, I think that is difficult,\u201d said Cockrell.\n\u201cWealth can stop you from connecting with other people,\u201d said the wife of a man who made about $80 million. Some Americans keep their wealth secret.\n\u201cThere are a lot of people hiding their wealth because they are worried about negative judgment,\u201d said Traeger-Muney. If wealthy Americans talk about their problems, people don\u2019t have a lot of sympathy,\u201d she said.\nCockrell said that there is a common mistake that many of his wealthy clients make \u2013 they let their money be the most important thing in their lives.\n\u201cIf you are part of the 1%, you still have problems. There are other parts of your life. Money is not the only thing,\u201d he said. \u201cYour problems are real.\u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nA Canadian man who became famous because he offered a free round-the-world trip to a woman with the same name as his ex-girlfriend has returned from the trip with his chosen namesake. Unfortunately, to the disappointment of those following the story, the two of them did not fall in love. Jordan Axani, a 28-year-old Toronto charity founder, arrived back in Canada with Elizabeth Quinn Gallagher and said the pair had a brother-sister-like relationship.\nAxani had made headlines in 2014 because he offered an air ticket to any Canadian named Elizabeth Gallagher. He had booked a three-week vacation with his girlfriend but they split up and he was unable to change the name on the flight tickets.\nThats where Axanis new travelling companion, a 23-year-old student from Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, enters the story. Elizabeth Gallagher, who calls herself Quinn, replied to an online posting from Axani and she was chosen. Gallagher explained before the trip that she had a pretty serious boyfriend. But that had not stopped journalists from hoping the globetrotters might fall for one another. Unfortunately, it did not happen.\nIm going to be very clear, Axani said, soon after the pair returned to Toronto. This was never a romantic endeavour. It was strictly platonic. I do not think of Quinn in a romantic way at all. There is no future for us romantically. She is a good friend. I think of her as a little sister and that is it. And our feelings are entirely mutual.\nIt took work to create that brother-sister, good-friend relationship, however. It wasnt easy and it certainly wasnt immediate. It took us about a week to really figure each other out, Axani said. There was a certain amount of stumbling around as the pair got to know each other about the dos and donts of travelling together. At the end of it, wed developed a really great rhythm  one second, we had really funny inside jokes and, the next second, we knew when the other person needed space.\nAlthough the pair did not fall in love, Axani said the trip, which included Milan, Venice, Vienna, Prague, Khao Lak (in Thailand) and Hong Kong, was fantastic. A favourite place was Prague, Axani said, where they met more people than anywhere else on the trip.\nOver the course of two and a half days I think we met about two dozen people. So thats a lot of stories, thats a lot of individuals and thats a lot of love for their home city of Prague.\nPeople were following the pair on Twitter and Instagram, Axani said, and they were even recognized in the street in Hong Kong. It was a real adventure. We had a blast. We learned a lot about ourselves and about each other. I cant imagine it going much better than it did.\nAxani arrived back in Toronto at 3am and went straight into a meeting at his charity, A Ticket Forward. Axani started the non-profit organization after his internet post went viral. He wants to offer round-the-world-trips to survivors of abuse, cancer and war.\nApart from that, Axani is also discussing making his story into a television show or film, he said. But he would not comment on what form those productions might take. Ill only say that theres been lots of interest from many production companies. Were well advanced. In terms of his love life, Axani said he was not looking for his next Elizabeth Gallagher yet. Im not looking for anything but life happens and well see, he said. As always, lifes a journey.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Brazil experienced one of its biggest nights of protest in decades as more than 100,000 people took to the streets nationwide to express their frustration at heavy-handed policing, poor public services and high costs for the World Cup. \nThe major demonstrations in Rio de Janeiro, S\u00e3o Paulo, Brasilia, Belem, Belo Horizonte, Salvador and elsewhere started peacefully, but several led to clashes with police and arson attacks on cars and buses. \nThe large turnout and geographic spread marked a rapid escalation after previous, smaller protests against bus price increases led to complaints that police responded disproportionately with rubber bullets, tear gas and violent beatings. \nCoinciding with the start of the Confederations Cup \u2013 a World Cup test event \u2013 the rallies brought together a wide coalition of people frustrated with the escalating costs and persistently poor quality of public services, lavish investment in international sporting events, low standards of health care and wider unease about inequality and corruption. \nWhile the vast majority of demonstrations in Rio were peaceful, several police were injured in clashes at the city\u2019s legislative assembly, at least one car was overturned and burned, and windows were smashed in the offices of banks and notary offices. \nThe unrest escalated during the night as a large crowd set several fires outside the legislative assembly, smashed the building\u2019s windows and painted graffiti on the walls proclaiming \u201cRevolution\u201d, \u201cDown with Paes, down with Cabral [the mayor and state governor]\u201d and \u201cHate police\u201d. Police inside responded with pepper spray and perhaps more \u2013 the Guardian saw one protester passed out and bleeding heavily from a wound in the upper arm. \nThe causes pursued by the protesters varied widely. \u201cWe are here because we hate the government. They do nothing for us,\u201d said Oscar Jos\u00e9 Santos, a 19 year old who was with a group of hooded youths from the Rocinha favela. \n\u201cI\u2019m an architect but I have been unemployed for six months. There must be something wrong with this country,\u201d said Nadia al Husin, holding up a banner calling on the government to do more for education. \nAt a far smaller rally in Brasilia, demonstrators broke through police lines to enter the high-security area of the national congress. Several climbed onto the roof. \nIn Belo Horizonte, police clashed with protesters who tried to break through a cordon around a football stadium hosting a Confederations Cup match between Nigeria and Tahiti. \nIn Porto Alegre, demonstrators set fire to a bus and, in Curitiba, protesters attempted to force their way into the office of the state governor. There were also rallies in Belem, Salvador and elsewhere. \nIn S\u00e3o Paulo, which had seen the fiercest clashes the previous week and the main allegations of police violence, large crowds gathered once again but initial reports suggested the marches passed peacefully. \nReflecting the importance of social networks in spreading the message about the protests, some in S\u00e3o Paulo \u2013 where numbers were estimated at between 30,000 and 100,000 \u2013 carried banners declaring \u201cWe come from Facebook\u201d. \nMost protesters were young and, for many, it was their first experience of such a giant rally. \u201cMy generation has never experienced this,\u201d said Thiago Firbida, a student. \u201cSince the dictatorship, Brazilians never bothered to take over the streets. They did not believe they had a reason to. But now Brazil is once again in crisis, with a constant rise in prices, so people are finally reacting.\u201d \nComparisons have been drawn with rallies in Turkey and elsewhere. Another global link was evident in the handful of demonstrators who wore Guy Fawkes masks, associated with Anonymous and the Occupy Wall Street protests. \nBrazil\u2019s demonstrations are being referred to as the \u201cvinegar revolution\u201d (after police arrested people for carrying vinegar to counter tear gas), as well as the \u201c20-cent revolution\u201d (due to the bus price rise) and the Passe Livre (after the demand for free public transport). \nSome said the protests felt un-Brazilian but liberating. \u201cOur politicians need to see the strength we have as one people. Brazilians tend to be too nice sometimes \u2013 they enjoy partying rather than protesting \u2013 but something is changing,\u201d said Deli Borsari, a 53-year-old yoga instructor. \nFollowing widespread news coverage of the costs of new and refurbished stadiums, the Confederations Cup football tournament has been one of the focuses of the protests. Before the opening match in Brasilia, crowds of demonstrators were dispersed by riot police. Footage showed frightened Japanese supporters rushing from the area holding their children, as the sound of shots \u2013 perhaps rubber bullets or tear gas \u2013 was heard. \nAnother protest march, near Rio\u2019s Maracana Stadium, was met with a similarly heavy police response. \nMost of the rallies appeared to start peacefully until they confronted the security forces, who are largely organized at a regional level. President Dilma Rousseff condones the protests, according to her aides. \u201cThe president believes peaceful protests are legitimate and proper for a democracy, and that it is natural for young people to demonstrate,\u201d said Helena Chagas of the president\u2019s office. \nHowever, the president was booed at the opening ceremony for the Confederations Cup. With the economy in bad shape and social unrest on the rise, she faces a serious political challenge, both now and in 2014, when Brazil will not only host the World Cup but also have a presidential election.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nAccording to a top-secret document, the National Security Agency (NSA) has got direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other major US internet companies. The NSA access is part of a program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.\nThe document claims collection directly from the servers of major US service providers. Although the document claims that the program is run with the help of the companies, all the companies who responded to a request for comment denied knowledge of any such program.\nIn a statement, Google said: Google cares deeply about the security of our users data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government back door into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data.\nSeveral senior tech executives insisted that they had no knowledge of PRISM or of any similar scheme. They said they would never have been involved in such a program. If they are doing this, they are doing it without our knowledge, one said. An Apple spokesman said he had never heard of PRISM.\nThe NSA access became possible because of changes to US surveillance law, introduced under President Bush and renewed under Obama in December 2012. The program facilitates a large amount of in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information. The law allows for the targeting of any customers of participating companies who live outside the US, or those Americans whose communications include people outside the US.\nThe revelation of the PRISM program follows a leak of a top-secret court order that forced telecoms provider Verizon to give the telephone records of millions of US customers to the US government. The participation of the internet companies in PRISM will add to the debate about the level of surveillance by the intelligence services. Unlike the collection of those call records from Verizon, this surveillance can include the content of communications and not just the metadata.\nIt is claimed that some of the worlds largest internet companies are part of the information-sharing program, which was introduced in 2007. Microsoft  which is currently running an advertising campaign with the slogan Your privacy is our priority  was the first, with collection beginning in December 2007. It was followed by Yahoo in 2008; Google, Facebook and PalTalk in 2009; YouTube in 2010; Skype and AOL in 2011; and finally Apple, which joined the program in 2012.\nUnder US law, companies must comply with requests for users communications, but the PRISM program allows the intelligence services direct access to the companies servers. The NSA document notes that the operations have the help of communications providers in the US.\nDuring the renewal of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) in December 2012, several US senators warned about the high level of surveillance the law might allow and shortcomings in the safeguards it introduces. When the FAA was first introduced, its supporters argued that one safeguard would be the fact that the NSA could not get electronic communications without the permission of the telecom and internet companies that control the data. But the PRISM program makes that permission unnecessary, because it allows the agency to take the communications directly off the companies servers, communications that include email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice-over-IP (Skype, for example) chats, file transfers and social networking details.\nThe PRISM program allows the NSA, the worlds largest surveillance organization, to get targeted communications without requesting them from the service providers and without needing individual court orders. With this program, the NSA is able to reach directly into the servers of the companies and get both stored communications and live communications.\nA senior administration official said in a statement: The Guardian and Washington Post articles refer to collection of communications under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). This law does not allow the targeting of any US citizen or of any person who is within the United States. The program is overseen by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Executive Branch and Congress. Only non-US persons outside the US are targeted. The program must limit the information it gets, keeps and disseminates about US citizens.\nThis program was recently reauthorized by Congress after a lot of debate. Information that is collected under this program is some of the most important and valuable intelligence information we collect and it is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nA long time ago, cinema audiences were transported to a galaxy far, far away.\nThat was 1977 but, in 2015, as the franchise plans to release its seventh  lm, interest in Star Wars shows no sign of slowing down. Now, there is news of a new  lm about Han Solo and of a reappearance for Darth Vader.\nMany fans around the world are constantly waiting for the release of new poster art, new trailers and other information, said Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst. Its hard to imagine any other movie franchise that could cause this much enthusiasm and excitement.\nThe latest Star Wars mania started after Disneys purchase of Lucas lm from the  lms creator, George Lucas, in 2012. Disney paid $4bn for Lucas lm and very soon announced that there would be three more Star Wars episodes  VII, VIII and IX  plus plans for spin-off movies and standalones.\nDetails of the second spin-off have now been made public. It is a story about Han Solo, the intergalactic smuggler played by Harrison Ford in the  rst three  lms. This second new  lm will be released in May 2018.\nIt will follow the release in December 2015 of Episode VII, directed by JJ Abrams and titled Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The unnamed Episode VIII is due out in 2017 and a spin-off, Rogue One, will arrive in cinemas in 2016.\nThat movie will outline a rebel mission to steal the plans of the Death Star, a key part of the story in the  rst  lm in 1977. There was lots of interest in the rumour that Darth Vader, the black-clad villain of the original series, will reappear in Rogue One. The interest con rms the power of Star Wars nostalgia.\nIn creating a multi-storyline, multi-character cinema universe around Star Wars, Lucas lm-Disney are copying the phenomenally successful series of  lms produced by Marvel Studios, which Disney also bought, in 2009.\nDisney has increased the level of marketing savvy to a product that was already popular: Dergarabedian says the decision to make all six existing Star Wars  lms available on streaming services is a brilliant way to build the excitement for the new  lm and reinvigorate the idea of Star Wars in the minds of the fans.\nBut, it is not certain that it needs reinvigorating. The level of enthusiasm that has surrounded Star Wars for at least the last twenty years is shown by the huge number of novels, comic books, video games and merchandising that Lucas lm has created over the years.\nMichael Rosser, news editor for Screen International, suggests that it is this shared universe of nostalgia that makes Star Wars the top  lm franchise. The great thing about the original  lms was that they created a huge universe of characters and possibility that sparked the imagination of viewers, he said.\nFor years, people have been wondering how the different parts of the story  t together. This new  lm goes back to Han Solo and Luke Skywalker so we hope it will reconnect with the original Star Wars  lms. The prequels failed to do that.\nRosser is referring to the three  lms Lucas directed between 1999 and 2005  The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith  which were about the life of Luke Skywalkers father, Anakin, who becomes Darth Vader. Despite quite bad reviews, the prequels took $2.5bn at the worldwide box of ce.\nIt shows the power of Star Wars that, although they were disappointing, the prequels still made a lot of money, said Rosser.\nIn the world of  lm, branding and a successful franchise are very important. Is there a risk that movie studios will simply become branding machines and lose their interest in cinema?\nRosser thinks not. They are desperate to keep the franchise going and make sure new  lms are of good quality. They also want people to go to the cinema at a time when lots are staying home for entertainment. But you dont want to watch Star Wars on your iPhone.\nMeanwhile, Dergarabedian expects massive business when The Force Awakens reaches cinemas in December 2015. We certainly expect a record opening for December and the  lm should make at least a billion dollars worldwide. Truly, Star Wars is the ultimate movie brand.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Amsterdam still looks liberal to tourists, who were recently assured by the Labour Mayor that the city\u2019s marijuana-selling coffee shops would stay open despite a new national law tackling drug tourism. But the Dutch capital may lose its reputation for tolerance over plans to dispatch nuisance neighbours to \u201cscum villages\u201d made from shipping containers. \nThe Mayor, Eberhard van der Laan, insists his controversial new \u00a3810,000 policy to tackle antisocial behaviour is to protect victims of abuse and homophobia from harassment. The camps where antisocial tenants will be rehoused for three to six months have been called \u201cscum villages\u201d because the policy echoes proposals from Geert Wilders, the far-right populist, who last year demanded that \u201crepeat offenders\u201d be \u201csent to a village for scum\u201d. \nBut Bartho Boer, a spokesman for the Mayor, denies that the plans are illiberal. \u201cWe want to defend the liberal values of Amsterdam,\u201d he says. \u201cWe want everyone to be who he and she is \u2013 whether they are gay and lesbian or stand up to violence and are then victims of harassment. We as a society want to defend them.\u201d According to Boer, the villages are not for \u201cthe regular nuisance between two neighbours where one has the stereo too loud on Saturday night\u201d but \u201cpeople who are extremely violent and intimidating, and in a clear situation where a victim is being repeatedly harassed\u201d. \nThose deemed guilty of causing \u201cextreme havoc\u201d will be evicted and placed in temporary homes of a \u201cbasic\u201d nature, including converted shipping containers in industrial areas of the city. \u201cWe call it a living container,\u201d says Boer. Housing antisocial tenants in these units, which have showers and kitchens and have been used as student accommodation, will ensure that they are not \u201crewarded\u201d by being relocated to better accommodation. \nDutch newspaper the Parool has pointed out that in the 19th century troublemakers were moved to villages in Drenthe and Overijssel, which rapidly became slums. But Boer insists that the administration has learned from past mistakes and is not planning to house the antisocial together. \nIt would be more accurate to call them \u201cscum houses\u201d than scum villages, says Boer, \u201cbecause we don\u2019t want to put more than one of these families in the same area\u201d. After up to six months in these houses, scattered around the city, the tenants will be found permanent homes. The city government anticipates moving around ten families a year into this programme, which starts in 2013. \nThe temporary dwellings will be heavily policed, but antisocial tenants will also have access to doctors, social workers and parole officers. \u201cThey are taken care of so the whole situation is not going to repeat at the new house they are in,\u201d says Boer.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nBehind the bright lights and mirrored panels, cameras are watching you. If you pick up a boot, a camera will make sure you dont put it into your bag. Enter a department store and you will be watched. But new technology is less focused on shoplifting and more interested in your age, sex and shopping habits.\nA few months ago, IT company Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) wrote a report that said around 30% of stores use facial recognition technology to track customers in-store. Facial recognition is a technology that can identify people by analysing and comparing facial features from a database. It uses devices such as Intel RealSense cameras, which are able to analyse everything from particular expressions to the clothing brands someone is wearing.\nIntel spokesman Joe Jensen says that the aim of using RealSense technology in shops is not to create databases of speci c peoples lives but to build generalized models of peoples lifestyles and shopping habits. We dont need to know a particular customer. We need to know that this shopper has these characteristics and that, when those characteristics are present, this is what a person tends to do.\nIf you combine recognition technology with databases of previous customer patterns, you can start to predict a lot about what a person may or may not do in a shop. If, for example, theres a woman walking quickly towards the sock section, you can use that data to predict she wants to buy socks. That could allow a store to automatically put targeted ads on screens aimed speci cally at that person. If she looks like the type of person who wants to buy socks, they will show her adverts for socks.\nIf it sounds familiar, its because the online world has been using techniques like these for years. If you search for something on Amazon, youll get targeted ads for similar products on other sites. But its not easy to bring these systems into the physical world. People do not react to cameras in the same way as they do to browser cookies.\nHoxton Analytics, a team of data scientists in London, has developed a technology that uses machine learning and arti cial intelligence to categorize people based on the shoes they are wearing. By analysing the style and size of peoples footwear as they walk past the sensor, the system can identify a customers gender with 75-80% accuracy.\nOwen McCormack, Hoxton Analytics CEO, says that the focus of the system was partly a reaction to facial recognition. My idea was, why dont we simply consider the clothes someones wearing? he said. If I just showed you a photo of someones body, you could probably tell me what gender they are. However, pointing a camera at someones chest or hips feels just as creepy as facial recognition. The idea was  what about peoples shoes?\nPeople use the word creepy a lot during discussions of in-store tracking. For stores and data scientists, the aim is to  nd a way of getting information without seeming intrusive.\nFor McCormack, the argument is based on the fact that personal information isnt collected. Right now, shops are doing lots of incredibly invasive things but we just dont know about it. What we say is that, if you know someones a male or a female, then your advertising will be much more ef cient. If you know that everyone in your shop right now is a male, youll be advertising PlayStations not hairdryers.\nFrom the perspective of stores, its understandable that physical shops want some of the information online shops collect. We allow this to happen online so why not of ine? Online, you get a pop-up asking you to accept cookies. But you cant ask for peoples consent in the same way when they move from one physical shop to another.\nBut its also true that the generation that is growing up with online shopping does not see online advertising as so invasive. In the CSC report, a survey showed that 72% of people aged 55 or more said they were very uncomfortable with these types of technologies in physical shops. But only 51% of 16-24 year olds said they were uncomfortable.\nAre younger people more open because they are more familiar with digital technology or do they believe in the honesty of organizations offering free services? Is this kind of technology always creepy or does it depend? In any case, there are a growing number of eyes between the shelves and they care a lot about what youre wearing.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"The Chief Medical Officer for England compared the problem of antibiotic resistance to the risks of international terrorism. But, each year, the number of deaths around the world from bacterial resistance is far more than the number of deaths from terrorist attacks. \nThe World Health Organization says that each year more than 150,000 people die from tuberculosis because of antibiotic resistance. This is now a war. \nA hundred years ago, life expectancy in the UK was about 47 years for a man and 50 years for a woman. Lots of young children died. About 30% of all deaths were in children under the age of five, mostly because of infectious disease. \nBut a child born in Britain today has more than a 25% chance of reaching their 100th birthday. We can thank public health systems, vaccination and antibiotics for this. \nIn intensive care, antibiotic resistant bacteria are most common. Here, powerful antibiotics are used very often. These drugs kill ordinary bacteria. But they cannot kill strong bacteria that have begun to learn how to survive antibiotic drugs. \nWhen I became a doctor in the 1990s, I learnt about Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) is a bacteria that is resistant to methicillin and all other penicillins. There were just a few drugs that could kill it \u2013 for example, vancomycin and teicoplanin. But antibiotic resistant bacteria became more and more common. \nIn our hospitals and our doctor\u2019s surgeries we use antiobiotics too often. \nAlso, we have put antibiotics into the food chain, when we grow food and when we put anti-bacterial drugs into food for farm animals. \nWe thought that antibiotics were something we could use forever. We thought that companies would continue to make more and more antibiotics. \nBut this is no longer true. We have found new, more resistant bacteria. The vancomycin that we used to treat MRSA infection no longer worked. We found Vancomycin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (VRSA) in our hospitals. And other bacteria were becoming resistant too. \nToday, infections with organisms that are very resistant are common, but fewer and fewer new antibiotic drugs are made. It is more and more difficult to develop new drugs that can kill resistant bacteria. Antibiotics have become drugs that are expensive to develop, that are only used in short courses and that quickly stop working because of bacterial resistance. \nThis war against bacteria is different from all other wars. There needs to be change in the way doctors give antibiotics and we need to use fewer antibiotics in farming. And we have to give companies good reasons why they should make new antibiotics, which will not make them lots of money. \nToday, antibiotic resistance has become a normal part of life. Less than a hundred years after the discovery of penicillin, we are beginning to lose the fight.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nThe Moroccan city of Ouarzazate is used to big productions. It is on the edge of the Sahara Desert and at the centre of the North African countrys Ouallywood  lm industry, where scenes from movies such as Lawrence of Arabia, The Mummy, The Living Daylights and even Game of Thrones were  lmed.\nNow the city, known as the door of the desert, is the centre for a complex of four linked solar mega- plants, which, together with hydro and wind, will help provide nearly half of Moroccos electricity from renewable energy by 2020. The project is a key part of Moroccos ambitions to use its deserts to become a global solar superpower.\nWhen the full complex is complete, it will be the largest concentrated solar power plant in the world. The  rst phase, called Noor 1, will be ready in November 2015. The mirror technology it uses is less widespread and more expensive than the photovoltaic panels that you can see on roofs all over the world. But it will have the advantage of being able to continue producing power even after the sun goes down.\nThe 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 worlds deserts receive enough energy in a few hours to provide power for all the people in the world for a whole year. But the challenge is to capture that energy and take it to where it is needed.\nAs engineers  nish Noor 1, its 500,000 moon-shaped solar mirrors glitter in the desert. The 800 rows follow the sun across the sky, whirring quietly every few minutes.\nWhen they are  nished, the four plants at Ouarzazate will need a space as big as Moroccos capital city, Rabat, and generate 580 mega-watts of electricity, enough to power a million homes.\nMoroccos environment minister, Hakima el-Haite, believes that solar energy could have the same effects on the region this century that oil production had in the last century. But the $9bn project was triggered by more immediate concerns, she said.\nWe import 94% of our energy as fossil fuels from other countries and that has big consequences for our state budget, el-Haite told the Guardian. So, when we heard about the possibilities of solar energy, we thought, Why not?\nSolar energy will make up a third of Moroccos renewable energy supply by 2020. Wind and hydro will make up the other two-thirds.\nWe are very proud of this project, el-Haite said. I think it is the most important solar plant in the world.\nTechnicians say that the Noor 2 and 3 plants, due to open in 2017, will store energy for up to eight hours  this gives the possibility of 24\/7 solar energy in the Sahara and the surrounding region.\nThe  rst part of the project is nearly completed and Morocco has bigger international ambitions. \u001cWe are already involved in transportation lines to cover the full south of Morocco and Mauritania,\u001d says Ahmed Baroudi, manager of Socie\u0001te\u0001 d\u0019Investissements Energe\u0001tiques, the national renewable energy investment  rm. But he says the project\u0019s effects will go further \u0013 even as far as the Middle East.\nExporting solar energy could have stabilizing effects within and between countries, according to the Moroccan solar energy agency (Masen). Morocco is making plans with Tunisia and energy exports northwards across the Mediterranean are a key goal.\nWe believe that its possible to export energy to Europe but,  rst, we have to build the interconnectors which dont yet exist, said Maha el-Kadiri, a Masen spokeswoman.\nIn the meantime, Morocco is focused on using solar to meet its own needs. This could one day include water desalination, which is very useful in a country that is having more and more droughts as the climate warms.\nAbout $9bn has been invested in the Noor Complex, much of it from international institutions such as the European Investment Bank and World Bank and supported by Moroccan government guarantees. Energy subsidies from Moroccos King Mohammed VI have stopped the cost from being transferred to normal people.\nOver a thousand, mostly Moroccan, workers are still racing to  x electric wires, take down scaffolding and insulate steel pipelines. They hurry past in yellow and orange safety vests, working 12-hour shifts beneath the Atlas mountains. They wear hard hats, safety shoes and ear plugs.\nWeve done the construction and, now, we will see how these projects look when they start, says Hajar Lakhael, a 25-year-old environment and security manager from Meknes. It is exactly like the preparation for a grand performance.\nA global audience will be watching with interest.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"The direct action group UK Uncut plans to make many Starbucks caf\u00e9s into cr\u00e8ches, refuges and homeless shelters to make people notice that Starbucks does not pay enough tax. \nThe House of Commons questioned Starbucks. They asked why the company paid no corporation tax in the UK during the past three years. \nUK Uncut wants to show a connection between government cuts, especially the cuts that affect women, and multinational businesses who do not pay enough tax. \nSarah Greene, a UK Uncut activist, said money for refuges would be cut if companies did not pay the fair amount of tax. The government lost about \u00a332 billion in 2011 because multinational businesses did not pay enough tax. \nGreene said the government could easily collect billions of pounds that could help pay for important services, if they were stricter when they collect taxes. \nUK Uncut turned its attentions to Starbucks after an investigation found that the company had paid only \u00a38.6 million in corporation tax since opening its caf\u00e9s in the UK in 1998 despite sales worth \u00a33 billion. \nUncut campaigner Anna Walker said \u201cWe\u2019ve chosen to highlight the impact of the cuts on women. So we\u2019re going to focus on changing Starbucks into the services that the government are cutting, for example refuges and cr\u00e8ches. \n\u201cStarbucks is a really great target because it is on every high street in the country so people can take action in their local areas,\u201d she said. \nStarbucks says it pays the correct level of taxes. The group Chief Executive, Howard Schultz, said: \u201cStarbucks has always paid taxes in the UK. \n\u201cOver the last three years alone, our company has paid more than \u00a3160 million in various taxes, including national insurance*, VAT and business rates.\u201d \nApple, eBay, Facebook, Google and Starbucks have avoided nearly \u00a3900 million of tax. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, said: \u201cI\u2019m not happy with the current situation. We need to make sure we continue to encourage these businesses to invest in our country, but they should pay fair taxes as well.\u201d \nA spokeswoman for Starbucks said: \u201cTax law can be extremely complex, but Starbucks respects tax laws and accounting rules. \n\u201cStarbucks spends hundreds of millions of pounds with local suppliers on milk, cakes and sandwiches, and on store design and improvements. When you consider the indirect employment created by Starbucks, the company\u2019s economic impact to the UK economy is more than \u00a380 million every year.\u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Water scientists have given a very strong warning about the world\u2019s food supplies. They say that everyone may have to change to a vegetarian diet by 2050. \nWe believe there will be an extra two billion people in the world by 2050. Humans get about 20% of their protein from animal-based products now, but this may need to decrease to just 5% to feed these extra people, say the world\u2019s top water scientists. \n\u201cThere will not be enough water to produce food for the nine-billion population in 2050 if more people start eating like people in the West,\u201d the report by Malik Falkenmark and colleagues at the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) said. \n\u201cThere will be enough water if the percentage of animal-based foods is limited to 5% of total calories.\u201d \nThere are warnings that water shortages will limit food production. At the same time, Oxfam and the UN prepare for a possible second global food crisis in five years. Prices for food items such as corn and wheat have increased nearly 50% on international markets since June. The price increase has been caused by very bad droughts in the US and Russia, and weak monsoon rains in Asia. More than 18 million people already have serious food shortages across the Sahel. \nOxfam says that the effects of price increases will be very bad in developing countries that need to buy food from other countries, including parts of Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East. \nChanging to a vegetarian diet is one way to keep more water to grow food, the scientists said. \nAnimal protein-rich food uses five to ten times more water than vegetarian food. One third of the world\u2019s farmland is used to grow crops to feed animals. \n\u201cNine hundred million people already don\u2019t have enough food and two million people are malnourished, even though we are producing more food,\u201d they said. \u201c70% of all water is used in farming, and growing more food to feed an extra two billion people by 2050 will put more pressure on water and land.\u201d \nThe report was released at the start of the annual world water conference in Stockholm, Sweden, where 2,500 politicians, UN groups, non-governmental groups and researchers from 120 countries met to discuss global water supply problems. \nEating too much, malnourishment and waste are all increasing. \u201cWe will need a new recipe to feed the world in the future,\u201d said the report\u2019s editor, Anders J\u00e4gerskog.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"If we reduced the amount of food we wasted around the world by just 25%, there would be enough food to feed all the hungry people in the world. Each year, we waste 1.3 billion tonnes of food, about one third of all the food we produce. This includes about 45% of all fruit and vegetables, 35% of fish and seafood, 30% of cereals, 20% of dairy products and 20% of meat. We waste food like this, when, at the same time, 795 million people suffer from hunger.\nThe problem is global but is different in different parts of the world. In developing countries, there is a lot of \u201cfood loss\u201d \u2013 this is when food is lost because of poor equipment, transportation and so on. In rich countries, there are low levels of \u201cfood loss\u201d but high levels of \u201cfood waste\u201d, which means people throw away food because they have bought too much or shops reject food because it doesn\u2019t look good.\nIn developed countries, people and shops throw away between 30% and 40% of all food bought but, in poorer countries, people throw away only 5% to 16%.\n\u201cIn the developing world, there is almost no food waste,\u201d says Robert van Otterdijk, coordinator of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization\u2019s Save Food programme. \u201cFood waste is happening in countries where people have more money, so they can throw away food. But there is a lot of food loss in developing countries because of the poor conditions they have.\u201d\nThe environmental impact of food loss and waste is high. The carbon footprint of food produced and not eaten is 3.3 gigatonnes of CO2. This means that, if food waste were a country, it would produce more greenhouse gases than any country, except the US and China.\n\u201cWe cause the problem of climate change because we produce and use too much \u2013 we are not in balance with what the Earth can provide,\u201d says van Otterdijk. \u201cProduction of food is one of the biggest production sectors in the world. If we waste one-third of all this, you can imagine what a huge effect this has on the natural resources \u2013 on land, water, energy and greenhouse gases.\u201d\nThe US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand produce the most food waste. People in those countries waste 39% of all the food they buy. The next is Europe, where people throw away about 31% of all the food they buy. In the UK, 15 million tonnes of food is lost or wasted each year. British people throw away 4.2 million tonnes of edible food each year. This means that 11.7% of all food people buy is wasted, which costs each family \u00a3700 a year.\nThe foods most often found in British bins are bread, vegetables, fruit and milk. The most wasted food in the UK by weight is bread \u2013 people throw away 414,000 tonnes (22.4%) of all the bread they buy. By percentage, the most wasted food is lettuce and leafy salads \u2013 people throw away 38% (64,000 tonnes) of all they buy.\nThe UK has improved in the past ten years, thanks to a campaign to reduce waste. Van Otterdijk says the UK has been very successful in reducing food waste. Between 2007 and 2012, the amount of food waste produced by UK households decreased by 21%, from 5.3 million tonnes to 4.2 million tonnes.\nVan Otterdijk says that more and more people are interested in food waste and this is great. \u201cWe have to do much more, and companies and governments also need to help,\u201d he says. \u201cBut, if it continues like this, maybe, after ten years, the situation around the world will be better.\u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nThe problem with Google Glasses, says Takahito Iguchi, is that theyre not cool. He may be right. Theres already a website dedicated to people wearing them looking either ridiculous or smug or, more often, both. Search Google Images and one of the first hits is a picture of a large, naked man wearing them in the shower. And its this that Iguchi, a Japanese entrepreneur, hopes may be Googles Achilles heel. He is launching a competitor that is a bit more stylish. A bit more Blade Runner. A bit more Japanese.\nIguchis augmented reality glasses arent really glasses  they are more a single piece of metal with a camera and a tiny projector. They are called Telepathy One and, since they were presented to the public for the first time in Austin, Texas, they have attracted $5m of venture capital. Like Glass, Telepathy One is due to launch in 2014.\nIts a simplified version of Google Glass. Glass has a range of uses  you can surf the internet, read emails, take photographs  but Telepathy will be more of a communication device. Connected via Bluetooth to your phone, it will focus on real-time visual and audio sharing. Youll be able to post photos and videos from your line of vision on Facebook or send them as an email, or see and speak to a video image of a friend.\nIt will help bring you close to your friends and family. We are very focused on the communication and sharing possibilities, says Iguchi, who has worked in the Japanese technology industry for 20 years.\nOf course, not everyone wants to get closer to the man in the futuristic headset, I tell him. Iguchi shakes his head. Im a visionary. I have a dream that people will understand other people. When I go to London, I am a stranger. Sometimes I feel fear. But I believe that everyone wants to be understood and to understand each other. And, with this device, you can know more information about people before you even speak to them.\nCompared to Google, Telepathy is a minnow, but Iguchi doesnt seem to worry. In his shared office space in San Francisco  a cool, converted warehouse  he quotes Sun Tzus The Art of War and says that even tiny armies can sometimes beat powerful forces. When he was growing up, Japanese technology ruled the world: the Sony Walkman was the iPhone of its day. Now, to compete, hes had to leave Tokyo and go to Silicon Valley.\nTokyo is very rich in fashion and culture but its still an island. Its isolated. There is not any way to expand. Whereas, in Silicon Valley, everyone is from everywhere. Its where you come to connect globally. The hardware will be made in Japan, and he is putting together a team of software engineers in the US to develop its applications.\nBuilding the prototype of Telepathy One was easy, Iguchi says. We have every sort of technology in Tokyo. It is presenting it to the world that is the challenge. The top manufacturers all want to work with him, he says, because they have the technology, they just struggle to sell it. There needs to be a story to the product. Like Apple did with the iPod  1,000 songs in your pocket. And Steve Jobs was inspired by Akio Morita, the co-founder of Sony, and he inspired me, so maybe it will come in a circle.\nMaybe. He certainly has the confidence of Jobs, but, with a thick Japanese accent, he sometimes struggles to make himself understood, a fact that may have contributed to his idea for Telepathy One. When he went to London to present the headset, he stayed in an Airbnb. The house owner was not my friend but I talked with him for three hours, and now he is my friend. That is how long it takes to understand each other, to share our feelings, and background, and career. Maybe Telepathy makes that quicker. If you are getting info from the cloud and social networks, that will happen more easily.\nIguchi hopes that seeing somebody elses I suddenly realized that everything is code. Everything is coded and is shareable between humans. And everything can be encoded and decoded. And, if code is exchangeable between humans, that will end all war. literal point of view will help you to see their metaphorical point of view. As a student, he explains, he studied philosophy by day and taught himself how to code by night. And, one day, I opened the door of my apartment and","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nWhen two people from the Marshall Islands saw a small fibreglass boat washed up on the beach of a remote Pacific island, they decided to take a closer look. Inside the boat, they found an emaciated man with long hair and a beard, who said he had been drifting for 16 months after setting out from Mexico, more than 12,500km away.\nThe man, dressed only in a 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 before, he said.\nHis condition isnt good, but hes getting better, said Ola Fjeldstad, a Norwegian anthropology student doing research on Ebon Island, one of the Marshall Islands. The man said his name was Jos Ivan and that he survived by catching turtles and birds with his bare hands. There was no fishing equipment on the boat, but a turtle was inside when it washed up. The boat looks like it has been in the water for a long time, Fjeldstad told reporters.\nAccording to Fjeldstad, the islanders who found the man took him to a nearby island  which is so remote it has only one phone line and no internet  to meet the mayor, Ione de Brum. The mayor contacted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Majuro, the Marshall Islands capital. Officials at the ministry said that they were waiting for more details and expected the man to be taken to the capital.\nOfficials are considering sending a boat to pick up the castaway. Hes 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. Weve been giving him a lot of water and hes gaining strength.\nFraser Christian, who teaches maritime survival courses, said the mans story, if true, would be remarkable but not unique. It was 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 people who are forced to eat turtles to start with their eyes  lots of fluid  then move on to the blood.\nThe major dangers castaways experience are 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 doesnt rain for a few days, so you cant collect rainwater, you have basically had it. Individual physiology was also important, with some people more able to survive than others.\nStories 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 said they had survived for nine months at sea on a diet of rainwater, raw fish and seabirds. But Cliff Downing, who teaches sea survival to sailors, said he was sceptical about the latest tale. It just doesnt sound right to me. There are 1,001 hazards that would make his survival for so long very unlikely.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Male bosses are being paid bonuses double the size of those given to female colleagues in identical jobs \u2013 a disparity that means men enjoy salary top-ups of \u00a3141,500 more than women over the course of a working lifetime. \nThe figures, released by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), reveal that men in UK management roles earned average bonuses of \u00a36,442 in 2012 compared with \u00a33,029 for women. In the most senior roles, female directors received bonuses of \u00a336,270 over the past 12 months, compared with \u00a363,700 awarded to male directors. \nThe latest figures highlighting the inequitable nature of pay in British business led to calls for action from campaigners on workplace equality. Ann Francke, the CMI\u2019s chief executive, said: \u201cIt\u2019s time to move this issue into the mainstream management agenda. \n\u201cThis is about changing our approach to management to allow for greater flexibility, less masculine cultures, more emphasis on outcomes rather than time in the office and greater transparency around performance and rewards. \u201cIn solving this issue, we would actually raise the performance of organizations and the well-being of individuals at work. What are we waiting for?\u201d Dr Ruth Sealy, a senior research fellow at Cranfield School of Management, added: \u201cIt is not surprising. Bonuses are a method of payment that can be used with discretion. As to what should be done about it, these things should be made more transparent.\u201d \nWhile statisticians warned that some of the data may be skewed by factors such as women entering occupations where there is less of a culture of bonus payments, the discrepancies in the sizes of awards do appear to be aggravating Britain\u2019s pay gap, which the government says is closing but still sees full-time male employees earn 10% more than women. \nMaria Miller, the Minister for Women and Equalities, said: \u201cThe CMI figures are yet another damaging example highlighting that, in the world of work, women still lose out to their male counterparts and that the playing field is far from level. \u201cChanges in the workplace are happening and it\u2019s good that the pay gap is closing \u2013 but there is still more to do before we see full equality in the workplace. \n\u201cThe government is playing its part: we have made pay secrecy clauses illegal, given tribunals the power to force employers who break equal pay laws to carry out equal pay audits and signed 120 companies up to our Think, Act, Report scheme, which encourages companies to improve the way they recruit, promote and pay women. \u201cWe\u2019ve also looked at other pay gap causes, such as having to juggle work and family responsibilities, by introducing shared parental leave and the right to request flexible working to all employees.\u201d \nLarge companies such as Tesco, BT, Unilever and the international law firm Eversheds are among those signed up to Think, Act, Report. The scheme has only attracted 120 supporters in nearly two years of existence, having risen from 54 participants in November 2012. However, the CMI\u2019s data did provide some evidence to support Miller\u2019s contention that the overall pay gap is narrowing: the difference between the average salaries earned by male and female bosses has appeared to shrink, decreasing from an average of \u00a310,060 in 2012 to \u00a38,502 in the CMI\u2019s most recent figures. However, the institute cautioned against direct comparisons between the 2012 and 2013 samples \u2013 which both polled around 40,000 managers \u2013 as they are not identical. \nA sub-set of 17,000 individual managers, whose salaries and bonuses have been tracked over a number of years, showed that male managers\u2019 earnings are rising faster than women\u2019s for the first time in five years, with men enjoying total increases of 3.2% compared with 2.8% for women, when salaries and bonuses are combined. \nAt the most senior level, male directors\u2019 earnings rose by 5.3% over the past 12 months, compared with just 1.1% for female directors.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Maria is sitting on a black plastic chair in a community centre on a cold Tuesday afternoon waiting for her number to be called. She is number 34. \nWhen it\u2019s her turn, Maria is called forward to pick up a brown paper bag filled with essentials including pasta, eggs and cornflakes, and is invited to choose between butternut squash or carrots as this week\u2019s vegetables. \nMaria is the 34th \u201cclient\u201d so far today at East Hampton Food Pantry, a community initiative set up just streets away from some of the most expensive and exclusive properties in the world. By the end of the day, the food pantry\u2019s organizers expect more than 400 families to have followed Maria through the doors to collect their weekly food parcel to help them get through the cold, dark Long Island winter. \nIn the summertime, the Hamptons, a collection of historic oceanfront towns and villages 100 miles from Manhattan, is a billionaires\u2019 playground. But, come Labor Day in early September, when the rich and famous shut up their mansions and head back to Manhattan or Beverly Hills, the glitz gives way to the gritty reality of life for the mostly immigrant community who live here all year. \u201cThe people who come here are rich and famous but we who live here are not,\u201d says Maria, who works 14-hour days in the summer cleaning mansions but goes months without any work at all in the winter. \nMaria laughs when asked if she has enough money. \u201cThere is no work in the winter, only in the summertime,\u201d says Maria, who, like many of the workers in the Hamptons, is from Latin America. \u201cHere, lots of people live in a single room because they can\u2019t pay the rent.\u201d \nShe says some families with up to five children are crammed into basements and still pay more than $1,000 a month in rent. \u201cPeople come here looking for work but, in the winter, there is nothing.\u201d \nLots of her friends can\u2019t pay for heating or medication and many would go hungry if it were not for the East Hampton Food Pantry, she says, which is just one of several food pantries in the town. \nVicki Littman, chairperson of the East Hampton Food Pantry, which provided more than 31,000 food parcels in 2015, says the number of people seeking out the food pantry is ever increasing. \u201cOnce Labor Day comes and the season is over and people\u2019s hours start to be cut back, our numbers go up to about 400 families a week,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen they come to us on Tuesday, they get two to three days\u2019 worth of food. Without us, they would struggle that much more.\u201d Littman says it can be hard for outsiders to realize that there are people struggling to get by in a place known the world over for its excess. \n\u201cWhen I discuss with the summer community that comes out here about the food pantries, they\u2019re always shocked because there is that glamorous side of the Hamptons where there are galas and the beaches and the mansions that are here. \u201cBut, what people don\u2019t realize is that there is that service industry. It\u2019s the landscapers, the nannies, the waitresses \u2013 they are all relying on that summer income to get them through the winter but people don\u2019t see that when they\u2019re coming out on holiday. \n\u201cThere are seniors who have to sometimes pick between whether they are going to pay for their medications or pay their bills or buy food, and that shouldn\u2019t be the case.\u201d \nLittman says the town has lost too many people working key jobs \u2013 such as teachers, police officers and even doctors and dentists \u2013 because they can\u2019t afford to live in the community and the food pantry board is determined to do more to ensure people have a better shot at staying put. Housing is, by far, the biggest cost in the Hamptons. At $147m, the nation\u2019s most expensive property is hedge fund manager Barry Rosenstein\u2019s 18-acre beachfront estate at 67 Further Lane, a stone\u2019s throw from Maidstone Golf Club, which is considered \u201cthe most elite, prestigious and difficult to get into\u201d of all the Hamptons clubs. \nLarry Cantwell, East Hampton\u2019s town supervisor and lifelong resident, says homes regularly change hands at more than $25m and the rapid price inflation at the top end has trickled down to even the town\u2019s most modest flats. \n\u201cFinding your first home is a challenge in an area like this,\u201d Cantwell says. \u201cNot just people who you would characterize as poor \u2013 working- and middle-class families are also having a hard time. If you can find a home to buy anywhere in East Hampton for $500,000, you\u2019re very lucky.\u201d Cantwell says more than half the town\u2019s homes are empty for most of the year, which causes the population to dwindle to as little as 10,000 in the winter months compared with 80,000 in August. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of the tale of two cities. There\u2019s certainly a lot of wealth here but almost all of that wealth is in second homes only used in the summer,\u201d says Cantwell, the son of a fisherman father and a house-cleaner mother. \u201cBut, the rest of us live here year round. \n\u201cThere are famous and very wealthy people but then you have hard-working and poor people struggling to get by. You\u2019ve got to remember that this community was founded as a farming and fishing community of people who lived off the land and the water \u2013 a real working-class community.\u201d \nCantwell says saving up enough money to buy your first house while working as a farmer or fisherman is near-impossible in East Hampton today \u201cand it\u2019s not just the poor \u2013 police officers, teachers, young professionals and others all struggle to find a place to live here and many of them cannot afford to own their own home.\u201d \nBeing homeless in the Hamptons means spending a lot of time on a bus. Various houses of worship have joined together to ensure there is somewhere for the homeless to spend the night over the winter. Churches up and down the north and south fork of Long Island take on the burden one night at a time and roughly 50 homeless people are bussed between them every day. Eddie Vallone, 22, is one of those on the bus every night. \u201cPeople look at the Hamptons as some sort of rich town and there\u2019s no problems going on. But there are a lot of problems here, especially drugs. \n\u201cIt\u2019s hard to really grasp \u2013'OK, the summer is coming to an end. What am I going to do for the winter?'\u201d Vallone says at Maureen\u2019s Haven, a charity that coordinates the homeless shelter programme. \u201cI want to work but there\u2019s no work to be done.\u201d \nVallone, who works cleaning pools and doing odd jobs on luxury estates, says that, if he saves well and doesn\u2019t impulse-buy, he can make his summer earnings stretch out until November. \u201cBut, work doesn\u2019t start again until May or the beginning of June.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Robert Mys\u0142ajek stops dead. Between two paw prints on a muddy mountain track, the scientist finds what he is looking for. \u201cDroppings!\u201d he enthuses. Wolf sightings are so rare that the sighting of their faeces marks a good day, even for a seasoned tracker. \nBut it is getting easier. There are now an estimated 1,500 wolves in Poland. The number has doubled in 15 years. Wolves are \u2013 along with the brown bear, the lynx and the wolverine \u2013 Europe\u2019s last large predator carnivores. Conservationists from Britain, Germany and the Netherlands are beating a path here to find out how the country has saved this protected species, slandered even in fairy tales. \nBits of bone and hair protrude from the precious black faeces. \u201cIt ate a red deer,\u201d says the University of Warsaw biologist. \u201cIn my lab, I can tell you all about this wolf \u2013 not only its diet but its gender, sexual habits, age, state of health and family connections.\u201d \nDNA tests have established that Polish wolves are travellers. \u201cOne wolf reached the Netherlands, where unfortunately it was hit by a car. They have a tremendous range. They need space. The average territory required by a Polish pack is 250 sq km,\u201d said Mys\u0142ajek. \n\u201cIs there any prospect of our ever being able to reintroduce wolves to Scotland?\u201d asks student Alex Entwisle, 23, on a field trip to southern Poland from his college in the UK. The animal science students have spent the day observing droppings and paw prints in the spruce-clad Beskidy mountains of the Polish Carpathians. \nTheir hot discussion topic is whether to reintroduce wolves to the British Isles for the first time since the 18th century. \nAs the guest of a British charity, the Wolves and Humans Foundation, Mys\u0142ajek toured the Scottish Highlands in 2015 and took questions from villagers about the Polish experience. \u201cThe big difference between Scotland and Poland is that we eat pork. We do not have many sheep here. \n\u201cThe similarity is that we have a lot of animals \u2013 300,000 red deer and more than 800,000 roe deer. In Poland, we also have a massive overpopulation of wild boar \u2013 about 200,000 \u2013 and these are ravaging farmers\u2019 cereal crops. Here, wolves are part of the solution,\u201d he says. \nThe scientist, who is a familiar face on Polish television, says wolves are exceptional animals that are capable of moving up to 30km during a single hunt. \u201cThe Beskidy pack is a strong unit, eight or nine individuals. This year, we have recorded five cubs, two yearlings and two adults. \n\u201cWe track them using motion-activated cameras in the forest and by following their prints in the mud and snow. In each family group, only one pair reproduces, once a year. All pack members care for the young with solidarity and devotion.\u201d \nMys \u0142ajek, the son of a shepherd, is puzzled by wolves\u2019 bad reputation. \u201cWhy does one speak of a 'lone-wolf gunman'? Why did we have to have Little Red Riding Hood?\" \nHe is fascinated by these aloof canines who remained in the wild 33,000 years ago when others decided on a much more comfortable existence as domestic dogs. \nWolves are not pooches. Mys\u0142ajek says only scientific arguments \u2013 the need to regenerate forests and control the wild animal population \u2013 can save Europe\u2019s wild carnivores, especially the unpopular wolf. \u201cNatural predators balance the ecosystem. They keep herbivores in check, thus allowing trees to grow tall for birds to nest in.\u201d \nShoot the deer? \u201cIt is only a partial solution,\u201d he says. \u201cIn a diverse environment, you have the so-called 'landscape of fear', where herbivores no longer spend all day grazing on the tender riverside grass. They move away, as a precaution, to avoid being trapped by a predator. This gives the vegetation a chance.\u201d \nThe ban on wolf hunting in the western Carpathians came into force in 1995 and nationwide in Poland in 1998. There are now resident packs in virtually all the country\u2019s major forests. The predators coexist with humans rather than being fenced off, as they are in African safari parks. \nThe Polish government pays compensation for livestock killed by wolves. Mys\u0142ajek advises farmers on erecting electric fences. He has helped revive the use of two deterrents that, for reasons no one quite understands, wolves find particularly scary: red bunting (hung around sheep pens) and the bark of the fluffy white Tatra Mountain Sheepdog. \nThe survival and mobility of Poland\u2019s wolves has been helped by the country\u2019s belated infrastructure development. In 1989, when the communists relinquished power, Poland had only one motorway. Major road projects \u2013 requiring wildlife impact studies \u2013 began after Poland joined the European Union in 2004. The country now has one of the highest densities in the world of overhead crossings and underpasses for wild animals. \nAttitudes have also changed. \u201cFor many years, hunting was cultural. In 1975, there were fewer than 100 wolves in Poland. Beginning in the 1950s, hunting wolves had been encouraged by the authorities. They paid a reward for killing a wolf worth a month\u2019s salary. It was carnage.\u201d \nMys\u0142ajek says the improvement in Polish wolves\u2019 survival chances has been considerable but remains fragile. Packs are mobile across borders and hunting still goes on in neighbouring Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Slovakia. \nHe claims Poland\u2019s new government, elected in October 2015, is hostile to wolves. \u201cThe Environment Minister, Jan Szyszko, makes no secret of being a hunter. There are 120,000 licensed hunters in Poland and they are influential in parliament. \n\u201cThe hunters claim wolves are a pest and that there are 4,000 of them in Poland, which is a spurious figure based on an unscientific count. This government is capable of turning back the clock.\u201d \nBeing a wolf advocate is not easy. \u201cIt is not as if you can argue to the politicians that wolves are a big tourist attraction. Most tourists want to see the animals but wolves stay away from humans. They have a tremendously sensitive sense of smell.\u201d \nThe 12 British animal science students leave the Polish Carpathians without a wolf sighting; just photographs of paw prints and droppings. Entwisle is convinced that Scotland will never be able to match Poland\u2019s success. \n\u201cIt would be amazing for the environment to have them back because of the problem of too many deer. But it would just not be viable because of the roads and sheep. \n\u201cThere would be problems with farmers. We had our industrial revolution too long ago. We ruined it for ourselves. In Britain, we like predators to be far away and to watch them on television, said Entwisle.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nJMW Turner, one of Britains greatest painters, will appear on the new 20 note, after a nationwide vote.\nIt will be the first time an artist has appeared on a British banknote, after the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, asked the public to choose a deceased cultural figure they felt deserved to be on the banknote.\nTurner, who is famous for his dramatic seascapes, beat off competition from 590 painters, sculptors, fashion designers, photographers, film-makers and actors put forward by 30,000 members of the public.\nThe list included Alfred Hitchcock, Alexander McQueen, Derek Jarman, Laura Ashley, William Morris and Vanessa Bell. This list was narrowed down to a final choice of five by a panel of artists, critics and historians.\nThe final five  Barbara Hepworth, Charlie Chaplin, Josiah Wedgwood, William Hogarth and Turner  were chosen because of their unquestioned contribution to both the visual arts and British society, as well as their enduring influence.\nThe announcement of the new banknote was made at the Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate. The announcement was made jointly by Carney and the artist Tracey Emin, who grew up in the town.\nCarney said it had been so important to get this right and have a proper process that involved the public. He added that banknotes are not only a practical necessity  they can be a piece of art in everyones pocket.\nThe fact that we will have Turner on the 20 note shows that the British people are a nation of people who appreciate creativity and appreciate the arts, said Emin.\nThe note will show Turners 1799 self-portrait, as well as one of his most famous works, The Fighting Temeraire, the ship that played an important role in Nelsons victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.\nThe note will also contain a quote from the artist  light is therefore colour  as well as his signature. The signature is from his will, in which he left many of his paintings to the nation.\nHistorical figures were first shown on banknotes in 1970. Turner joins Winston Churchill and Jane Austen as the significant figures who will feature on the new polymer notes  a plastic-type material  Churchill on the 5 and Austen on the 10 note. The new 20 note will be available by 2020.\nTurner was born in 1775 in London, the son of a barber, and he entered the Royal Academy Schools at the age of 14. In 1786, when he was sent to Margate, his love of painting and drawing the north-east Kent coast began. He returned to that coast throughout his life and it was where he painted some of his most dramatic oils and watercolours. He described its skies as the loveliest in all Europe.\nTurner was a very prolific artist  he produced more than 550 oil paintings and 2,000 watercolours in his lifetime. His life was also the subject of a film, in 2014, by Mike Leigh, with Timothy Spall as the artist.\nVictoria Pomery, the director of Turner Contemporary, said: The decision to celebrate JMW Turner, one of the greatest technical pioneers in the history of British art, is extraordinary. It has proven that Turner is the nations favourite artist.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"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 perhaps not surprising that England fan Anthony McDowell from Liverpool was having none of the doom and gloom that preceded some of the build-up to the tournament in Brazil. \u201cThe place is lovely. The people are great. There\u2019s a party atmosphere,\u201d said McDowell. \u201cThe only thing that could be better is the England team.\u201d\nHe and half a dozen friends are among the multitudes of supporters from around the world who have made the beachfront into a party zone of national colours and chants. Some danced, some posed for photos, some drank, but mostly they just walked and talked football, waiting for the next game to begin on the nearby FanFest big screen. The last time there were so many people here during the daytime, the pope was visiting.\nThe cheerful, largely peaceful mood was far from the protests, transport chaos and stadium problems that plagued preparations for the World Cup. But, now the football is well and truly under way, visiting supporters are determined to enjoy the experience. \u201cIf I had known, when I started planning, how complicated and costly it would be, I wouldn\u2019t have come. But, now that we\u2019re here, it\u2019s great,\u201d said Brian Hill, a retired chief executive from Sunderland.\nThe trip has not been problem free. Hill travelled for more than 20 hours to get to Rio, then hit long delays on the road from the airport at 6.30am. His son, Andrew, had his sunglasses stolen almost as soon as he sat on the beach. And, they have been surprised that many bars are not set up with big screens for the games. But, like many fans, they said they loved the atmosphere, if not the logistics, of this tournament which has got off to a spectacular start on the pitch.\nEven the surliest cynic cannot have failed to be thrilled by Robin van Persie\u2019s extraordinary diving header for the Netherlands against Spain. Elsewhere, there has been a glut of goals: 28 in the first eight games \u2013 almost three times as many as at the same stage in South Africa in 2010. Adding to the carnival mood on the streets, where the majority of fans are from neighbouring nations, Latin-American teams won in every game they played up until the time of writing.\nSo far, the tournament has avoided the worst Doomsday scenarios, though it is far from trouble free. The stadiums may have been delivered late and \u2013 in some cases \u2013 not fully finished, but there have been no reports of structural problems or difficulties entering the grounds since the kick off.\nAs at previous World Cups, ticketing has been a problem, with many empty seats at several games, including the Netherlands against Spain. FIFA spokesman Saint-Clair Milesi confirmed that only 48,000 of the 51,900 seats at the ground were filled. FIFA is also investigating security lapses that allowed Chilean fans to let off fireworks during their victory over Australia.\nThe Globo newspaper listed a number of shortcomings in the 12 host cities. Almost all suffered worse traffic congestion than usual. The worst transport problems were in Natal, where bus drivers have been on strike since 12 June. In Salvador, some journey times were five times longer than usual. \u201cTraffic was already bad but this week it is chaotic,\u201d Jecilda Mello, president of residents\u2019 group the Association of Friends of the Historic Centre, told the paper.\nBut, protests have diminished since the opening day, when small demonstrations took place in several cities, prompting police to use tear gas and pepper spray. Since then, the only security threat has been petty theft and overexcited fans. A spontaneous street party of Argentinian fans was dispersed with pepper spray after the fans blocked roads.\nThe huge distances have led to some sharply contrasting World Cup experiences. The tournament has made only a small mark on S\u00e3o Paulo, South America\u2019s most populous city, but, far away in Manaus \u2013 the remote Amazonian city where England played Italy \u2013 visitors said World Cup fever was in full swing with brightly decorated streets and flags fluttering on many cars.\nThe FA chairman, Greg Dyke, said the shift in mood was palpable. \u201cWe've had a really warm welcome in Manaus. It\u2019s a big thing for them, even if it is a bit strange to spend so much on a stadium with no one to play in it. But we were in S\u00e3o Paulo for four or five days in the run-up to the opening match and you wouldn\u2019t have known until the last day that there was even a World Cup on. It was weird.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nValdevaqueros is one of the last unspoilt beaches in southern Spain. Currently the beach just has an access road filled with camper vans from Germany, France, Italy and Britain, which bring windsurfers and kitesurfers who are attracted by the strong winds in the area.\nFor years it has been very different from the concrete-lined beaches of Torremolinos and Marbella along the coast, but earlier in 2012 the local council in Tarifa said yes to plans to build a tourist complex next to the beach. Environmental and conservation groups have protested that the project will harm the habitats of protected species, but for most of the council the issue is simple: jobs. Tarifa has 18,000 inhabitants and 2,600 are unemployed as Spain experiences its worst economic crisis in at least half a century.\nTraditional jobs such as fishing are dying out so tourism is the only solution, but it must be sustainable, said Sebastin Galindo, a councillor from the Socialist party, which is in opposition in Tarifa but voted with the governing Peoples Party support the project. Galindo says the complex meets environmental standards. There is a law that was designed to stop more ugly developments like those that spoilt a lot of Spains beaches when mass tourism first arrived in the 1960s and 1970s. This law says that the complex must be at least 200 metres from the coast; it will be much farther than that  it will be 800 metres.\nOpponents of the complex say more housing is not needed in a country that already has a million empty homes. The Socialist opposition in Madrid attacked the idea, and Galindo said it discriminated against migrant workers who came to Spain during the boom years, many of them from Morocco, whose coastline is just 14km away and can be seen from Tarifa.\nSurfers fear that new buildings in Valdevaqueros would reduce the strength of the famous local wind but fail to attract traditional package holidaymakers. Its not really a family spot. Just wait until they see what the wind is like, said Henning Mayer, who has come here from Germany every year for 20 years. Ten years ago they said they would build a new highway here. It didnt happen, so I think it will be impossible to build new hotels.\nAt the southernmost point of Spain, Tarifa is where Africa and Europe meet, where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic. Campaigners say it also has a vital role for migrating animals.\nThe campaign to save the beach was launched hours after the Tarifa council voted for the project. The campaign has a Facebook page and is supported by groups including Greenpeace, the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Spanish branch of conservation network Birdlife. Also joining the opposition to the project is the Andalusian College of Geographers, which says that the site would disturb two wildlife conservation areas and cross the border of a national park.\nMoney is once again more important than urban laws and European environmental directives, said Ral Romeva, a member of the European Parliament. In Romevas view, another problem with the project is that the site has too little water in a town that already suffers from shortages in the hot summer weather of Andalusa.\nMany locals are also wondering why a resort should be built 10km away, and not on wasteland near Tarifas picturesque old centre, with its typically Andalusian white walls and small streets, dominated by a 10th-century Moorish castle. We agree with the complex as long as it creates jobs in the town, but we are against it if it only benefits a few, said Cristbal Lobato, who has worked at the same beachside bar in Tarifa for 30 years. If they put it in the centre of Tarifa, where there is space, then clients could visit shops, tapas bars and restaurants.\nOverlooking the green fields where the resort will be built, biologist Aitor Galn said, Anywhere else in Europe, this place would have the utmost protection, but here they want to get rid of it all and cover it with buildings. What they want to do is turn this into Benidorm, but what attracts people here is wildlife and the wind. But by taking advantage of the current crisis and unemployment, builders and mayors who agree with them can justify any amount of destruction.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nThe vice-president of Google has warned that piles of digitized material  blogs, tweets, pictures, videos and official documents such as court rulings and emails  could be lost forever because the programs we need to view them will become defunct. Our first steps into the digital world could be lost to future historians, Vint Cerf told the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences annual meeting. He warned that we faced a forgotten generation or even a forgotten century because of what he called bit rot, where old computer files become useless junk.\nCerf says we need to develop digital methods to preserve old software and hardware so that out-of-date files can be recovered even if they are really old. When you think about the quantity of documentation from our daily lives that is captured in digital form, like our interactions by email, peoples tweets and all of the world wide web, its clear that we could lose an awful lot of our history, he said. We dont want our digital lives to fade away. If we want to preserve them, we need to make sure that the digital objects we create today can still be viewed far into the future, he added.\nWhat is bit rot and is Vint Cerf right to be worried? Accessing digital content in the future could be less of a problem than Cerf thinks. His warning highlights an irony at the heart of modern technology, where music, photos, letters and other documents are digitized in order to ensure their long-term survival. But, while researchers are making progress in storing digital files for centuries, the programs and hardware needed to read the files are continually falling out of use.\nWe are throwing all of our data into what could become an information black hole without realizing it. We digitize things because we think we will preserve them. But what we dont understand is that, unless we take other steps, those digital versions may not be any better, and may even be worse, than the artefacts that we digitized, Cerf says. If there are photos you really care about, print them out.\nAncient civilizations did not have these problems because histories written on clay tablets or sheets of papyrus needed only eyes to read them. To study todays culture, future scholars would be faced with PDFs, Word documents and hundreds of other file types that can only be interpreted with special software and sometimes hardware, too.\nThe problem is already here. In the 1980s, it was routine to save documents on floppy disks and buy computer games on cassettes. Even if the disks and cassettes are in good condition, the equipment needed to run them is now mostly found only in museums.\nCerf warns that important political and historical documents will also be lost to bit rot. In 2005, American historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote Team of Rivals: the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. She went to libraries around the US, found the physical letters of the people involved and reconstructed their conversations. In todays world, those letters would be emails and the chances of finding them will be incredibly small one hundred years from now, said Cerf.\nHe concedes that historians will take steps to preserve material considered important by todays standards. But he argues that the significance of documents and correspondence is often not fully appreciated until hundreds of years later. Historians have learned how Archimedes, the greatest mathematician of antiquity, considered the concept of infinity and anticipated calculus in 3BC after his writings were found hidden under the words of a thirteenth-century prayer book. Weve been surprised by what weve learned about an earlier civilizations from objects that have been preserved only by chance, he said.\nResearchers in Pittsburgh have made progress towards finding a solution to bit rot. Digital snapshots of computer hard drives are taken while they run different software programs. These can then be uploaded to a computer that copies the one the software ran on. The result is a computer that can read defunct files.\nInventing new technology is only half the battle, though. It could be even more difficult to obtain the legal permissions to copy and store software before it dies. When IT companies go out of business, they may sell the rights to someone else, which makes it very difficult to get approval. To do this properly, the rights of preservation might need to be incorporated into our thinking about things like copyright and patents and licensing. Were talking about preserving them for hundreds to thousands of years, said Cerf.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"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. \nThat 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 \u2013 from a renewed focus on diet to tackling alcohol to keeping up the efforts against HIV in Africa. \nThe 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 \u2013 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 \u2013 twice as many as previously thought. The big increase is in adult deaths. Conventional wisdom has it that malaria kills mostly children under five. \n\u201cThe way I was taught as a doctor and everybody else is taught is that, in malarial areas, you become semi-immune as an adult,\u201d said Dr Christopher Murray, IHME Director and one of the founders of the Global Burden of Disease project. \u201cWe 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.\u201d But, he adds, their fever could be something else. The findings have prompted further studies. \nAlthough Margaret Chan, Director General of the World Health Organization, gave the IHME study a warm official welcome, some of the staff are cautious. \u201cWe need to be very careful in assessing the validity [of the figures],\u201d said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist in the Evidence for Information and Policy Cluster. \u201cWe need to wait to be persuaded by evidence.\u201d His colleague Dr Tiers Boerma, Director of the WHO Department of Health Statistics and Informatics, added: \u201cPeople should understand that some of the numbers are very different and the WHO can\u2019t jump with any academic publication that states a different number.\u201d However, said Mathers, \u201cthe fact that IHME has pushed the envelope with some of these analyses is stimulating\u201d. One of the main themes, said Murray, was \u201cincredibly rapid change in the leading causes of death and the pace of that change is a lot faster than we expected it to be\u201d. \nReduced fertility and longer life expectancies have meant a rise in the mean age of the world\u2019s 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. \u201cIn a place like Brazil, the speed of change is so fast that most institutions are ill-equipped to deal with it,\u201d Murray said. \nThe 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 \u201clifestyle\u201d diseases, such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer \u2013 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. \nThe third big finding was, Murray said, \u201ca surprise to us\u201d. That was the sheer extent of disability and the toll it took on people who were living longer but not healthier lives. \u201cThe main causes of disability are different from the ones that kill you,\u201d he said. They were mental health problems such as anxiety and depression, musculoskeletal disorders such as arthritis and lower back pain \u2013 complained of in every country in the world \u2013 anaemia, sight and hearing loss and skin disease. In addition, there was substance abuse. \u201cThe rates for these are not going down over time,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are making no progress in reducing these conditions.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Benjamin Carle is 96.9% made in France, even his underpants and socks. Six Ikea forks, a Chinese guitar and some wall paint stopped him being called 100% French, but nobody is perfect.\nCarle, 26, decided, in 2013, to see if it was possible to live using only French-made products for ten months as part of a television documentary. \nHe got the idea after the Minister for Economic Renewal, Arnaud Montebourg, asked the French people to buy French products.\nFor the experiment, Carle had to give up his smartphone, television, refrigerator (all made in China); his glasses (Italian); his morning coffee (Guatemalan) and his favourite David Bowie music (British).\nIt is lucky that his girlfriend, Ana\u00efs, and cat, Loon, are both French, so he didn\u2019t have to give them up.\n\u201cI wanted to see if it was possible to do what the minister was asking us to do,\u201d Carle said.\nHe had just three rules: eat only food made in France, not have any contact with foreign-made products and to do it all on \u20ac1,800 a month (above the minimum wage of \u20ac1,430 to cover the extra cost of living in Paris).\nThe journalist was shocked to find out at the start of the experiment that only 4.5% of the things in his flat were made in France. Everything not made in France had to go, including the lightbulbs (China) and green beans (Kenya).\nWithout a refrigerator (none are made in France), he had to chill his food on the window ledge.\nHis foreign-made clothes, including his underwear, were replaced with more expensive alternatives: French-produced underpants (\u20ac26), socks (\u20ac9), polo shirt (\u20ac75), espadrille sandals (\u20ac26), but no jeans because none are produced in France.\nGoing out with friends was a problem \u2013 no American films, no Belgian beer, no sushi or pizza. When he stayed home, with no sofa for the first few months and no television, he listened to French singer Michel Sardou and read French novels. French wine was, of course, allowed and French-Canadian singer C\u00e9line Dion, but not French bands such as Daft Punk, who sing in English.\nHe could not use his British-made bicycle or even a French car because he discovered that the only affordable Peugeot, Renault and Citro\u00ebn cars are not made in France. So, he bought an orange Mobylette moped.\nHis computer was replaced by a Qooq, a tablet that connects \u2013 slowly \u2013 to the internet and the iPhone, which he swapped for an old Sagem mobile.\nCarle said his aim was to \u201csave the French economy\u201d. He said the experiment was part serious and part fun. He even asked a French language expert to check if he should use the word \u201ccool\u201d and other English words \u2013 the expert told him swap it for the nearest French alternative: \u201cchouette\u201d.\nAt the end of the experiment, a special \u201cauditor\u201d said Carle was 96.9% \u201cmade in France\u201d and Montebourg gave him a medal.\nCarle\u2019s conclusion: \u201cIt\u2019s not entirely possible to live 100% \u2018made in France\u2019, particularly in terms of new technology.\n\u201cThis wasn\u2019t about French nationalism or patriotism. It was trying to show that we should think about the way we buy and make different choices, and that is the same in all countries. If we want to save jobs and industries, we should support them.\n\u201cA T-shirt is more expensive in France but I can be sure it has been made by workers who are correctly paid and have good working conditions. I cannot be sure about a cheaper T-shirt produced in Asia or Morocco. People could do more as consumers.\u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"A menu scandal at some of Japan\u2019s top hotels and department stores is damaging the international reputation of Japanese food. \nOne luxury hotel group admitted that it lied about ingredients on its menus. Since then, there have been similar stories from restaurants run by famous hotels and department stores in Japan. \nThe story began when the Hankyu-Hanshin hotel group admitted that it gave false descriptions of menu items at some of its restaurants between 2006 and October 2013. \nFor example, the red salmon 'caviar' that customers ordered was in fact the eggs of the flying fish. \nThe hotel group\u2019s president, Hiroshi Desaki, went on television to announce a 20% pay cut for himself and 10% for other executives. But this did not make customers less angry. \nDays later, Desaki resigned \u2013 he said that the hotel group had betrayed their customers.  \nSo far, the company has refunded 20 million yen to more than 10,000 consumers. In total, they will refund 110 million yen. \nCustomers who believed they ate expensive kuruma shrimps were told they in fact ate much cheaper black tiger shrimps. \nThe scandal started when a customer complained in a blogpost that a 'scallop' dish he ordered at the Prince Hotel in Tokyo contained a similar, but cheaper, type of shellfish. \nThe hotel investigated the complaint 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, lied to customers who believed they were paying high prices for top ingredients. \nThe Hotel Okura group \u2013 where Barack Obama has stayed \u2013 said they also injected beef with fat to make it juicier and incorrectly described tomatoes as organic. \u201cWe apologize for lying to our clients,\u201d it said. \nThe list of fraudulent ingredients gets bigger: orange juice from cartons that was sold as freshly squeezed; Mont Blanc desserts with Korean chestnuts instead of the French ones on the menu; shop-bought chocolate cream that the menu said was home-made; imported beef sold as expensive wagyu beef. \nThe menu scandal has come at the wrong time. Japan is trying to persuade South Korea and other countries to start to buy Japanese food again after the Fukushima nuclear accident. \nFood industry experts said the global financial crisis in 2008 forced luxury hotels to save money. \n\u201cMenu descriptions were created to sound good to the customers, and, when hotels couldn\u2019t get the ingredients on the menu, they just used food from different places,\u201d Hiroshi Tomozawa, a hotel and restaurant consultant, told Kyodo News.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nNot many exercise classes have a tea break halfway through. But Margaret Allens does. After a gentle warm-up and a few quick exercises, the 93-year-old great-grandmother lets her group relax with a cup of tea and a quick rest.\nSome of the class of eight look as if they need to rest more than others. Allen herself, wearing a thick shirt, knitted waistcoat, slacks and sensible shoes, is not even sweating. Despite an extremely painful trapped nerve in one leg and a knee in need of replacement, she looks like she could go on for hours.\nThe general rule is that eating just before doing sport is not a good idea and especially not halfway through the class. But, on the afternoon I visit Allens class in Saltburn-by-the-Sea near Middlesbrough, slices of fruitcake are being passed around during the break. The cake has been baked to celebrate Allens recent birthday by her 89-year-old sister, Joan.\nThe ladies have just finished their cake when Allen is up again, leading the group through a lively Scottish tune with lots of toe pointing and leg kicking. Forty-five minutes later, the class is finally over.\nAllen, a former volunteer with the charity Red Cross, has been leading classes in the north-east town for 45 years. She wasnt particularly sporty at school, but she started playing the piano for a keep-fit class during the second world war and eventually took over in her 40s when the previous instructor retired.\nAt one time, Allens class had more than 18 regulars, each paying 1 a time. But, these days, the group is getting smaller  during the tea break, the ladies discuss a funeral that most of them had attended that week for one of the younger members of the group who had just died, aged 68.\nAllen is the oldest, followed by her sister. The baby of the group is 60-year-old Jean Cunion, who is a bit embarrassed to admit that she is perhaps the least fit of the group. I remember, the first time I came, Margaret said, Whos that huffing and panting? and I had to admit it was me. Ruth Steere, 76, says Allen always knows whats going on, although her back is always to the class: She always shouts at us if we go wrong. Shes remarkably good at knowing what we are doing.\nAllen, a keen dancer, has never done any formal training to be a fitness instructor. Instead, she choreographs her own moves based on five tapes from the BBCs first ever fitness guru, Eileen Fowler. Allen thinks her good health is largely a result of keeping busy, especially since her husband died in 1997. She started writing poetry when she was 80.\nI write poems about everything. Im a prolific writer. I just cant stop, she says, when she phones me a few days after the interview to read out a poem she has written about the joys of exercise. One of the class, 84-year-old former teacher Winnie Robertson, thinks the secret to staying fit is never letting yourself go: Use it or lose it, thats what I say.\nAllen still plays the piano and gives speeches. She did a computer course when she was 88. Ageing is no fun, she admits, reading me a few lines from a poem she has written called That Beast Called Age. She happily remembers a doctor who saw her for the first time a few years ago, who said she couldnt possibly be more than 78: I said, Thank you, doctor. You can go now.\nShe also has a no-nonsense attitude to weight gain: I just think people shouldnt eat too much. Whenever I hear someone saying, Oh, I cant lose weight, I say: Sellotape. She mimes taping her mouth shut. I said this just the other day to a big fat man. Everything in moderation is my motto.\nEarlier in 2013, Allen was watching the news and saw a woman being given the British Empire Medal. She was saying: Im 80 and Im the oldest fitness instructor in the country! I was thinking: No, youre not. But I shant be writing to Buckingham Palace.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Opposition to Western Australia\u2019s shark cull has intensified as thousands of people took to beaches across the continent to call on the state\u2019s premier to end the policy, and RSPCA Australia and Virgin Atlantic owner Richard Branson spoke out against it. The controversial catching and killing of sharks longer than three metres began after what the state government called an \u201cunprecedented\u201d number of shark attacks on Western Australia\u2019s coast, which saw a 35-year-old surfer killed in November 2013. He was the sixth person to die from a shark attack in two years. \nHowever, according to the Shark Attack File, Australia as a whole has averaged one shark- related fatality a year for the last 50 years. Kate Faehrmann, a board member at the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, said from a protest in Perth: \u201cWe\u2019ve been saying all along that this policy won\u2019t work. Drumlines, used to catch the sharks, are indiscriminate killers. They\u2019ll kill sharks whether they\u2019re one, two, three metres or more, as well as dolphins, turtles and other things. That\u2019s why the community doesn\u2019t want it.\u201d \nThousands of people protested on Perth\u2019s Cottesloe Beach and Sydney\u2019s Manly Beach, as well as hundreds at Glenelg, in south- west Adelaide, and at beaches in Victoria and Queensland. Faehrmann said the protests had shown Australians wanted sharks protected: \u201cWhat\u2019s amazing is so many people in Australia love sharks. This has demonstrated something about the national psyche, that, despite Jaws, despite all the fear, people are coming out in their thousands across the country to say, 'That\u2019s their ocean. We respect them, we love them and we don\u2019t want them killed.'\u201d Anthony Joyce, a surfer who once had his foot caught in a shark\u2019s mouth, said: \u201cThe number of sharks they are going to kill is going to make no difference in the scheme of things.\u201d \nThe state government has refused to provide a running tally of sharks killed, though there have been reports of sharks smaller than three metres being released after getting caught on drumlines, floating drums anchored to the sea bed with bait hanging on hooks beneath them. Conservationists argue there is no evidence the cull will reduce the number of shark attacks on humans, as no previous cull has solely used drumlines. Researchers at the University of Western Australia say the recent spate of shark attacks in the state may have more to do with the state having the fastest-growing population in Australia, rather than a rising number of sharks. \nRichard Peirce, chairman of the UK-based conservation charity, the Shark Trust, said that the cull would be ineffective and potentially lure more predators towards the coast. \u201cThe activity in Western Australia is compounding the human tragedy of shark attacks. It is very sad that a government that could be seen to take positive initiatives with regards to shark \u2013 human interactions by trialling alternatives to indiscriminate killing has ignored the best advice and opted for an approach that is ineffective and counterproductive,\u201d he said. \u201cThe indiscriminate nature of drumlines is often overlooked \u2013 even if monitored through the day, leaving the lines in overnight has the potential to attract other predators into the area, attracted by those sharks and other species hooked and injured.\u201d \nGlobally, in 2012, there were 80 unprovoked attacks by sharks, seven of which proved fatal, compared to nearly 100m sharks killed by humans each year. RSPCA Australia released a statement saying it believes the cull is unjustified. \u201cThere is no evidence that the increase in attacks is a result of increasing shark numbers. Rather, it is consistent with a changing population and human behaviour; that is, there are greater numbers of people in the water,\u201d it said. \nRichard Branson told Fairfax Radio the policy was backfiring. \u201cI\u2019m sure one of the reasons Western Australia Premier, Colin Barnett, did it was because he was thinking it would encourage tourism. It\u2019s going to do quite the reverse, I think. You\u2019re advertising a problem that doesn\u2019t exist in a major way and you\u2019re deterring people from wanting to come to Perth and your beautiful countryside around it. All you\u2019re going to achieve, I think, is to worry people unnecessarily.\u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nI got a Dyson vacuum cleaner but I dont even know if I want it. I just picked it up, Louise Haggerty, a 56-year-old hairdresser and waitress, said at the end of her trip to the Black Friday sales at one oclock in the morning. It was mental in there. It was crazy. It was absolutely disgusting, disgusting.\nHaggerty went to a 24-hour Sainsburys supermarket in north-east London with a friend. She hoped to buy a bargain flat-screen TV. But so many people pushed in the queue that we didnt have a chance, she said. The poor woman who was second in the queue was pushed out by a crowd of youths. She didnt get anything. People were behaving like animals  it was horrible, she said. I only saw two security guards.\nFrustrated when she was unable to buy a 40 TV reduced from 299.99 to 149.99, Haggerty rushed to pick up a vacuum cleaner, reduced from 319.99 to 159.99. I dont even know how much it costs; I dont know even know if Im going to buy it. I just wanted something, she said. There are lads in there with three, four, five tellies. Its not fair.\nOne of those lads was Andy Blackett, 30, who had two trolleys full of bargains. I got two coffee makers, two tablets, two TVs and a stereo, he said. I couldnt tell you the prices but I know theyre bargains. But his friend Henry Fischer wasnt as successful. Someone snatched my telly from me  its because Im the smaller one.\nBlackett, Fischer and some friends had driven to Sainsburys at 12.45am after leaving the bedlam of a Tesco 24-hour supermarket, where the Black Friday sale started at midnight. Tesco was scary so we came here instead, Blackett said.\nMore than a dozen police officers went to another Tesco store because scuffles began between eager and frustrated shoppers. Customers removed cardboard hoardings that were holding back sale items until 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 criticized the manager for not providing enough security and suggested the sale should be stopped altogether.\nPolice intervened at several other stores just before the doors opened at midnight. Meanwhile, Manchester Police said that at least two people had been arrested at Black Friday sales events. South Wales Police also received a number of calls from staff at Tesco stores after they became concerned due to the number of people who had turned up to sale events.\nTV sales at the Tesco store began just before 1am. One of the first purchasers of a flat-screen TV was James Alled. He bought two and was already trying to sell one of them to someone further down the queue. I bought them for 250. Ill sell it to you for 350, 300 cash, he said. Further back in the queue, Christine Ball, 62, wasnt impressed. I got here at 10.15pm and Im further back now than when I got here, she said. These people dont know what a queue is.\nBall had not heard of the US-inspired Black Friday sales until now, like most of the shoppers. She 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 milk and a loaf of bread. Telly, milk and bread  the necessities, she said.\nMel Mehmet, 23, had been to Black Friday sales in 2013 and had expected queues but she said the atmosphere in Tesco scared her this time. Its crazy having the sale at midnight  the police must have more important things to do at night than come to sales. Were going to PC World first thing  their sale starts at 8am.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nThey may not know who Steve Jobs was or even how to tie their own shoelaces, but the average six-year-old child understands more about digital technology than a 45-year-old adult, according to a new report.\nThe arrival of broadband in the year 2000 has created a generation of digital natives, Ofcom (which checks standards in the UK communications industries) says in its annual study of British consumers. Born in the new millennium, these children are learning how to operate smartphones or tablets before they are able to talk.\nThese younger people are shaping communications, said Jane Rumble, who is head of media research at Ofcom. As a result of growing up in the digital age, they are developing completely different communication habits from older generations, even compared to the 16-to-24 age group.\n800 children and 2,000 adults took Ofcoms digital quotient, or DQ, test, which attempts to gauge awareness of and self-con dence around gadgets from tablets to smart watches, knowledge of superfast internet, 4G mobile- phone networks and mobile apps.\nAmong 6- to 7-year-olds, who have grown up with YouTube, Spotify music streaming and online television, the average DQ score was 98, higher than for those aged between 45 and 49, who scored an average of 96. Digital understanding peaks between 14 and 15 years old, with a DQ of 113, and then drops gradually throughout adulthood, before falling rapidly in old age.\nPeople can now test their digital knowledge with a short version of the questionnaire that will give anyone a DQ score, along with advice on how to improve their understanding and protect themselves and their families online.\nThe ways in which millennial children contact each other and consume entertainment are so different from previous generations that forecasters now believe their preferences to be a better indication of the future than the preferences of trendsetting young adults.\nThe most remarkable change is in time spent talking by phone. Two decades ago, teenagers spent their evenings monopolizing the home telephone line, talking about love affairs and friendships in conversations that lasted for hours.\nFor those aged 12 to 15, phone calls account for just 3% of time spent communicating through any device. For all adults, this rises to 20% and, for young adults, it is still three times as high at 9%. Todays children do the majority of their remote socializing by sending written messages or through shared photographs and videos. The millennium generation is losing its voice, Ofcom claims.\nOver 90% of their device-time is message based, chatting on social networks like Facebook, sending instant messages through services like WhatsApp or even sending traditional mobile- phone text messages. Just 2% of childrens time using devices is spent emailing, compared to 33% for adults.\nAway from their phones, 12- to 15-year-olds have a very different relationship with other media, too. A digital seven-day diary shows live television accounts for just half of viewing for this age group, compared to nearly 70% for all adults. They spend 20% of their time viewing short video clips, for example on YouTube, or news clips on Facebook and other social sites. The rest of their viewing is shared between DVDs, streamed content through Net ix or iTunes and recorded television programmes.\nYoung adults aged 16 to 24 are big media consumers. However, they consume hardly any live radio or print-based media.\nYounger people are also moving away from live television and moving to streaming and catch- up services. Even among adults, television is becoming less important. Television viewing among 16- to 24-year-olds has been dipping each year since 2010, but 2013 was the  rst year that researchers found that viewing fell in all age groups. The theory is that easy-to-use tablet computers with large screens have brought many older people online.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"A big international disagreement has started over the right of Bolivia\u2019s indigenous Indian tribes to chew coca leaves, the main ingredient in cocaine. This could have a significant effect on global drugs policy. Bolivia has received a special exemption from the 1961 Convention on Drugs, the agreement that controls international drugs policy. The exemption allows Bolivia\u2019s indigenous people to chew the leaves. \nBolivia said that the convention was against its new constitution, which says it must \u201cprotect native and ancestral coca\u201d as part of its cultural heritage and says that coca \u201cin its natural state \u2026 is not a dangerous drug\u201d. \nSouth American Indians have chewed coca leaves for hundreds of years. The leaves give energy and have medicinal qualities. People who support Bolivia\u2019s position said that defending the rights of indigenous people was the right thing to do. \u201cThe Bolivian move is very important,\u201d said Danny Kushlick, of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation. \u201cIt shows that any country that doesn\u2019t want to continue the war on drugs can change its relations with the UN conventions.\u201d \nBut the UN\u2019s International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), which checks global drug agreements, says Bolivia may harm international drug controls. Many countries \u2013 including the UK, the US, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and Russia \u2013 do not want to give Bolivia what it is asking for. \nThe UK told the UN that it \u201crespects the cultural importance of the coca leaf in Bolivia\u201d, but it adds: \u201cThe United Kingdom is worried that the exemption could lead to more coca production and \u2013 most importantly \u2013 more coca reaching the cocaine trade. The exemption would make it more difficult to control the illegal drugs trade.\u201d \nThe right of indigenous people in South America\u2019s Andean region to chew coca leaf was removed in 1964 when Bolivia was under a dictatorship and it signed the convention. \nIn 2011, Bolivia told the UN that it did not want to be part of the convention any more. It is now part of the convention again, but with an exemption so that its indigenous people can continue chewing coca leaves. \nThe exemption is the first in the history of UN drug-control agreements. It has led to worries that other countries may also ask for exemptions. The Russian government says that the exemption will lead to more illegal cocaine and warns that \u201cit also sets a dangerous example that could be used by other states in creating a more liberal drug-control regime\u201d. \nThe British parliament has recommended that the UK government should support Bolivia\u2019s request. It says that it is important that countries stay in the convention. Bolivia\u2019s return could be blocked only if a third or more of the 184 countries that have signed the convention opposed the exemption. Some people believe that the US and UK are telling other countries that they should block Bolivia\u2019s request. \nNancie Prud\u2019homme, of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, said people are wrong to oppose Bolivia\u2019s request. \u201cThese objections are not completely legal,\u201d she said. She added that, all over the world, it has become normal to support cultural and indigenous rights, so we should support Bolivia\u2019s efforts. \nThe decision to ban coca chewing was based on a 1950 report. Some people say the report did not use any evidence. It is legal to grow coca leaves in Bolivia. As a result, cocaine production has decreased in the country and some experts see Bolivia as a model for other countries.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"The small room looks like a classroom. The posters on the walls show letters of the alphabet and a map of Bangladesh. \nBut, it is hard to concentrate \u2013 there is the loud hammering and chemicals in the air that hurt the throat and eyes. But, the children who learn in this three-square-metre room are lucky. They have escaped working in the factories opposite. \nFor 14 years, SOHAY, a non-governmental organization (NGO), has worked in slums in Dhaka to send child workers to school. It especially tries to help children who do dangerous work. \nThe classroom is one of 23 centres that SOHAY has set up in Dhaka. The classes at the centres help children enter primary school. When they are in school, the children get extra help with their homework at the centres. \nAlamin, ten years old, used to work in a plastic factory. He now goes to one of the centres. His parents are happy that he\u2019s now in school and not doing dangerous work. His friend Rabi says he wants to forget his past in the factory. \u201cI like school,\u201d he says. \nSOHAY also has classes for parents and managers to stop child labour. It can be very difficult for working children to go to school. They are not like other children. After they stop working, they sometimes find it difficult to make friends and adapt to school. It is also difficult to make sure they stay in school \u2013 lots of these children don\u2019t finish school. \nSeven-year-old Zhorna Akter Sumayya has two older brothers \u2013 they both work (one at a restaurant, one at a local club). But, she went to a SOHAY centre and she now goes to school. Her family live in the slum and her parents need the money their sons make but they want their daughter to go to school. \nIn 2015, SOHAY helped 1,540 children to leave dangerous work and helped 2,125 more children \u2013 those who would soon start work \u2013 to go to school. About 780 more children are preparing to start school in 2017. \nThe Labour Law of Bangladesh 2006 does not allow children younger than 14 to work but UNICEF says that, in Bangladesh, 4.7 million children younger than 14 are employed and 1.3 million children aged five to 17 do dangerous work.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"A group of experts say that thousands of people are taking unnecessary medicines and have bad diets because of bogus allergy tests. Allergies and food intolerances are increasing very quickly but people do not understand the difference between an allergy and a food intolerance \u2013 this is causing problems, says the charity Sense About Science, who have written a guide to allergies. \n\u201cIt\u2019s a big mess,\u201d said Tracey Brown, director of Sense About Science. \u201cThere is unnecessary action for people who don\u2019t really have allergies and not enough action for people who have allergies.\u201d \nLots of people tell the waiter or waitress in a restaurant that they have an allergy. But some of these people don\u2019t have an allergy \u2013 that have a food intolerance, which is not dangerous. Experts fear that restaurants hear so many people say that they have allergies (when maybe that is not true) that they may not be careful enough when they give food to a person who has a real allergy. \n\u201cIt matters very much,\u201d said Moira Austin of an allergy charity. \u201cIf a restaurant thinks somebody just doesn\u2019t want to eat a food because it makes them feel uncomfortable, the restaurant may be less careful. There have been deaths where people have gone to a restaurant, told the waiter or waitress that they have an allergy to a food and the meal has been given to them containing that food.\u201d \nThe guide says most allergy tests bought on the internet or in shops do not work. They include a test people can use at home, which looks for specific antibodies against different foods in the blood. These antibodies are part of the body\u2019s response to infections but \u201cthe best medical evidence has shown high antibody levels do not suggest an allergy\u201d, the guide says. The test often shows people have an allergy or a food intolerance when this is not true. \nAnother test also does not work. It uses a mixture of acupuncture and homeopathy. Testing hair is also pointless, the guide says. \u201cHair cannot show if you are allergic or not so testing hair cannot give any useful information on allergies.\u201d \n\u201cI often see children who are on very limited diets \u2013 their parents believe that they have allergies because they have taken 'allergy tests' that do not work,\u201d said Paul Seddon, an allergy doctor for children. \u201cThis needs to stop, which can only happen if we prove these 'tests' do not work.\u201d \nAllergies can cause tiredness, headaches and eczema in children. But you need to check if they have an allergy and this takes a long time and many tests. It may seem like a good idea to do just one test and get a quick answer. But, it will be a wrong answer. \nAllergies are increasing in developed countries. There are three times more children with certain allergies now compared to 30 years ago. The Sense About Science guide lists a number of myths about the sources of allergies, for example the myths that fast food or E numbers in food colourings cause allergies.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nThe last time she went on stage, the mobile phone was having its first trials. Thirty-five years later, as she performs once again, singer Kate Bush is faced with a different world.\nWhile most concerts are now aglow with phones and tablets, Bush does not want her fans watching her shows through a screen.\nBefore her highly anticipated series of concerts at the Hammersmith Apollo in London, Bush released a statement asking her fans to put down their mobile phones at her gigs.\nBush wrote on her website: I have a request for all of you who are coming to the shows. We have purposefully chosen an intimate theatre setting rather than a large venue or stadium. It would mean a great deal to me if you would please refrain from taking photos or filming during the shows.\nI very much want to have contact with you as an audience, not with iPhones, iPads or cameras. I know its a lot to ask but it would allow us to all share in the experience together.\nWith her love of theatrics and opulent costumes, Bushs keenness to stop fans uploading footage to YouTube could also be an attempt to keep the show a surprise for the thousands of fans who have bought tickets for the 22 dates she is playing.\nBush is not the first singer or musician to speak out against the effect of phones at concerts. The Who front man Roger Daltrey recently said it was weird that people did not have their mind on the show when they had gone to a performance and were concentrating on staring at the screen rather than the artist on stage.\nHe said: I feel sorry for them, I really feel sorry for them. Looking at life through a screen and not being in the moment totally  if youre doing that, youre 50% there, right? Its weird. I find it weird.\nIn 2013, Beyonc berated one her fans at a gig for filming. You cant even sing because youre too busy filming, Beyonc told him. You gotta seize this moment. Put that damn camera down!\nThe debate around phones at live events is not restricted to music. Recently, Dutch football fans at PSV Eindhoven protested against the introduction of wi-fi in their stadium, holding up banners with messages like No wi-fi. Support the team, You can sit at home, and Stand united, while Manchester United have also told fans to leave their large electronic devices at home.\nJarvis Cocker has also criticized fans with phones in the audience  he says they drive him insane at concerts, adding: It seems stupid to have something happening in front of you and look at it on a screen thats smaller than a cigarette packet.\nJohnny Marr said in 2013 that it meant that fans missed out on the sensory experience of live music in their desperation to film the event for later.\nTo stand and just be looking at it through your phone is a completely wasted opportunity. You know, I dont mean to be unkind but I think you should put your phone down because youre just being an idiot, really. Just enjoy the gig, he said.\nEven in the world of classical music, one of the worlds leading pianists surprised concertgoers in June 2013 when he stormed off stage because a fan was filming his performance on a smartphone. Krystian Zimerman returned moments later and said: The destruction of music because of YouTube is enormous.\nBut Sam Watt of Vyclone, a phone app that encourages audiences to film at concerts and then brings together the footage to create a crowd-sourced video of the event, said that filming at concerts enhanced the experience.\nFans filming is now part of the concert experience  that is a just a fact  so we take the footage that people are filming at concerts and then it comes back to them mixed together with everybody else who was filming. You end up with really fantastic content, he said.\nOur thinking is that filming at concerts adds to the experience, rather than taking away from it and I think, if Kate Bush came round for a cup of tea, we could have a really interesting discussion about this, he added. Knowing that people are going to film and want those memories is really important. Youve got to embrace it.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"On the market square in Rjukan stands a statue of the town\u2019s founder, a noted Norwegian engineer and industrialist called Sam Eyde. The great man stares northwards across the square at an almost sheer mountainside in front of him. \nBehind him, to the south, rises the equally sheer 1,800-metre peak known as Gaustatoppen. Between the mountains, along the narrow Vestfjord valley, lies the small, but once mighty, town that Eyde built in the early years of the last century, to house the workers for his factories. \nEyde harnessed the power of the 100-metre Rjukanfossen waterfall to generate hydroelectricity in what was, at the time, the world\u2019s biggest power plant. \nBut one thing he couldn\u2019t do was change the elevation of the sun. Deep in its east \u2013west valley, surrounded by high mountains, Rjukan and its 3,400 inhabitants are in shadow for half the year. During the day, from late September to mid-March, the town, three hours north-west of Oslo, is not completely dark, but it\u2019s certainly not bright, either. \nRecently, however, Eyde\u2019s statue has gazed out upon a sight that even he might have found startling. High on the mountain opposite, 450 metres above the town, three large, solar-powered, computer-controlled mirrors steadily track the movement of the sun across the sky, reflecting its rays down on to the square and bathing it in bright sunlight. \n\u201cIt\u2019s the sun!\u201d grins Ingrid Sparbo, disbelievingly, lifting her face to the light and closing her eyes. A retired secretary, Sparbo has lived all her life in Rjukan and says people \u201cdo sort of get used to the shade. You end up not thinking about it, really. But this ... this is so warming. Not just physically, but mentally. It\u2019s mentally warming.\u201d \nTwo young mothers wheel their children into the square and stand in the sun. On a freezing day, an elderly couple sit on one of the new benches, smiling at the warmth on their faces. Children beam. Lots of people take photographs. A shop assistant, Silje Johansen, says it\u2019s \u201cawesome. Just awesome.\u201d \nPushing his child\u2019s buggy, electrical engineer Eivind Toreid is more cautious. \u201cIt\u2019s a funny thing,\u201d he says. \u201cNot real sunlight, but very like it. Like a spotlight.\u201d \nHeidi Fieldheim says she heard all about it on the radio. \u201cBut it\u2019s far more than I expected,\u201d she says. \u201cThis will bring much happiness.\u201d \nAcross the road, in the Nye Tider caf\u00e9, sits the man responsible for this unexpected access to happiness. Martin Andersen is a 40-year-old artist who moved to Rjukan in the summer of 2001. \nThe first inkling of an artwork Andersen called the Solspeil , or Sun mirror , came to him as the month of September began to fade: \u201cEvery day, we would take our young child for a walk in the buggy,\u201d he says, \u201cand, every day, I realized we were having to go a little further down the valley to find the sun.\u201d By 28 September, the sun completely disappears from Rjukan\u2019s market square. It doesn\u2019t reappear until 12 March. \nThroughout the seemingly endless intervening months, Andersen says, \u201cWe\u2019d look up and see blue sky above, and the sun high on the mountain slopes, but the only way we could get to it was to go out of town. It\u2019s sad, a town that people have to leave in order to feel the sun.\u201d \nTwelve years after he first dreamed of his Solspeil, a German company specializing in so-called CSP \u2013 concentrated solar power \u2013 helicoptered in the three 17-sq-m glass mirrors that now stand high above the market square in Rjukan. \u201cIt took,\u201d he says, \u201ca bit longer than we\u2019d imagined.\u201d \nIt really works. There were objectors \u2013 and plenty of them \u2013 petitions and letter-writing campaigns and a Facebook page organized against what a large number of locals saw initially as a vanity project and, above all, a waste of money. But even they now seem largely won over. \n\u201cI was strongly against it,\u201d admits Nils Eggerud. Like many others, he felt the money could have been better spent elsewhere \u2013 on a couple of extra carers to look after Rjukan\u2019s old people, perhaps, or improved school facilities, cycle paths, a bit of rural road resurfacing. \n\u201cAnd I still have my doubts about the ongoing maintenance costs,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat will they be, who will pay them? But ... well, it does feel nice, standing here. And, really, you just have to look at the people\u2019s faces.\u201d \nIn his office overlooking the square, Rjukan\u2019s energetic young mayor, Steinar Bergsland, is interested not so much in the cost but in the benefits the mirrors might bring to the town. \nAlready, Bergsland says, visitor numbers are up for the time of year and Rjukan\u2019s shopkeepers have reported their takings following suit. A hi-tech company is interested in relocating to Rjukan, attracted by the cutting-edge technology on view at the top of the mountain and the publicity it has attracted. \n\u201cThis is a powerful symbol for Rjukan,\u201d Bergsland says, and, helped by assorted government grants and a donation from a local business, the town needed to find just 1m krone \u2013 \u00a3100,000 \u2013 of the mirrors\u2019 total 5m-krone cost. \nAnd, seen against the town\u2019s 650m krone annual budget, he points out, 1m krone really wasn\u2019t very much to pay for something that \u201cgives us a far, far better chance of raising the money we need for better schools and more nursing care. And just look out of the window. Look at those happy faces. Now it\u2019s actually here, people love it.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Fit in four minutes. It sounds like a headline from a health magazine; an unattainable promise on late-night satellite TV. Then you attempt Dr Izumi Tabata\u2019s training protocol \u2013 20 seconds of all-out effort, 10 seconds of rest, repeat eight times \u2013 and between sounding like Darth Vader as you desperately suck in oxygen and collapsing in a messy bundle of sweat and defeat, you realize just how wrong you were. \nTabata has seen it all before. \u201cThey were dead!\u201d he chuckles as he recalls the first time he inflicted the system that bears his name on his university students in the early 1990s. \u201cAfter four minutes\u2019 hard exercise they were wiped out. But after six weeks they saw the results and were surprised. We all were.\u201d \nHis research followed extensive monitoring of Japan\u2019s speed skating team in the early 1990s when he \u2013 along with the team\u2019s coach Irisawa Koichi \u2013 noticed that short bursts of brutally hard exercise seemed to be at least as effective as hours of moderate training. Tabata set out to show this with a simple experiment. One group of moderately trained students performed an hour of steady cardiovascular exercise on a stationary bike five times a week. The other group did a ten-minute warm-up on the bike, followed by four minutes of Tabata intervals, four times a week \u2013 plus one 30-minute session of steady exercise with two minutes of intervals. \nThe results were startling. After six weeks of testing, the group following Tabata\u2019s plan \u2013 exercising for just 88 minutes a week \u2013 had increased their anaerobic capacity by 28% and their VO 2 max, a key indicator of cardiovascular health and maximal aerobic power, by 15%. The control group, who trained for five hours every week, also improved their VO 2 max, but by 10% \u2013 and their training had no effect on anaerobic capacity. \u201cWe have also measured increases in heart size after three weeks of doing the protocol,\u201d says Tabata. \u201cAnd there is also forthcoming research that shows that it lowers the risk of diabetes in humans, something we have already shown in rats.\u201d \nBut there are no half-measures here. You can\u2019t go steady on a cross trainer, chewing gum and reading the latest issue of HELLO! The regimen demands head-down bursts on a stationary bike or rowing machine; explosive bodyweight exercises, sprints or suchlike. Remember how you felt after doing a 100m sprint at school? Imagine doing eight of them with only a ten- second break to recover. \n\u201cAll-out effort at 170% of your VO 2 max is the criterion of the protocol,\u201d says Tabata. \u201cIf you feel OK afterwards you\u2019ve not done it properly. The first three repetitions will feel easy but the last two will feel impossibly hard. In the original plan the aim was to get to eight, but some only lasted six or seven.\u201d \nAs one commenter on the popular exercise forum T-Nation puts it: \u201cWhen done correctly you should meet God. Most people are incapable of doing it correctly and shouldn\u2019t even try.\u201d \nTabata doesn\u2019t completely agree. \u201cEveryone can do it but beginners should start with educated trainers so that they can work at the correct intensity for them,\u201d he explains. He says that he will soon publish research showing that doing the programme just twice a week, less than half the volume in the original research, still provides significant health benefits. \nAnother soon-to-be-published finding, which Tabata describes as \u201crather significant \u201d, shows that the Tabata protocol burns an extra 150 calories in the 12 hours after exercise, even at rest, due to the effect of excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. So while it is used by most people to get fit \u2013 or by fit people to get even fitter \u2013 it also burns fat. \nIt\u2019s slightly surprising, therefore, that the plan is still the preserve of the serious athlete and musclehead crowd \u2013 although that may change now that Tabata has agreed a deal with Universal Studios that will lead to a network of instructors and a DVD range released towards the end of the year. \u201cI decided to do this because I often go on YouTube and, while I am honoured that people are doing it, some are doing it wrong because they don\u2019t realize the intensity you need to work at,\u201d says Tabata. \nSo should we all start incorporating this plan into our fitness regimens? Richard Scrivener, a former Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach at Northampton Saints Rugby Club, says that while the benefits are clear, Tabatas are an addition, not a replacement, to a favoured sport or training method. \u201cRunners, for instance, need a high level of running economy, which comes from skill acquisition and putting in the miles,\u201d says Scrivener, \u201cBut they could effectively ease off the long runs and reduce the overall mileage by introducing Tabata training. This will unload the skeleton and give joints the chance to rest and recover, especially if one is prone to niggles or has a history of injuries \u2013 and you would probably therefore get more out of the long runs when you do undertake them.\u201d \nGym rats can benefit by doing three strength sessions and three Tabatas a week. And the rest of us can build up session by session, week by week, all the time knowing that it will never get easier because every session calls for maximum effort. That\u2019s the cruel genius of the protocol: it is unrelenting \u2013 and effective.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"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 a gleam in Steve Jobs\u2019s eye, BlackBerry\u2019s innovations ensured its smartphone was one of Canada\u2019s biggest exports. \nSix years later, in the summer of 2011, as violence engulfed London and spread to Birmingham, Nottingham, Liverpool and Manchester, so effective was BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) at mobilizing the rioters that politicians called for the service to be temporarily shut down. But two years later, it is the users themselves who are pulling the plug. As demand for BlackBerry handsets fades, the once noisy BBM grapevine is falling silent. Dozens of alternatives have sprung up to take its place, from Facebook\u2019s and Apple\u2019s own-brand instant messaging applications to independent start-ups such as WhatsApp and Kik (which is also Canadian). Free to download and use, they use the internet to swap text messages, pictures, voice clips,\u2019stickers\u2019, and even videos in WhatsApp\u2019s case, between most types of phones. \nIn an attempt to retain its following, BBM has been released on Android and Apple phones. Despite the competition, the response has been overwhelming, with an announcement that there have been more than 20 million downloads. But, despite the initial interest, many believe BBM\u2019s wider release will do little to save the service. \n\u201cThe move to bring BlackBerry to the iPhone is four or five years too late,\u201d says James Gooderson, an 18-year-old student who blogs on technology. \u201cWhatsApp has removed the reason why young people would use a BlackBerry.\u201d BBM claims 80 million monthly users after its upgrade, but WhatsApp has 300 million. Other services expose BBM\u2019s 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 the world over, are also unforgivably absent. Even the contacts and calendar sharing that BBM made possible on BlackBerry handsets have not migrated to the Apple and Android versions. \nMessaging is moving from verbal to visual. Photos uploaded to Instagram trigger a wave of comments and Snapchat\u2019s pictures, which self-delete 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. Yet as recently as 2011, BBM was so powerful it was credited with starting a revolution in Egypt; and, at the time of the London riots, it was a more urgent source of news than the television screen. \n\u201cWe could see on our BlackBerry messages where the rioters were going next; TV news would catch up four hours later,\u201d 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 economic deprivation in Britain. Moore mainly communicates on an iPad now. He dismisses the notion that the BBM curfew urged by some MPs would have stopped the looting. \u201cThe social networking wasn\u2019t the reason,\u201d he says. \u201cI know a lot of people who were out rioting. People had been angry for a long time. Mention the words 'stop and search' around here and you immediately have a room full of angry young men.\u201d \nNearly 80% of young smartphone owners regularly use a social networking application, says the research firm Enders Analysis, but two-thirds use more than one. Among 16- to 24-year-olds, 60% use Facebook every day but 46% use alternatives. \u201cIt\u2019s a much more complex, multifaceted environment,\u201d says Benedict Evans, a digital media specialist at Enders. \u201cThe smartphone itself has become the platform. All of these apps plug into your phone book and your photo library. Apps rise and fall like fireworks. Some, like Instagram, last; others disappear into thin air.\u201d \nThirteen-year-old Bennett has three devices, all hand-me-downs from family members. He keeps his BlackBerry for messaging, uses an iPhone over wi-fi to play games and makes phone calls on an HTC-branded Android phone. His friends are still on BBM \u2013 the four phone thefts at his school so far this term were all BlackBerrys. At the touch of a few buttons, a single BlackBerry message can be sent to the phone owner\u2019s entire contacts book \u2013 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. \u201cInstagram is Facebook without parents,\u201d he says. \u201cFacebook has been taken over by the older generation. Once I saw my mum on Facebook, I deleted my account.\u201d \nFor families that may struggle to pay their heating bills this winter, the low price tag attached to buying and communicating on a BlackBerry retains its appeal. Unlimited BBM messages are available to anyone with a second-hand device and a \u00a37-a-month deal from T-Mobile. But trust in the privacy of BBM\u2019s system has been eroded. Part of the attraction to business people, revolutionaries, demonstrators and rioters was a belief that encrypted words sent over the company\u2019s secure servers could not be traced back to their writers. Prosecutions after the riots put an end to that belief. \nAcross town from Stockwell, outside the gates of a private school in well-heeled South Kensington, the older pupils all have Apple logos on their handsets. They all use WhatsApp. For many, BBM is a distant memory. \u201cI still have a Blackberry, but I\u2019m the only one,\u201d says a teenager standing with a circle of friends. And how does that make him feel? \u201cIsolated,\u201d he replies.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"A major international row with wide-ranging implications for global drugs policy has erupted over the right of Bolivia\u2019s indigenous Indian tribes to chew coca leaves, the principal ingredient in cocaine. Bolivia has obtained a special exemption from the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the framework that governs international drugs policy, allowing its indigenous people to chew the leaves. \nBolivia had argued that the convention was in opposition to its new constitution, adopted in 2009, which obliges it to \u201cprotect native and ancestral coca as cultural patrimony\u201d and maintains that coca \u201cin its natural state \u2026 is not a narcotic\u201d. \nSouth American Indians have chewed coca leaves for centuries. The leaves reputedly provide energy and are said to have medicinal qualities. Supporters of Bolivia\u2019s position praised it for standing up for the rights of indigenous people. \u201cThe Bolivian move is inspirational and groundbreaking,\u201d said Danny Kushlick, Head of External Affairs at the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, which promotes drug liberalization. \u201cIt shows that any country that has had enough of the war on drugs can change the terms of its engagement with the UN conventions.\u201d \nHowever, the UN\u2019s International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), which monitors implementation of the global drug treaties, has accused Bolivia of threatening the integrity of the international drug control regime. A number of countries \u2013 including the UK, the US, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and Russia \u2013 opposed Bolivia\u2019s demands. \nThe UK\u2019s submission to the UN, which oversees the convention, said that it \u201cacknowledges and respects the cultural importance of the coca leaf in Bolivia\u201d, but it adds: \u201cThe United Kingdom is \u2026 concerned that the reservation could lead to increases in coca production and \u2013 crucially \u2013 the amount of coca diverted to the cocaine trade. As such, the reservation would weaken international law as it relates to the global effort to tackle the drugs trade and could weaken the international community\u2019s response to that trade.\u201d \nThe right of indigenous communities in South America\u2019s Andean region to chew coca leaf was removed in 1964 when Bolivia was under a dictatorship and it signed up to the convention. But, under the terms of the agreement, Bolivia was given 25 years to implement the ban. This expired in 1989 and since then the issue has been under dispute. \nIn 2011, Bolivia \u2013 whose President, Evo Morales, is a former coca producer \u2013 formally notified the UN of its withdrawal from the convention. On Friday it reacceded to the convention, but with an exemption from the prohibition on the chewing of coca leaves. \nThe move is the first of its kind in the history of UN drug-control treaties and has sparked concerns that other countries may apply for amendments. The Russian government has argued that the move will lead to \u201can increase in illegal circulation of cocaine\u201d and warned that \u201cit also sets a dangerous precedent that could be used by other states in creating a more liberal drug-control regime\u201d. \nThe British parliament\u2019s Home Affairs Select Committee has recommended that Bolivia\u2019s request should be backed by the UK government, arguing that it was important that countries remained within the single convention. Bolivia\u2019s re-accession could be blocked only if a third or more of the 184 countries that have signed up to the convention opposed its request. There are suspicions that the US and UK are frantically lobbying other countries to gain sufficient numbers to block Bolivia\u2019s request. \nNancie Prud\u2019homme, Projects Director at the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, criticized the co-ordinated opposition to Bolivia\u2019s demands. \u201cThese objections are legally questionable,\u201d she said. \u201cThey support an arbitrary and over-broad provision and apply international drug laws in a vacuum. This is not appropriate. No state has paid any attention to decades of developing international norms on cultural and indigenous rights, which support Bolivia\u2019s efforts.\u201d \nThe decision to ban coca chewing was based on a 1950 report produced by the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Coca Leaf, which proponents of drug liberalization say was not based on supporting evidence. In an interview in 1949, the head of the Commission, Howard B Fonda, signalled his opposition to the chewing of coca leaves before his inquiry had begun. Fonda told an interviewer: \u201cWe believe that the daily, inveterate use of coca leaves by chewing \u2026 is not only thoroughly noxious and therefore detrimental, but is also the cause of racial degeneration in many centres of population, and of the decadence that visibly shows in numerous Indians \u2026 Our studies will confirm the certainty of our assertions and we hope we can present a rational plan of action \u2026 to attain the absolute and sure abolition of this pernicious habit.\u201d \nThe growing of coca leaves is legal and licensed in Bolivia. The policy has been credited with a fall in cocaine production in the country, leading some experts to see the Bolivian model as a way forward for other countries.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nPolice and intelligence agencies around the world have, for almost 100 years, used lie detectors to help convict criminals or find spies and traitors.\nBut the polygraph could soon be defunct. Researchers in Britain and the Netherlands have developed a new method that has a success rate, in tests, of over 70%. This new method could be in use in police stations around the world within a decade. It doesnt monitor facial tics, talking too much or waving of arms, which are all signs that someone is lying. The new method monitors full-body motion, which can show that the person is feeling guilty.\nThe polygraph is widely used in the US in criminal cases and for security clearance for the FBI and CIA but is much less popular in Europe. Many people in the scientific and legal communities do not believe that it is reliable. By contrast, the new method has performed well in experiments.\nThe basic thought is that liars fidget more and so the use of an all-body motion suit  the kind used in films to create computer-generated characters  will record this. The suit has 17 sensors that register movement up to 120 times per second in three dimensions for 23 joints.\nOne of the research team, Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University, said that years of research show that an interviewer will know whether someone is telling the truth, and not lies, in only about 55 times out of 100\nHe said the new method, by contrast, was right over 70% of the time. And he was confident they would be able to do better. In some tests, the team has already achieved more than 80%.\nAnderson said: Guilty people fidget more and we can measure this.\nAnderson added that the research had a special significance at this time because of a recent US Senate report on torture by the CIA. There are problems with torture from a moral point of view but it is also a very unreliable way of getting accurate information. We have known for a long time that torture does not work, Anderson said. The new method offers a good alternative to interviews.\nThe research paper was written by Dr Sophie van der Zee of Cambridge University, Professor Ronald Poppe of Utrecht University, Professor Paul Taylor of Lancaster University and Anderson.\nThe polygraph was created in 1921 by policeman John Larson. It records changes in pulse, blood pressure, sweating and breathing to find out whether someone is lying.\nIn movies, the polygraph is always right, But, in 1998, the US Supreme Court ruled that there was no consensus that the polygraph was reliable. This conclusion was supported by the US National Academy of Scientists in 2003.\nThe experiment carried out by Anderson and his colleagues involved 180 students and employees at Lancaster University  half of the people were told to tell the truth and half to lie. They were each paid 7.50 for their participation in the 70-minute experiment, involving two tests.\nSome were interviewed about a computer game Never End, which they played for seven minutes. Others lied about playing the game  they had only seen notes about it.\nThe second test involved a lost wallet containing 5. Some were asked to bring the wallet to a lost-and-found box. Others hid it and lied about it.\nOverall, we correctly guessed whether 82.2% (truths: 88.9%; lies: 75.6%) of the interviewees were telling the truth or lying based on the movements in their individual limbs, the report says.\nAnderson said: First, we looked at how much different body parts showed that someone was lying. We found that liars wave their arms more, but this is only at the 60% level that you can get from a polygraph.\nThe success came when we looked at total body motion. That tells truth from lies over 70% of the time and we believe we can improve it even more by combining it with optimal questioning techniques.\nAnother advantage is that total body motion is mostly the same in people who have different cultural backgrounds and different levels of anxiety  these things confuse other lie-detection technologies, Anderson said.\nThe use of all-body suits is expensive  they cost about 30,000  and they can be uncomfortable, so Anderson and his colleagues are now studying low-cost alternatives. These include using motion-sensing technology from computer games, such as the Kinect devices developed by Microsoft for the Xbox.\nAnderson admits that intelligence agencies such as the CIA could teach agents how to trick the full-body motion method by keeping their bodies completely still. But he said that in itself would be a giveaway.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"A few months before he died, Carl Sagan recorded a message of hope to would-be Mars explorers, telling them: \u201cWhatever the reason you\u2019re on Mars is, I\u2019m glad you\u2019re there. And I wish I was with you.\u201d \nSeventeen years after the pioneering astronomer set out his hopeful vision of the future in 1996, a company from the Netherlands is proposing to turn Sagan\u2019s dreams of reaching Mars into reality. The company, Mars One, plans to send four astronauts on a trip to the Red Planet to set up a human colony in 2023. But there are a couple of serious snags. \nFirstly, when on Mars their bodies will have to adapt to surface gravity that is 38% of that on Earth. It is thought that this would cause such a total physiological change in their bone density, muscle strength and circulation that voyagers would no longer be able to survive in Earth\u2019s conditions. Secondly, and directly related to the first, they will have to say goodbye to all their family and friends, as the deal doesn\u2019t include a return ticket. \nThe Mars One website states that a return \u201ccannot be anticipated nor expected\u201d. To return, they would need a fully assembled and fuelled rocket capable of escaping the gravitational field of Mars, on-board life support systems capable of up to a seven-month voyage and the capacity either to dock with a space station orbiting Earth or perform a safe re-entry and landing. \u201cNot one of these is a small endeavour,\u201d the site notes, requiring \u201csubstantial technical capacity, weight and cost\u201d. \nNevertheless, the project has already had 10,000 applicants, according to the company\u2019s Medical Director, Norbert Kraft. He told The Guardian that the applicants so far ranged in age from 18 to at least 62 and, though they include women, they tended to be men. \nThe reasons they gave for wanting to go were varied, he said. An American woman called Cynthia, who gave her age as 32, told the company that it was a \u201cchildhood imagining\u201d of hers to go to Mars. She described a trip her mother had taken her on in the early 1990s to a lecture at the University of Wisconsin. \nShe said the lecturer had been Sagan and she had asked him if he thought humans would land on Mars in her lifetime. Cynthia said: \u201cHe in turn asked me if I wanted to be trapped in a \u2019tin can spacecraft\u2019 for the two years it would take to get there. I told him 'yes', he smiled, and told me in all seriousness, that yes, he absolutely believed that humans would reach Mars in my lifetime.\u201d \nShe told the project: \u201cWhen I first heard about the Mars One project I thought, this is my chance \u2013 that childhood dream could become a reality. I could be one of the pioneers, building the first settlement on Mars and teaching people back home that there are still uncharted territories that humans can reach for.\u201d \nThe prime attributes Mars One is looking for in astronaut-settlers are resilience, adaptability, curiosity, ability to trust and resourcefulness, according to Kraft. They must also be over 18. \nFounded in 2010 by Bas Lansdorp, an engineer, Mars One says it has developed a realistic road map and financing plan for the project based on existing technologies and that the mission is perfectly feasible. The website states that the basic elements required for life are already present on the planet. For instance, water can be extracted from ice in the soil and Mars has sources of nitrogen, the primary element in the air we breathe. The colony will be powered by specially adapted solar panels, it says. \nMars One said it had signed a contract with the American firm Paragon Space Development Corporation to take the first steps in developing the life support system and spacesuits fit for the mission. \nThe project will cost a reported $6bn, a sum Lansdorp has said he hopes will be met partly by selling broadcasting rights. \u201cThe broadcasting revenue from the London Olympics was almost enough to finance a mission to Mars,\u201d Lansdorp said, in an interview with ABC News. \nAnother ambassador to the project is Paul R\u00f6mer, the co-creator of Big Brother, one of the first, and most successful, reality TV shows. \nOn the website, R\u00f6mer gave an indication of how the broadcasting of the project might proceed: \u201cThis mission to Mars could be the biggest media event in the world,\u201d said R\u00f6mer. \u201cReality meets talent show with no ending and the whole world watching.\u201d \nThe aim is to establish a permanent human colony, according to the company\u2019s website. The first team would land on the surface of Mars in 2023 to begin constructing the colony, with a team of four astronauts every two years after that. \nThe project is not without its sceptics, however, and concerns have been raised about how astronauts might get to the planet and establish a colony with all the life support and other requirements needed. \nProfessor Gerard\u2019t Hooft, winner of the Nobel Prize for theoretical physics in 1999, is an ambassador for the project.\u2019 T Hooft admits there are unknown health risks. The radiation is \u201cof quite a different nature\u201d from anything that has been tested on Earth, he said. \nThe mission hopes to inspire generations to \u201cbelieve that all things are possible, that anything can be achieved,\u201d much like the Apollo Moon landings. \n\u201cMars One believes it is not only possible, but imperative that we establish a permanent settlement on Mars in order to accelerate our understanding of the formation of the solar system, the origins of life and, of equal importance, our place in the universe,\u201d it says.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Not just the identity of the man in the car park with the twisted spine, but the appalling last moments and humiliating treatment of the naked body of Richard III in the hours after his death have been revealed at an extraordinary press conference at Leicester University. \nThere were cheers when Richard Buckley, Lead Archaeologist on the hunt for the king\u2019s body, finally announced that the university team was convinced \u201cbeyond reasonable doubt\u201d that it had found the last Plantagenet king, bent by scoliosis of the spine, and twisted further to fit into a hastily dug hole in Grey Friars church, which was slightly too small to hold his body. \nBut, by then, it was clear the evidence was overwhelming, as the scientists who carried out the DNA tests, those who created the computer-imaging technology to peer onto and into the bones in extraordinary detail, the genealogists who found a distant descendant with matching DNA, and the academics who scoured contemporary texts for accounts of the king\u2019s death and burial outlined their findings. \n\u201cWhat a morning. What a story,\u201d said Philippa Langley, of the Richard III Society. She had been driving on the project for years, in the face of incredulity from many people, and finding funds from all over the world when it looked as if the money would run out before the excavation had even begun. \nWork has started on designing a new tomb in Leicester Cathedral, only 100 yards from the excavation site, and a ceremony will be held to lay him into his new grave there, probably next year. Leicester\u2019s Museums\u2019 Service is working on plans for a new visitor centre in an old school building overlooking the site. \nRichard died at Bosworth on 22 August 1485, the last English king to fall in battle, and the researchers revealed how for the first time. There was an audible intake of breath as a slide came up showing the base of his skull sliced off by one terrible blow, believed to be from a halberd, a fearsome medieval battle weapon with a razor-sharp iron axe blade weighing about two kilos, mounted on a wooden pole, which was swung at Richard at very close range. The blade probably penetrated several centimetres into his brain and, said the human bones expert Jo Appleby, he would have been unconscious at once and dead almost as soon. \nThe injury appears to confirm contemporary accounts that he died in close combat in the thick of the battle and unhorsed \u2013 as in the great despairing cry Shakespeare gives him: \u201cA horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!\u201d Another sword slash, which also went through the bone and into the brain, would also have proved fatal. But many of the other injuries were after death, suggesting a gruesome ritual on the battlefield and as the king\u2019s body was brought back to Leicester, as he was stripped, mocked and mutilated. \nOne terrible injury, a stab through the right buttock and into his pelvis, was certainly after death and could not have happened when his lower body was protected by armour. It suggests the story that his naked corpse was brought back slung over a horse, mocked and abused all the way, is true. Bob Savage, a medieval arms expert from the Royal Armouries who helped identify the wounds, said it was probably not a war weapon but the sort of sharp knife or dagger any workman might have carried. \nMichael Ibsen, the Canadian-born furniture maker proved to be the descendant of Richard\u2019s sister, heard the confirmation on Sunday and listened to the unfolding evidence in shocked silence. \u201cMy head is no clearer now than when I first heard the news,\u201d he said. \u201cMany, many hundreds of people died on that field that day. He was a king, but just one of the dead. He lived in very violent times and these deaths would not have been pretty or quick.\u201d \nIt was Mathew Morris who first uncovered the body, in the first hour of the first day of the excavation. He did not believe he had found the king. The mechanical digger was still chewing the tarmac off the council car park, identified by years of research by local historians and the Richard III Society as the probable site of the lost church of Grey Friars, whose priests bravely claimed the body of the king and buried him in a hastily dug grave, probably still naked, but in a position of honour near the high altar of their church. The leg bones just showing through the soil were covered up again. \nTen days later, on 5 September, when further excavation proved Morris had hit the crucial spot, he returned with Lin Foxhall, head of the archaeology department, to excavate the body. \u201cWe did it the usual way, lifting the arms, legs and skull first, and proceeding gradually towards the torso \u2013 so it was only when we finally saw the twisted spine that I thought: 'My word, I think we\u2019ve got him.'\u201d \nAs far as Langley is concerned, Richard was the true king, the last king of the north, a worthy and brave leader who became a victim of some of the most brilliant propaganda in history, in the hands of the Tudors\u2019 image- maker, Shakespeare. There remains the dark shadow of the little princes in the tower, an infamous story even in Richard\u2019s day: the child Edward V and his brother Richard were declared illegitimate when Richard III claimed the throne, imprisoned in the Tower of London and never seen alive again. Although it is by no means certain that the bones found at the tower centuries later are theirs, there may be more DNA detective work to be done there.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Scientists have implanted a false memory in the brains of mice in an experiment that they hope will shed light on the well-documented phenomenon whereby people \u2018remember\u2019 events or experiences that have never happened. False memories are a major problem with witness statements in courts of law. \nDefendants have often been convicted of offences based on eyewitness testimony only to have their convictions later overturned when DNA, or some other corroborating evidence, is brought to bear. \nIn order to study how these false memories might form in the human brain, Susumu Tonagawa, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and his team encoded memories in the brains of mice by manipulating individual neurons. Memories of experiences we have had are made from several elements, including records of objects, space and time. These records, called engrams, are encoded in physical and chemical changes in brain cells and the connections between them. \nAccording to Tonagawa, both false and genuinememories seem to rely on the same brain mechanisms. In their work, Tonagawa\u2019s team used a technique known as optogenetics, which allows the fine control of individual brain cells. They engineered brain cells in the mouse hippocampus, a part of the brain known to be involved in forming memories, to express the gene for a protein called channelrhodopsin. When cells that contain channelrhodopsin are exposed to blue light, they become activated. The researchers also modified the hippocampus cells so that the channelrhodopsin protein would be produced in whichever brain cells the mouse was using to encode its memory engrams. \nIn the experiment, Tonagawa\u2019s team placed the mice in a chamber and allowed them to explore it. As they did so, relevant memory-encoding brain cells were producing the channelrhodopsin protein. The next day, the same mice were placed in a second chamber and given a small electric shock, to encode a fear response. At the same time, the researchers shone light into the mouse brains to activate their memories of the first chamber. That way, the mice learned to associate fear of the electric shock with the memory of the first chamber. \nIn the final part of the experiment, the team placed the mice back in the first chamber. \nThe mice froze, demonstrating a typical fear response, even though they had never been shocked while there. \u201cWe call this \u2018incepting\u2019 or implanting false memories in a mouse brain,\u201d Tonagawa told Science. \nA similar process may occur when powerful false memories are created in humans. \u201cHumans are very imaginative animals,\u201d said Tonagawa. \u201cIndependent of what is happening around you in the outside world, humans constantly have internal activity in the brain. So, just like our mouse, it is quite possible we can associate what we happen to have in our mind with bad or good high-variance ongoing events. In other words, there could be a false association of what you have in your mind rather than what is happening to you.\u201d \nHe added: \u201cOur study showed that the false memory and the genuine memory are based on very similar, almost identical, brain mechanisms. It is difficult for the false memory bearer to distinguish between them. We hope our future findings along this line will further alert legislatures and legal experts to how unreliable memory can be.\u201d \nChris French, head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London, is a leading researcher in false memories in people. He said that the latest results were an important first step in understanding their neural basis. \n\u201cMemory researchers have always recognized that memory does not, as is often assumed, work like a video camera, faithfully recording all of the details of anything we experience. Instead, it is a reconstructive process, which involves building a specific memory from fragments of real memory traces of the original event, but also possibly including information from other sources.\u201d He cautioned that the false memories created in the mice in the experiments were far simpler than the complex false memories that have generated controversy within psychology and psychiatry \u2013 for example, false memories of childhood sexual abuse, or even memories for bizarre ritualized satanic abuse, abduction by aliens, or \u201cpast lives \u201d. \u201cSuch rich false memories will clearly involve many brain systems and we are still a long way from understanding the processes involved in their formation at the neuronal level,\u201d said Professor French. \nMark Stokes, a neuroscientist at Oxford University, said the experiments were a \u201ctour de force\u201d but that it was important to put them into perspective. \u201cAlthough the results seem to imply that new memories were formed by the artificial stimulation (rather than the actual environment), this kind of phenomenon is still a long way from most people\u2019s idea of memory,\u201d he said. Rather, he said, it was equivalent to implanting an association that perhaps someone cannot place but that makes them wary of a specific environment for no apparent reason. \u201cIt is unlikely that this kind of pairing could lead to the rich set of associations related to normal memories, although it is possible that, over time, such pairing could be integrated with other memories to construct a more elaborate false narrative.\u201d \nThe mouse models created by the MIT team will help scientists ask ever more complex questions about memories in people. \u201cNow that we can reactivate and change the contents of memories in the brain, we can begin asking questions that were once the realm of philosophy,\u201d said Steve Ramirez, a colleague of Tonagawa\u2019s at MIT. \u201cAre there multiple conditions that lead to the formation of false memories? Can false memories be artificially created? What about false memories for more than just contexts \u2013 false memories for objects, food or other mice? These are the once seemingly sci-fi questions that can now be experimentally tackled in the lab.\u201d \nAs the technology develops, said French, scientists need to think about its uses carefully. \u201cWhatever means are used to implant false memories, we need to be very aware of the ethical issues raised by such procedures \u2013 the potential for abuse of such techniques cannot be overstated.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nHundreds of young Cubans are using the first known free, open-access internet service in the communist island nation. It has been made possible by one of Cubas most famous artists. A small cultural centre in the capital city, Havana, has suddenly become a rare source of free wi-fi. The internationally known Cuban artist Kcho is providing the service. Perhaps more surprisingly, the service has been approved by the state-owned telecommunications company, Etecsa.\nPeople say the service is very slow, especially when the centre gets crowded. But, in a country where only about 5% of the population has unrestricted access to the internet, a facility that is both free of charge and free of restrictions is being welcomed.\nThe chance to click on international news websites, communicate with friends and family overseas and use sites like Facebook and Twitter has created a lot of excitement. I come as often as I can, said Adonis Ortiz, 20, while video-chatting with his father, who lives in the US and whom he has not seen in nine years.\nAs diplomatic and trade relations between the US and Cuba improve, American tech giants such as Google and Apple are expected to enter the Cuban market as soon as they are permitted. In the meantime, Cuba has installed a high-speed fibre-optic cable under the sea from Venezuela and internet users have some access to Chinese equipment.\nAnother estimate, that a quarter of Cubans have access to the internet  still one of the lowest rates in the Western Hemisphere  in fact measures residents who use a restricted domestic intranet that only features certain websites and has limited email.\nKcho has offered the public admission to his own personal internet connection. But this is not the action of a counter-revolutionary or free-market rebel. Kcho was probably chosen as the acceptable face of a government recognizing the inevitable attractions of the internet.\nKcho, who has close ties to the Cuban government, announced that his actions had been approved by the Ministry of Culture. The artist said he wanted to encourage Cubans to familiarize themselves with the internet. Its only possible if you are determined and if you absorb the costs, Kcho told the Associated Press. It is expensive but the benefit is tremendous. I have something that is great and powerful. I can share it and I am doing so.\nKchos real name is Alexis Leiva Machado. He became famous internationally for his painting, sculpture and drawings after winning the grand prize at a prominent art biennial in South Korea. He is currently preparing for the Havana biennial in May. Born on one of Cubas islands, he is known for contemporary art with rustic, seaside and patriotic themes and imagery.\nIn the centres courtyard, tech-savvy young people lounge throughout the day or just sit outside when its crowded, tapping away on laptops and tablets or glued to their smartphones.\nCuba has some of the lowest connectivity rates on the planet, with dial-up accounts closely restricted and at-home broadband almost unheard of except in the case of foreigners  they pay hundreds of dollars a month for the service in a country where the average salary is between $17 and $20 a month. Kcho is believed to be paying $900 a month to provide the free wi-fi.\nSince 2013, Cuban authorities have opened hundreds of internet salons, where an hour online costs $4.50, at speeds far lower than those at Kchos studio of around 2mbps. A 2014 report found average internet connectivity speeds to be around 10.5mbps in the US and 23.6mbps in world-leading South Korea. Globally, the average was about 3.9mbps.\nWith dozens of users at one time, the signal strength of Kchos wi-fi is diluted. One user said he sometimes visits in the middle of the night, when nobody else is around, and finds it to be unbelievably fast.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nIs this the moment when streaming goes truly mainstream? According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), there were only 41m subscribers using music streaming services around the world in 2014. It might be the area with the biggest revenue growth for the record business but it is still quite small. Not only that, but many of those subscribers have streaming as part of a mobile phone package so it is uncertain exactly how active its users are. Some sources suggest 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 making products go mainstream but its not that good.\nIs this the end of downloading? The iTunes Store arrived in 2003 (2004 in Europe) at a time when piracy was widespread. Apple managed to persuade consumers to pay for downloads and grew a huge business with an estimated 70% market share. Downloads were still 52% of the total digital income in 2014, according to IFPI. Apple holds the lions share of this  it is biggest music retailer in the world. But download revenue reached a peak 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 in order to get into the premium headphone market and, 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. The vast majority of people like music but dont love it enough to pay $120 a year to listen to it. The average spend of a music buyer in the UK in 2014, for example, was just 39.52. Even Apple will  nd it very dif cult to make most of those people triple their annual spend on recorded music.\nHas Apple Connect made Apple the most artist-friendly service? Apple have previously tried to be artist-friendly via iTunes. It didnt work. Apple Connect is something very different, somewhere in the middle of YouTube, Facebook and SoundCloud. It lets artists post music, videos, photos and more to their pro le pages. Apple has generally had strong relations with the music industry and, also, artists themselves and, generally, it has a good reputation among artists. Compare that to Spotify, which has been criticized by artists from Radioheads Thom Yorke to Taylor Swift. There is the smell of revolution in the air and Apple is making sure its on the right side of the battle. \nWhere are the artist exclusives? This is going to be the interesting bit when the service goes live. Getting exclusives for big albums will be crucial to streaming. Spotify paid a lot of money to get Led Zeppelin and Metallica exclusively. Apple was watching this carefully and making notes. It already has AC\/DC and the Beatles\u0019 catalogues for download on iTunes. But can it persuade these two to enter the world of streaming? It also managed to get the surprise Beyonce\u0001 album in 2013 before anyone else so it is inevitable that it will want more like that. It was an easy decision for artists to give iTunes the download exclusive on an album because iTunes controls so much of the download market. But trying to do that in streaming is not the same thing. It is also important to remember that streaming now counts towards the album chart in markets like the UK and US and artists, who still want to succeed in the charts, will not want to limit their audience by limiting themselves to one service. \nIs this going to kill Spotify? Some people are already saying that Apple Music will destroy rivals like Spotify. However, its 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. Apples 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 pro table 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.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nThere are worse things to do in life than stroll along Rios Copacabana beach in the sunshine on the way to watch a World Cup match, so it was perhaps not surprising that England fan Anthony McDowell from Liverpool was in a good mood. The place is lovely. The people are great. Theres a party atmosphere, said McDowell. The only thing that could be better is the England team.\nHe and half a dozen friends are among the thousands of supporters from around the world who have made the beach into a party zone of national colours and chants. Some danced, some posed for photos, some drank, but mostly they just walked and talked football, waiting for the next game to begin on the nearby big screen. The last time there were so many people here during the daytime, the pope was visiting.\nThe cheerful, largely peaceful mood was very different from the protests, transport chaos and stadium problems during the preparations for the World Cup. But, now the football is under way, visiting supporters are determined to enjoy the experience. If I had known, when I started planning, how complicated and costly it would be, I wouldnt have come. But, now that were here, its great, said Brian Hill, an England fan from Sunderland.\nThe trip has not been without its problems. Hill travelled for more than 20 hours to get to Rio. His son, Andrew, had his sunglasses 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 got off to a spectacular start on the pitch.\nEveryone must have been thrilled by Robin van Persies extraordinary diving header for the Netherlands against Spain. And, there have been lots of goals: 28 in the  rst eight games  almost three times as many as at the same stage in South Africa in 2010. Adding to the carnival mood on the streets, where the majority of fans are from neighbouring nations, Latin-American teams have been very successful so far.\nUp to now, the tournament has avoided the worst Doomsday scenarios, though it is far from trouble free. The stadiums may have been delivered late and  in some cases  not fully  nished, but there have been no reports of structural problems or dif culties entering the grounds since the kick off.\nAs at previous World Cups, ticketing has been a problem, with many empty seats at several games. FIFA spokesman Saint-Clair Milesi con rmed that only 48,000 of the 51,900 seats at the Netherlands versus Spain game were filled.\nThe Globo newspaper listed a number of problems in the 12 host cities. Almost all suffered worse traf c congestion than usual. The worst transport problems were in Natal, where bus drivers were on strike. In Salvador, some journey times were  ve times longer than usual. Traf c was already bad but this week it is chaotic, said Jecilda Mello, a local resident. \nBut, protests have diminished since the opening day, when small demonstrations took place in several cities and police used tear gas and pepper spray. Since then, the only security threat has been petty theft and overexcited fans. A spontaneous street party of Argentinian fans was dispersed with pepper spray after the fans blocked roads.\nThe huge distances have led to some very different World Cup experiences. The tournament has made only a small mark on Sa_o Paulo, South Americas most populous 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  ags on many cars.\nThe FA chairman, Greg Dyke, said there was a big difference in atmosphere. \u001cWe\u0019ve had a really warm welcome in Manaus. It\u0019s a big thing for them, even if it is a bit strange to spend so much on a stadium with no one to play in it. But we were in Sa\u0003o Paulo for four or  ve days before the opening match and you wouldn\u0019t have known until the last day that there was even a World Cup on. It was weird.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nA new report has warned that up to a billion people will remain in extreme poverty by 2030 unless countries confront the social, economic and cultural forces that keep them in poverty. The report by the Chronic Poverty Advisory Network says that many people may rise above the poverty line of $1.25 a day, but slip back again when they experience problems such as drought or illness and insecurity or con ict.\nThe report found that, in parts of rural Kenya and in South Africa, 30 to 40% of people who escaped from poverty fell back again, rising to 60% in some areas of Ethiopia between 1999 and 2009. Even in successful countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam, the proportion was 20%.\nIndividual examples show how easy it is for people to slip back into poverty. Amin, from rural Bangladesh, has seen his livelihood gradually decline, due to his own and his wifes illnesses, the cost of his sons marriage, the death of his father and loss of goods such as  shing nets. Lovemore, from Zimbabwe, has become one of the poorest people in his village. He recently lost his job due to bad health and had to take in his  ve grandchildren after the death of his daughters.\nWe need to ensure that people who are lifted out of poverty remain above the poverty line permanently. Too many families are slipping back into poverty because they struggle to recover from personal or bigger setbacks. Governments shouldnt assume that, just because somebodys income reaches $1.25, that means job done, said Andrew Shepherd, lead author of the report.\nA UN high-level panel said it was possible to achieve the goal of eliminating extreme poverty by 2030. The report, however, argues that more of the same will not get to zero. Despite a drop in extreme poverty from 1.9bn in 1990 to 1.2bn in 2010, the report says that progress in the next 15 years will be much harder. The big gains in China are unlikely to be matched by similar progress elsewhere, while climate-related shocks and deep poverty in parts of sub-Saharan Africa will slow down progress.\nThe report says the focus should be on the chronically poor  those who are poor for many years or their entire lives  and on stopping the descent into poverty. Governments have been quite good at moving people over the poverty line because that is relatively easy. But they have shied away from the more dif cult job of trying to solve chronic poverty, said Shepherd.\nThe report says progress on poverty reduction has had less of an impact on the chronically poor than on those who were already closer to the poverty line. It will not be possible to get to zero unless development policies focus on the chronically poor, it adds. The report suggests three policies, all of which require massive global investment.\nThe  rst is social assistance  to bring the poorest people closer to a decent standard of living. The second is education, from early childhood to the start of work, to enable people to escape and stay out of poverty. The third is economic growth policies that ensure that the bene ts of increasing national prosperity reach the very poorest people.\nAll this will cost money and the report says one obvious implication is that countries will need greater tax revenues. Aid will also be needed for the start-up costs for social assistance, universal health coverage and to  nance education, including scholarships for the poorest children. There remains a huge role for aid in the next 20 years, as many developing countries spend less than $500 on each of their citizens a year. Even Nigeria, with its oil wealth, spends only $650 per person, Shepherd said.\nWith the current crises in Syria, South Sudan and the Central African Republic, the report says it is essential that governments try to reduce the risk of con ict and to create peace.\nThe report also argues that, if the inequalities which affect the poorest people  such as access to land, labour markets and the power relationships between men and women  are addressed, this would tackle two goals at the same time: reducing chronic poverty and inequality.\nThe authors urge governments to develop an inclusive national development plan and to work with civil society to ensure that the poorest people are represented politically as well as trying to stop dif cult social norms, such as dowries and witchcraft, that contribute to extreme poverty: This often means challenging parts of the status quo.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nEvery morning, before the temperatures in Indias capital start to rise, a handful of old friends gather. On the dry grass not far from the India Gate monument at the centre of Delhi, they stretch, breathe and meditate.\nIt is the only healthy way to start the day. Much better than an egg or a sandwich or a cup of tea, said Arvind Singh at 6.15am as he did his breathing exercises on a bench.\nSingh, a 42-year-old salesman, and his friends are not alone. All across India, in the overcrowded cities, on whatever green space is left, you can see similar scenes.\nOn 21 June  the new International Day of Yoga  Narendra Modi, Indias prime minister, hopes the world will join in. On the grass near India Gate, up to 45,000 people will take part in a 35-minute class  they hope it will be the biggest yoga session ever.\nThe participants will include 64-year-old Modi, most of his government and, they hope, a range of celebrities.\nEncouraging Indians, and others, to stretch has become a focus for Modi, who led his Bharatiya Janata Party to a landslide election victory in 2014. In May 2015, schools were told to make sure students attended yoga events at the same time as the big demonstration in Delhi, even though it is on a Sunday.\nIndias police officers are well known for being out of shape. So, the government has said they want to introduce compulsory yoga for them. They have said, too, that daily yoga lessons will be offered free to three million civil servants and their families. Air India, the national airline, has also said it will introduce yoga for trainee pilots.\nModi, an ascetic who is a vegetarian and an enthusiastic yoga practitioner, suggested an international yoga day when he was speaking to the United Nations on a visit to New York in 2014.\nModi said that yoga is an invaluable gift of Indias ancient tradition. He said that it encourages unity of mind and body, thought and action, harmony between man and nature, and a holistic approach to health and wellbeing. He added, It is not about exercise but discovering the sense of oneness with yourself, the world and nature.\nYoga is between 3,000 and 6,000 years old. It came from somewhere on the Indian subcontinent, possibly from among religious ascetics. Its meditative practices, as well as its physical exercises, have long been associated with local religious traditions including Buddhism and Jainism, as well as Hinduism, which is practised by 80% of Indians.\nModi has been criticized before for creating a view of Indian culture that has little place for other traditions. One person called the event on 21 June a mix of cultural nationalism and commercialization.\nOthers, however, talk about a recent US court ruling that said yoga was not always linked to religion. A court in California ruled that: The practice of yoga may be religious in some contexts but yoga classes as taught in the [San Diego] district are not religious, mystical or spiritual. This ruling came after two Christian parents said they believed that yoga in schools was a Hindu exercise.\nAmish Tripathi, the author of best-selling novels set 4,000 years ago in India that retell stories from Hindu mythology, said characters in his books practise yoga.\nIn ancient India, yoga was part of daily life, both the physical and the mental aspects. Every culture has gifted something to the world and this is our gift, Tripathi said.\nSuneel Singh, a guru in south Delhi, agreed that yoga did not belong to any one religion: Is tai chi just Chinese? Is football just English? It is the same with yoga  yoga is for everybody. It is a cheap way to stay healthy.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Swiss police recently entered the Baur Au Lac hotel in Zurich at dawn and arrested 16 football officials, including five current or former FIFA executives. They were later charged with corruption in the US. The officials included the former Brazilian federation chief Ricardo Teixeira and his successor, Marco Polo Del Nero. \nThey were among 16 individuals accused of fraud and other crimes by the US Department of Justice. The US has now charged 27 defendants, including former FIFA executives. \u201cThe level of corruption is completely unacceptable,\u201d said the US Attorney General, Loretta Lynch. \nSwiss police arrested the president of the South American football confederation, the Paraguayan Juan \u00c1ngel Napout, and Alfredo Hawit, the head of the North and Central American and Caribbean governing body. Hawit started his job after Jeffrey Webb left the job in May 2015 because he was arrested. This was part of the US operation that led to a crisis at FIFA and caused Sepp Blatter to lose his job and reputation. \nThe Swiss Federal Office of Justice said of the latest arrests: \u201cThey are in custody before their extradition. The US believes they accepted bribes of millions of dollars\u201d. Webb and the Colombian former executive Luis Bedoya entered guilty pleas in the US. \nEleven current and former FIFA executives have now been charged in the investigation, which alleges $200m in bribes, mainly from TV and marketing contracts but also FIFA\u2019s development programmes. \n\u201cThe message from this announcement should be clear to everyone who hopes to escape our investigation: you will not escape,\u201d said Lynch. Teixeira, the former son-in-law of the FIFA ex-president Jo\u00e3o Havelange, was charged together with Del Nero and his predecessor Jos\u00e9 Maria Marin, who was charged in May 2015. \nFourteen men were charged in May 2015. Days later, Blatter won a fifth term as president but then agreed to leave his job as the crisis grew. He was then suspended together with the UEFA President, Michel Platini, because of an alleged \u00a31.3m payment to the Frenchman. Both men might get life bans when the FIFA ethics committee hears their case in December if they are found guilty. \nAmong 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; former Peruvian football federation president Manuel Burga; and Bolivia\u2019s football president, Carlos Chaves, already jailed in his own country. \nLynch said: \u201cThe Department of Justice really wants to end the corruption in the leadership of international football \u2013 not only because there is such a lot of corruption but also because the corruption is an insult to international principles.\u201d \nThe acting FIFA President, Issa Hayatou, refused to comment on the detail of the latest arrests. But he said neither he nor the organization was corrupt. Hayatou appeared for the first time before the media since he started the job in September, when Blatter was suspended, and said the current crisis was the fault of a few bad people. \n\u201cFIFA is not corrupt. We have some people that have shown negative behaviour. But not everyone in FIFA is corrupt,\u201d said Hayatou, president of the Confederation of African Football for more than 25 years. \u201cThere are lots of people who have been in FIFA for more than 20 or 30 years that have not been accused of anything.\u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nMuch of BB Kings best work was blues but he was always open-minded about and interested in other kinds of music. He bridged musical and cultural differences with warmth and skill. Perhaps it is too early to speak of the last of the bluesmen but it is hard to imagine that any future blues artist will match King. He in uenced thousands of musicians and millions of music fans in a career that lasted 65 years. \nRiley B King (the B did not seem to stand for a name) was born in Mississippi, the son of African-American farm workers. He learnt the basics of guitar from a family friend and perfected his singing with a quartet of gospel singers. In his early 20s, he moved to Memphis.\nWithin a couple of years, he was playing regularly at a bar in West Memphis and he also became a disc jockey, presenting a show on a Memphis radio station. His billing, The Beale Street Blues Boy, was shortened to Blues Boy King and then to BB. After a single session in 1949 for a Nashville label, King began recording for the West Coast-based Modern Records in 1950.\nHe had his  rst hit in 1952, with Three OClock Blues, which was number one in the R&B chart for 15 weeks; it was the  rst of many hits. On these and his dozens of other recordings, most of them his own compositions, King developed a style that was innovative but had its roots in blues history. He was always ready to praise the musicians who had in uenced him  he would usually mention T-Bone Walker  rst. He would also cite the earlier blues guitarists Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lonnie Johnson and the jazz players Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt.\nHe once explained that his guitar technique was partly based on his lack of skill: I started to bend notes because I could never play in the bottleneck style. I loved that sound but just couldnt do it. He was modest about his singing, too, a mixture of the style of ballad singers such as Nat King Cole and blues shouters such as Joe Turner and Dr Clayton. Probably his favourite composer and singer was Louis Jordan, whose music he commemorated in the 1999 album Let the Good Times Roll.\nThroughout the 1950s, King was the leading blues artist on an endless series of one-nighters. In 1956, he played 342 gigs. In 1962, he tried to change that working pattern by signing with a major label, ABC, but the  rst records under that contract were rather unsuccessful, both with his fans and with the record company.\nThe 1965 album Live at the Regal, however, has become iconic, a turning point in the early listening of many younger musicians. He had further R&B hits with blues numbers including How Blue Can You Get and Paying the Cost to Be the Boss, and, in 1969, he got near the top of the pop charts  where no blues artist had been for many years  with The Thrill Is Gone.\nIt took him a while to establish himself with a rock audience but he was brought to their attention by musicians who admired him. About a year and a half ago, he said in 1969, all of a sudden, kids started saying to me, Youre the greatest blues guitarist in the world. And Id say, Who told you that? And theyd say, Mike Bloom eld or Eric Clapton. I owe my new popularity to these youngsters. \nFrom then on, King was  rmly established as a leading blues artist. Guided by his manager, Sidney Seidenberg, he went on international concert tours that took him to Japan, Australia, China and Russia. He also gave concerts to prisoners at the Cook County jail in Chicago and at San Quentin, which led to his long involvement in rehabilitation programmes.\nIn 1990, King was diagnosed with diabetes and cut back his touring but his followers outside the US could still see him every year or two. He would now deliver most of his act sitting down but the strength of his singing and the  uency of his playing were almost as good as ever. The celebrations for his 80th birthday, in 2005, included an award-winning album of collaborations with Clapton, Mark Knop er, Roger Daltrey, Gloria Estefan and others, tributes from musicians as diverse as Bono, Amadou Bagayoko and Elton John, and a goodbye tour that was not a goodbye at all.\nIn 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.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"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. \nStreaming 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. \nThere 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). \nEasily 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. \u201cIt is now clear that music streaming and subscription is a mainstream model for our business,\u201d 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\u2019s 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. \nIn 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. \nDigital formats now account for 39% of all music sales, or nearly \u00a35.9bn out of \u00a315bn, and, while sales of CDs and vinyl declined steeply in 2013, they still contribute just over half the industry\u2019s 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%. \nHowever, vinyl continued to make a comeback in some markets. Sales increased by 32% in America and by 101% in the UK in 2013. \nThe 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\u2019s Prism was the best-selling album by a female artist, in sixth place behind Eminem, Justin Timberlake, Bruno Mars and Daft Punk. \nConsumer-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.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nFrom all across Rwanda, and even parts of neighbouring Burundi, people are coming to the southern town of Butare to a little shop called Inzozi Nziza (Sweet Dreams). They come for a taste of the unknown, something most have never tasted before  sweet, cold ice cream.\nHere, at the central African countrys  rst ice- cream parlour, customers can buy scoops in sweet cream, passion fruit, strawberry and pineapple  avours. Toppings include fresh fruit, honey, chocolate chips and granola. Black tea and coffee are also on sale.\nThe shop, which has ice cream, coffee, dreams written on its signs, is taking advantage of local curiosity about the dessert  and changing lives in the process, says Inzozi Nzizas manager, Louise Ingabire.\nIce cream is important, she says between mouthfuls of a honey- avoured offering. Some Rwandans like ice cream, but its a new thing. We still have some work to do, to tell others that theyll enjoy it.\nThe shop can certainly make dreams come true. I didnt have a job before: I just stayed at home. Now, I have a vision for the future. I am making money and I can give some of it to my family, says the 27-year-old.\nButare, which has 89,600 residents and is located 135km south of the capital, Kigali, is the home of the National University of Rwanda. Inzozi Nziza has become a meeting place for tired students looking to treat themselves to something cool and different.\nIts something uniting people here, Kalisa Migendo, a 24-year-old agriculture student, says. If you need to go out and talk to a friend, a girl or a boy, you come to Inzozi Nziza for an ice cream.\nMost of the ingredients are from local sources and the milk comes from nearby Nyanza. The vanilla beans and cocoa are imported.\nInzozi Nziza was opened by the theatre director Odile Gakire Katese. She met Alexis Miesen and Jennie Dundas, co-founders of Blue Marble Ice Cream in Brooklyn, New York, and formed a partnership to open the shop in 2010.\nAn ice-cream shop, Katese said, might help to put the human pieces back together by rebuilding spirits, hopes and family traditions, Miesen says.\nAt the start, Miesen and Dundas owned the shop in partnership with its staff and had shares in the business, which is a cooperative and non-pro t. After 18 months, they transferred their shares to the women, who had by then proved they could run the business.\nIce cream is new to Rwanda. Making the business successful requires a lot of skills and changing peoples way of thinking because selling and eating ice cream is not part of Rwandan culture.\nThe Butare shop employs nine women, who spend their spare time practising with Ingoma Nshya, Rwandas  rst and only female drumming group, which was established by Katese ten years ago.\nThe musicians are Hutu and Tutsi women. Some are survivors of the 1994 genocide, during which almost a million Tutsis and Hutus were killed. Some members of Ingoma Nshya are widows, some orphans.\nHistorically, says Ingabire, Rwandan women were forbidden to drum and many people considered the drums too heavy for women to carry. But its something which brings unity.\nIngabires father, two siblings and many cousins were killed in the genocide. When Im drumming, it gives me power because were still alive and survivors, she says.\nThe ice-cream parlour is in a documentary by  lm-makers Rob and Lisa Fruchtman. Sweet Dreams, which tells the story of how the women have made a promising post-genocide future, also includes the female drummers.\nThe  lm has been shown in more than a dozen countries, including the US, UK and several African states. We feel the  lm is about resilience, hope, bravery, resourcefulness and the ability to change the course of your own life, says Lisa Fruchtman.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nWill we soon live in a world where drones deliver packages? If you believe Amazon, the answer is yes. Others are not so sure: we need to make more technical progress in this area but there is also the problem of public safety.\nAmazon spokesman Paul Misener told a US congress hearing recently that his company would be ready as soon as all the rules were in place. The Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) will  nally have regulations on the commercial use of unmanned aircraft by June 2016. But the technology has a long way to go before then and larger machines arent legal yet  only drones up to 25kg will be legal. And the FAA says that, if youre going to crowd the skies with radio- controlled  ying robots, they must all use different radio frequencies that nobody can jam or hijack.\nProfessor Sajiv Singh, who runs a cargo delivery company called NearEarth, said that, to pilot a state-of-the-art drone, you simply give it some basic instructions: go to this altitude, perform this short task, go back home. But even short  ights from a mobile landing pad could cause serious logistical problems, he said.\nTheyre not going to deliver from one uninhabited place to another uninhabited place; theyre going to deliver from a warehouse to the consumer, which will probably be an urban area or a suburban area, he said. In those particular cases, there are going to be hazards that the vehicle is going to have to see. Maybe there will be terrain that the map doesnt know about. Then, maybe theres construction equipment that wasnt there before but is there now. Maybe GPS signals are blocked, in which case its going to have an incorrect idea about where it is. All these problems can be solved, he said  but its dif cult.\nOne major problem is maintaining radio contact with a drone and planning for what happens if that contact breaks. If you have an off-the-shelf UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle], itll just keep going and crash into the ground, said roboticist Daniel Huber.\nFurthermore, you cant do everything with a 25kg aircraft, said Jay McConville, director of business development for unmanned systems at Lockheed Martin. People in the aircraft business have to remind ourselves that the operator doesnt really care about every little thing about the aircraft and wants instead to focus on the end result, he said. Operators want to see vehicle status information; they want to see video on their handheld device or their laptop.\nTechnologically, most of the things that we need for this are in place, said Huber. He is working on a program to allow drones to inspect infrastructure  pipelines, telephone lines, bridges and so on. Weve developed an exploration algorithm where you draw a box around an area and it will  y around that area and look at every surface and then report back.\nHuber, who works on 3D systems imagery, said about Amazon: I have heard them say that many packages are lightweight  a drone can carry a kilogram for 15 minutes. If you have a vehicle that can go into a neighbourhood, it can deliver from that base. You need a 15-minute distance and typical off-the-shelf drones have that distance. Its one way, he said, of making sure the surrounding population is relatively safe. The larger you get, the more dangerous you get.\nProblems with the use of drones can be solved in some very dramatic ways, Huber said. At a recent conference, he said, a disaster relief drone company demonstrated a robot that could take off and, when it got tired, land on its own charging station and exchange its batteries.\nOf course, safety is still a major concern  Singh says that, for a commercial aircraft to be allowed to  y, it has to prove a rate of one serious failure every one million hours. Drones, he said, are a long way from that. The Reaper drone has one failure in 10,000 hours, Singh said. But they dont consider an oil leak a catastrophic failure  something has to fall out of the sky.\nPart of the reason for this is that air travel is dangerous so standards are much higher. If you  y commercial airlines, they often say, Oh, a component has failed  we have to go back to the gate, Singh said. And thats an established industry with 60 years of legacy! I hate to think that a drone might come down on a busy road. Part of the solution, Singh said, is planning for every situation: If things fail, the vehicle has to do something reasonable.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"A thick crust of bird droppings is piled on the gilded balustrade of one of Britain\u2019s most expensive properties. Pigeon skeletons lie among shattered mirrors and water streams through broken cornicing. This is The Towers, a \u00a330m palace in \u201cBillionaires\u2019 Row\u201d in north London, whose spectacular ruin has been kept secret until now. \nIt is one of ten mansions in the middle of The Bishops Avenue \u2013 the heart of London\u2019s spiralling property market \u2013 that have stood almost entirely vacant since they were bought a quarter of a century ago, it is believed on behalf of members of the Saudi Arabian royal family. Their Grecian columns are cracking into pieces and mosaic-tiled swimming pools are filled with rubble. Nature has taken over to the extent that owls have moved in. \nIt is a desolate scene repeated up and down the supposedly prestigious avenue that Lloyds Bank has calculated is the second most expensive street in Britain. While more and more people struggle to get on to London\u2019s property ladder as house prices rise at 11.2% a year, 16 mansions on the most expensive stretch of The Bishops Avenue are sitting empty, many behind padlocked gates, with their windows shuttered with steel grilles and overgrown grounds patrolled by guard dogs. \nAcross the street stands another derelict mansion, worth \u00a318m, with smashed windows and walls coated in anti-climb paint. Metal grilles block the windows of another, which has been sold for \u00a320m. \nBut that doesn\u2019t stop the prices going up. Dryades, a mansion until recently owned by a Pakistani politician, sold for \u00a312m in 2007 and is believed to be worth about \u00a330m today. Heath Lodge, the scene of the 1984 murder, by silver bullet, of fashion tycoon Aristos Constantinou, is worth \u00a313m today, after having been sold in the late 1970s for \u00a3400,000. \nThe dereliction can be agonizing for people struggling to keep a roof above their heads in one of the world\u2019s most expensive cities. One security guard working on the avenue said it was exasperating to see so many tens of thousands of square feet of property \u2013 enough to house dozens of people \u2013 falling apart. \nRoyals flushed with oil wealth from Nigeria and Saudi Arabia were among the first to come to this curving road near Hampstead Heath. Iranians fled here after the fall of the shah. Now, Chinese house hunters are following Russians and Kazakhs who have spent millions securing an address estate agents tell them is as world famous as the Champs Elys\u00e9es and Rodeo Drive. Recently, two mansions have been on sale for \u00a365m and \u00a338m, promising endless Italian marble, leather-padded lifts and luxury panic rooms. \nHowever, in the grounds of the empty mansions, stone fountains crumble and lawns have become bogs. Inside one, water drips through a huge crystal chandelier onto a thick carpet rotting under sections of collapsed ceiling. Moss grows through shattered bricks and mirrored tiles are scattered across a bathroom. The swimming pool is filled with a foot of brackish water and has flowers growing through its tiles. Wooden slats bulge away from the sauna. \nBut it is the wreck of The Towers, a grand mansion set among acres of hornbeams, oaks and limes, that is most dramatic, with its huge, high-ceiling halls occupied by pigeons and its walls turned bright green by algae as water pours through three storeys and plinks into a vast, empty, basement swimming pool. Unopened wooden crates marked \u201cbullet- proof glass\u201d reveal the security fears of the previous owners. \nToday, very few people live on The Bishops Avenue full time. A security guard patrolling the pavement outside one mansion said that the owners were not there. Another, outside Royal Mansion, declined to say if anyone was home, while a member of staff at another mansion simply warned the Guardian about the guard dogs. Magdy Adib Ishak-Hannah, an Egyptian-born private healthcare mogul, whose personal wealth is \u00a345m, said he was in the minority of permanent residents. \n\u201cIt\u2019s not a neighbourly place, where you can chat over the fence,\u201d he said. \u201cTo be honest, I have never seen what my neighbours look like. Next door, a Saudi princess spent \u00a335m on a new house and I\u2019ve never seen her. There are about three houses that are lived in 24\/7 and half of the properties are occupied three to six months a year. The other half, who knows if they come or not?\u201d \nThe multimillion-pound wrecks are evidence of a property culture in which the world\u2019s richest people see British property as investments. One Hyde Park, a block of apartments in Knightsbridge, is another example where more than half the flats are registered with the council as empty or second homes. \nNevertheless, the talk on the avenue is about building \u00a35m apartments, instead of \u00a350m mansions, in an effort to draw people back. \nAnil Varma, a local property developer, has decided to rebuild one of the most valuable sites on the avenue as a collection of 20 apartments with a concierge, maid service, 25-metre pool, spa and cinema. \n\u201cIf you build a big house and try and sell for \u00a330m to \u00a340m, it won\u2019t sell,\u201d he said. \u201cLocals won\u2019t buy and so you have to bring in overseas buyers.\u201d \nBut the prospect of the avenue\u2019s empty property being used to help solve the housing crisis remains distant. Andrew Harper, a local Conservative councillor, laughed when asked whether some of the derelict housing could become affordable homes. He said the land price would be prohibitive. \n\u201cVery wealthy people own property there,\u201d he said. \u201cSometimes they live in them and sometimes they don\u2019t.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Not many exercise classes have a tea break in the middle. But Margaret Allen\u2019s class has one. After a gentle warm-up and a few quick exercises, the 93-year-old great-grandmother lets her group sit down and relax with a cup of tea. Some of the eight people in the class look like they need a break, but Allen is not even sweating. \nThe general rule is that eating just before doing sport is not a good idea and especially not halfway through the class. But, on the afternoon I visit Allen\u2019s class in Saltburn-by-the-Sea, they eat fruitcake during the break. The cake was made for Allen\u2019s recent birthday by her 89-year-old sister, Joan. \nThe ladies have just finished their cake when Allen gets up again. She plays a lively Scottish song and there is lots of toe pointing and leg kicking. Forty-five minutes later, the class is finally over. \nAllen has been leading classes in the north-east town for 45 years. She wasn\u2019t very sporty at school, but she started playing the piano for a keep-fit class during the second world war and started leading the class in her 40s when the old instructor retired. \nAt one time, Allen\u2019s class had more than 18 regulars, each paying \u00a31 a time. But, these days, the group is getting smaller. During the tea break, the ladies discuss a funeral that most of them went to that week for one of the younger people in the group who died recently, aged 68. \nAllen, who loves dancing, has never done any formal training to be a fitness instructor. Instead, she got ideas for her own moves from five fitness videos from the BBC. Allen thinks she is healthy because she keeps busy, especially since her husband died in 1997. She started writing poetry when she was 80. \nAllen is the oldest, her sister the second oldest. The baby of the group is 60-year-old Jean Cunion, who is a bit embarrassed to say that she is perhaps the least fit of the group. \u201cI remember, the first time I came, Margaret said, 'Who\u2019s that breathing heavily?' and I had to say it was me.\u201d Ruth Steere, 76, says Allen always has her back to the class, but she always knows what\u2019s happening: \u201cShe always shouts at us if we go wrong. She\u2019s very good at knowing what we are doing.\u201d \n\u201cI write poems about everything. I just can\u2019t stop,\u201d she says, when she phones me a few days after the interview to read out a poem she has written about the joys of exercise. She still plays the piano and gives speeches. She also did a computer course when she was 88. \nAgeing is no fun, she says. She reads me a few lines from a poem she has written called \u2019That Beast Called Age\u2019. She happily remembers a doctor who saw her for the first time a few years ago, who said he didn\u2019t believe she was more than 78: \u201cI said, 'Thank you, doctor. You can go now.'\u201d She also has a practical idea for people who are overweight: \u201cI just think people shouldn\u2019t eat too much. When I hear someone say, 'Oh, I can\u2019t lose weight', I say: 'Sellotape.'\u201d She mimes taping her mouth shut. \u201cI said this the other day to a big fat man. Everything in moderation is my motto.\u201d Earlier in 2013, Allen was watching the news and saw a woman get the British Empire Medal. \u201cThe woman said: 'I\u2019m 80 and I\u2019m the oldest fitness instructor in the country!' I thought: 'No, you\u2019re not.'\u201d But Allen won\u2019t write to the Queen to complain.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"George W Bush, Benedict Cumberbatch and Stephen Hawking have done it. David Cameron, Barack Obama and Pamela Anderson have refused to do it. The Ice Bucket Challenge began in the US in July. It has raised $100 million for the ALS Association, an American motor neurone disease charity, and \u00a34.5 million for a British charity, as well as thousands of pounds for charities in Hong Kong and Australia. \nBut some people are unhappy with the Ice Bucket Challenge. Animal-rights groups and environmentalists (people who want to protect the natural world) have criticized it. Some people say it wastes water. Other people criticize it because some people enjoy the fun and then do not donate anything to charity. \nBut the challenge continues to grow. If you don\u2019t know how it works, someone gives a short speech to camera about the charity, then throws a bucket of ice cubes in water over their head or asks a friend to do it. Then, they give the names of three other people who have to do the same or donate money to the charity. \nIt was an unlucky coincidence that the Ice Bucket Challenge was happening during World Water Week, when people from all over the world met in Stockholm to discuss the planet\u2019s water crisis. The charity WaterAid is asking people to use recycled water from their baths or rainwater from their gardens, or to use sea water. \nDouglas Graham, of the UK Motor Neurone Association, said: \u201cWe are not surprised about the criticism but this is a wonderful windfall and we\u2019re so grateful. We didn\u2019t expect it but, suddenly, the donations just started.\u201d The money is a very big help to a small charity that looks after sufferers of a terrible disease that has no cure and kills five people a day in the UK. \nFormer Baywatch star and animal-rights activist Pamela Anderson wrote a public letter to the ALS Association. In the letter, she said that she did not like the charity\u2019s use of animal experimentation. \nA few US stars have rejected the challenge because of California\u2019s drought. Actor Matt Damon solved the problem by using water from his toilet. Actor Verne Troyer used milk, also for environmental reasons. And some people say the challenge caused a water shortage on the Scottish island of Colonsay. \nAnother criticism is that small charities won\u2019t know what to do with the extra money but the MND Association rejects this. \u201cOh, we know what to do with the extra money here,\u201d said Graham. \u201cWe pay for research to find the causes of the disease, and a treatment or cure. We give care and support to 3,500 people and they need it because this disease is expensive to manage. More than 50% of people with the disease die within two years.\u201d \nBut, for many people with a connection to the disease, the awareness that the challenge has created is as important as the money. Normally, the MND Association gets about 300,000 hits a year on its website. On just one day recently, it had 330,000 hits. \n\u201cIt is great to donate to any charity. I understand that some people might want to donate to a different charity,\u201d said Graham. \u201cIn 2013, British people gave \u00a362 billion to charity \u2013 we should be proud of that. It\u2019s fabulous for us to get this windfall. Over the next few weeks, we will decide how to spend the money in the best way.\u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"The business idea is to produce a cheap light that gets free power from gravity and could end the use of dangerous kerosene lamps in Africa and India. \nBut when British designer, Patrick Hunt, tried to get money from banks or venture capitalists to help start his business, he hit a problem. \u201cWe tried to get funding, but it\u2019s slow and difficult and nobody wants to take a risk,\u201d he said. \nSo he tried crowdfunding on a US website, Indiegogo, which has recently opened up in the UK. Within five days, he made \u00a336,200. His campaign was so popular that within 40 days he had made \u00a3400,000 from the public. \nA 10kg bag of rocks is attached to the light, lifted to a height of about two metres, and while it slowly falls to the ground it makes enough power for half an hour of light. \nHunt is one of a new group of entrepreneurs who are trying to get money from the fast-growing crowdfunding industry to start their businesses. Another new crowdfunding site is InvestingZone. It matches wealthy people with entrepreneurs. \nOn Indiegogo, users can offer \u201cperks\u201d for different levels of investment \u2013 for example, people who helped to fund Hunt\u2019s light could feel good about helping someone who is less rich, but they also got one of his lights as a present. \nFor Danae Ringelmann, who started Indiegogo, the \u201cgravity light\u201d is a perfect example of how crowdfunding can work and how it can test an entrepreneur\u2019s idea. a European service. It says it is very popular in Britain. International activity has increased by 41% since December. \nThere are other crowdfunding sites, such as Kickstarter, Seedrs and Funding Circle, but Indiegogo is the only crowdfunding site where anyone can start a campaign. No project is too crazy for Indiegogo. \nThe site charges a 4% fee for successful campaigns. Entrepreneurs who do not find the amount of money they wanted to find can either pay back all the money or keep all the money but pay a 9% fee. \nA British woman made \u00a3100,000 to open a \u201ccat caf\u00e9\u201d in London through the site. It will be called Lady Dinah\u2019s Cat Emporium, but it is not open yet. It will be somewhere people can \u201ccome in from the cold to a comfortable chair, a hot cup of tea, a book and a cat\u201d. \nWith her Wall Street background and the experience of helping 100,000 businesses and services find money, Ringelmann has good advice for entrepreneurs. \n\u201cIdeas are a dime a dozen. What is important is how you make your idea happen. If you are afraid that someone will steal your idea, and that that person will make your idea happen better and faster than you, then you are not the right person to make the idea happen. It\u2019s all about confidence to move fast and to learn,\u201d she says. \nCrowdfunding as an alternative to banks has grown, but, at the moment, big-bucks investors with lots of money are not very interested. That could start to change in the UK when people start using InvestingZone.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nUntil the end, David Bowie, who has died of cancer, was still full of surprises. His latest album, Blackstar, appeared on his 69th birthday on 8 January 2016 and proved that he hadnt lost his gift for making dramatic statements as well as challenging, disturbing music.\nThroughout the 1970s, Bowie was a trailblazer of musical trends and pop fashion. He became a singer-songwriter, a pioneer of glam-rock, then got into what he called plastic soul, before moving to Berlin to create innovative electronic music. His ability to mix brilliant changes of sound and image is unique in pop history.\nBowie was born David Robert Jones in south London. In 1953, the family moved to Kent, where David showed talent for singing and playing the recorder. Later, he studied art, music and design.\nAt 15, David formed his first band, the Kon-rads. It was clear that Davids talents and ambition meant that he should go solo. David took the name Bowie to avoid confusion with Davy Jones of the Monkees.\nBowies first album, released in June 1967, was titled simply David Bowie. In July 1969, Bowie released Space Oddity, the song that would give him his first commercial breakthrough. Timed to coincide with the Apollo 11 moon landing, it was a top five UK hit.\nIn March 1970, Bowie married art student, Angela Barnett. The Man Who Sold the World was released in the US in late 1970 and in the UK the following year. With its daring songwriting and broody, hard-rock sound, it was the first album to really show his writing and performing gifts. The albums themes included immortality, insanity, murder and mysticism, which showed that Bowie was a songwriter who was thinking outside of pops usual boundaries.\nHe followed it with 1972s Hunky Dory, a mix of wordy, elaborate songwriting. It was an excellent collection that met with only moderate success but that all changed with The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars later that year.\nThis time, Bowie appeared as a science-fiction character  an intergalactic glam-rock star visiting planet Earth. The hit single Starman brought instant success for the album.\nEverything Bowie touched turned to gold. He had his first UK number 1 album with Aladdin Sane (1973), which included the hit singles The Jean Genie and Drive-in Saturday. But Bowie was already planning his next career moves.\nHis increasing interest in funk and soul music could be heard on the album Young Americans (1975), which gave him a US chart-topper with Fame (with John Lennon as a guest vocalist).\nWith the album Station to Station (1976), Bowie introduced a new persona, the Thin White Duke. This persona was the same as his role as a sad space traveller in Nicolas Roegs film The Man Who Fell to Earth.\nBowies relationship with his wife had been suffering under the pressures of success and the couple divorced in 1980. This was a year of further creative triumph, bringing a fine album, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), and its chart-topping single, Ashes to Ashes, followed by a period playing the title role in The Elephant Man on the Broadway stage.\nHe achieved a number 1 single with his 1981 partnership with Queen, Under Pressure, and became increasingly involved with different media. He appeared in the German movie Christiane F (1981) and wrote music for the soundtrack. He had another chart hit with Cat People (Putting Out Fire) from Paul Schraders movie Cat People (1982).\n1983 was the year in which he put his energy into the album Lets Dance and follow-up concerts. Lets Dance turned Bowie into a crowd-friendly global rock star, with the album and its singles Lets Dance, China Girl and Modern Love all becoming huge international hits.\nThis was the heyday of MTV and Bowies talent for eye-catching videos increased his popularity, while the six-month Serious Moonlight tour drew massive crowds. It was to be the most commercially successful period of his career.\nAt the 1985 Live Aid famine relief concert at Wembley Stadium, Bowie was one of the best performers. In addition, that year, he teamed up with Mick Jagger to record the fundraising single Dancing in the Street, which quickly went to number 1.\nA few days after his appearance at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert at Wembley Stadium in April 1992, Bowie married the Somalian model Iman and the couple bought a home in New York.\nFor the album Black Tie White Noise (1993), he included elements of soul, electronica and hip hop. It topped the UK album chart and gave him a top 10 single, Jump They Say.\nNew media and technology influenced his recordings, too. His 1999 album Hours was based around music he had written for a computer game called Omikron, in which Bowie and Iman appeared as characters. The birth of Bowie and Imans daughter, Alexandria, followed in August 2000.\nAs an adopted New Yorker, Bowie was the opening act at the Concert for New York City in October 2001, where he joined Paul McCartney, Jon Bon Jovi, Billy Joel, the Who and Elton John in a benefit show six weeks after the 9\/11 attacks.\nDuring his Reality tour in 2004, Bowie had chest pains while performing in Germany and needed emergency surgery in Hamburg.\nHe saw the medical emergency as a warning and started to slow down. In February 2006, he was given a Grammy lifetime achievement award. He was entered into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.\nThe Next Day (2013) was his first album of new material in a decade. It included the single Where Are We Now?, which gave him his first UK top 10 hit since 1993. The album went to the top of the charts in Britain and around the world. In 2014, Bowie was given the Brit Award for Best British Male, making him the oldest person to get the award.\nHe is survived by Iman, their daughter, Alexandria, his stepdaughter, Zulekha, and his son, Duncan, from his first marriage.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nAccording to a group of experts, bogus allergy tests are convincing thousands of people to take unnecessary treatments and put themselves or their children on inadequate diets. This can result in malnutrition. Allergies and food intolerances are increasing rapidly but confusion between the two, as well as misdiagnosis, are causing real harm, said the charity Sense About Science, which has produced a guide with the help of allergy specialists.\nIts probably the biggest mess for science communication  there are myths, misinterpreted studies and bad medical practice. All this results in under- and over-diagnosis, said Tracey Brown, director of Sense About Science. The costs are huge  unnecessary actions for some and not enough action for those whose lives depend on it.\nExperts fear that restaurants and caterers hear so many people say that they have allergies (which can be dangerous for the individual), when in fact they have a food intolerance (which is not dangerous), that they may not take all the precautions they should take when serving a person who has a genuine allergy.\nIt matters very much, said Moira Austin of a charity that supports people suffering from anaphylaxis. If a caterer thinks somebody is just avoiding a food because they dont want to get bloated, they may be less careful. There have been a number of fatalities where people have gone to a restaurant, told staff that they have an allergy to a particular food and the meal has been served up containing that allergen.\nThe guide says most internet and shop-bought allergy tests have no scientific basis. They include a home-testing kit that looks for specific immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies against foods in the blood. These antibodies are part of the immune systems response to infections but the best medical evidence has shown that high IgG levels do not suggest an allergy, the guide says. Results are often positive in people who do not have an allergy or a food intolerance.\nAlso unscientific is another test, a mixture of acupuncture and homeopathy. It attempts to measure electronic resistance across the skin while the child or adult holds the suspect food in their hand. Hair sample testing is also pointless, the guide says. Hair is not involved in allergic reactions so testing hair samples cannot provide any useful information on allergies.\nI commonly see children who have been put on to unnecessarily restricted diets. Their parents assume, in good faith, that they have allergies to multiple foods because of allergy tests that have no scientific basis, said Paul Seddon, a paediatric allergist. This needs to stop, which can only happen if we prove these tests are unscientific.\nAnother paediatric allergist, Adam Fox said: I get a number of patients who come in after sending their hair off for analysis or after excluding a whole range of foods for their children. It is very difficult to deal with that. There are two challenges. Children need to be given proper diets but it is the unnecessary avoidance of things that arent harmful that has a huge impact on the quality of life. A child who cant eat wheat or drink milk cant go to parties.\nThe belief that a childs chronic lack of energy or headaches or eczema are caused by an allergy takes a long time and many tests to prove or disprove. It is tempting to go to an alternative therapist who will do one test and provide a quick, but wrong, answer.\nAllergies are increasing in developed countries. The percentages of children diagnosed with allergic rhinitis and eczema have both trebled in the last 30 years. This is leading many more people to suspect allergies are the reason for their own or their childrens health problems. The guide lists a number of myths about the sources of allergies, from the suggestion that they are caused by E numbers in food colourings to toxic overload and fast food.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nWhen Larry Pizzi first heard about electric bikes nearly 20 years ago, he asked: Why would anyone want to screw up a bike by putting a motor and batteries on it?\nIts a question that still puzzles some people. Bicycle shops in the US do not usually sell e-bikes, even though they have been around since the late 1990s.\nPizzi, who is now CEO of Currie Technologies, the number one seller of e-bikes in the US, believes thats about to change. Others in the bike industry agree. Familiar brands including Trek, Raleigh and Specialized all offer electric models and they believe that the market is about to take off.\nThe US is different from other countries when it comes to electric bikes. Nearly 32m e-bikes were sold in 2014, most of them in China, where they are mostly used for transportation. They are popular in much of Europe, too. Theyre common in the Netherlands and Switzerland; German postal workers use them to get around and BMW offers one for about $3,000.\nElectric bikes are different from motorcycles or mopeds, which rely on motorized power; they are bicycles that can be pedalled with  or without  help from an electric motor. Riding an e-bike feels like riding a normal bike with a strong wind behind you; the motor just helps you go faster or climb hills. Unlike mopeds, e-bicycles are usually permitted on bike paths and they cant travel faster than 20mph.\nTo succeed, the electric bike business in the US must overcome legal, cultural and financial obstacles. E-bikes are banned in some states, including New York. Some people who own and work in bike shops dont like putting motors on bicycles  one of the reasons is the extra weight. Some e-bikes weigh nearly 30kg.\nE-bikes are also expensive. While cheaper models sell for as little as $700, Court Rye, the founder and editor of ElectricBikeReview.com, a popular website, says riders should expect to pay at least $1,500 for a quality e-bike with a good battery. The best models cost more than twice that.\nThe companies that make and sell e-bikes say they can overcome those obstacles. E-bike technology, particularly the batteries, is improving. Batteries are getting smaller, theyre getting lighter, theyre getting more reliable and they are lasting longer, says Don DiCostanza, the founder and CEO of Pedego, an electric bikemaker and retailer.\nCompanies like Bosch, the German electronics giant, and Shimano, the leading manufacturer of bicycle gears, are entering the business. This should help lower the resistance from bike shops. This has really caught the attention and the imagination of bicycle dealers, says Curries Larry Pizzi. Pedego and startup ElectroBike arent waiting for the shops to come around; they are building their own stores.\nPerhaps most importantly, more cities are building cycling infrastructure including bike lanes so bicycle commuting has become more popular. As the US Census Bureau reported in 2014, the number of bike commuters grew from about 488,000 in 2000 to 786,000 in 2012. Electric bikes make commuting more practical  and fun  by reducing worry about hills, headwinds, tiredness and sweat.\nMost of our customers are ageing baby boomers who want to have the cycling experience they had as a kid, says Pedegos Don DiCostanza. The main reason they stopped riding bikes was because of hills. Pedego has opened nearly 60 stores in the US and it has sold bikes to tour companies in San Francisco and Washington, DC.\nElectroBike, which operates 30 stores in Mexico, opened its first American store in Venice Beach, California in the autumn of 2014 and hopes to grow to 25 US stores in a year. CEO Craig Anderson says: We want to help reduce traffic, help reduce our carbon footprint and encourage a healthy lifestyle. He tells customers: Ride this once and try not to smile.\nStartups like Pedego and ElectroBike will have to compete with big companies like Trek and Currie, which, in 2012, was acquired by the Accell Group, a public company based in the Netherlands that is Europes market leader in e-bikes. Accell owns the Raleigh brand, as well as Haibike, an award-winning German electric bike.\nAccell has great hopes for e-bikes in North America, Curries Larry Pizzi says. While baby boomers are still very important, were finding that a lot of younger people are using e-bikes for transportation, instead of cars.\nAccells Yuba brand even sells a cargo bike with a stronger motor and rear rack. You can carry two children, says Pizzi. You can carry 45kg of shopping. Its a minivan alternative.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"To a master traditional navigator like Tua Pittman from Raratonga in the Cook Islands, a canoe is much more than just a means of transport. \u201cThe canoe is our island, the crew members are the community and the navigator is the leader,\u201d Pittman says. He continues, explaining that the converse is also true. \u201cAn island is our canoe, the community are the crew members and the politicians and leaders are the navigators. On a canoe, you are not just going from one destination to another using the stars, the moon, the sun and the birds. Navigation is using the philosophies of being a leader to show your crew members the light of life.\u201d \nIt has been a whirlwind week for the crews of the flotilla of four sailing canoes since arriving in Sydney for the start of the World Parks Congress. Tua\u2019s journey began at the Cook Islands on 25 September. The first leg took the islanders to Samoa, then Fiji, Vanuatu and onto the Gold Coast, before heading south to Sydney. Around 100 crew members were involved in the various stages of the voyage and they aimed to travel using only traditional navigation techniques. Unfortunately, said Tua, the crews were forced to rely on modern navigation equipment on some occasions to reach Australia in time for the Congress. \nThe official title of the expedition is the Mua Voyage and it is a partnership between the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Oceania Regional Office and five Pacific Island countries: Samoa, Tonga, New Zealand, the Cook Islands and Fiji. The main goal of the 6,000-nautical-mile (11,000km) trip was to deliver a special message to the World Parks Congress. \nIn part, the message said: \u201cWe see the signs of overexploitation. We no longer see the fish and other marine creatures in the size, diversity or abundance of the past. We witness the change as foreign fishing fleets ply our waters in a race to strip our resources. Our coral reefs, the greatest in the world, and our mangrove and wetland spawning grounds are disappearing. Our ocean is vast but not limitless. Growing global populations and the relentless pursuit of unsustainable development are reducing the ability of our ocean to sustain life.\u201d \nIn spite of the effort and urgency behind the Pacific Islanders\u2019 message to the delegates of the Congress, much of the final days of the marine part of the Congress were taken up with trying to set a revised target for the amount of the ocean that needs to be protected in marine sanctuaries. According to the IUCN, as of 2013, the amount of the world\u2019s oceans in marine protected areas was not even three per cent and less than one per cent of that is \u2019no take\u2019. This was despite a target of 20-30% no-take areas set by the last World Parks Congress held in South Africa in 2003. \nWorld-leading marine scientist Professor Callum Roberts from the University of York was one of the scientists who helped set the 20-30% target in 2003. But he said it was not enough. \u201cThe IUCN should now lift its target from 30 to 33%. New research strengthens the case for the 30% target set previously to now be raised. Any reduction in efforts at this stage and moment in history would be disastrous for our oceans.\u201d \nAfter difficult negotiations, the World Parks Congress delegates passed a motion that will dramatically shift the goals for global marine management. Instead of the 20-30% aspirational target, the IUCN\u2019s new official position is to \u201curgently increase the ocean area that is effectively and equitably managed in ecologically representative and well-connected systems of MPAs [marine protected areas] or other effective conservation measures by 2030; these should include strictly protected areas that amount to at least 30% of each marine habitat and address both biodiversity and ecosystem services.\u201d \nTua Pittman was delighted with the news that a strong resolution on the planet\u2019s oceans had passed the Congress. \u201cIt\u2019s just like a huge reward for all the effort that we made to be here and to be heard. To hear they made that resolution is fantastic. It\u2019s a step in the right direction.\u201d He says that, while much of the traditional navigational aids were things such as the sun, moon and stars that never changed and would, at least on a human scale, always be there, other impacts of environmental degradation were becoming clearer when voyaging across the Pacific. \nHe said he was 55 and, in his lifetime, he was already beginning to see that it was much harder to catch fish on the open ocean. He also said that pollution was worsening, particularly as the canoes approached big cities such as Sydney. And the effects of climate change were already beginning to impact seriously on Pacific Islanders. \u201cThe decisions of the big countries have twice, thrice, four times the impact on the small countries than on developed, large nations. Many times, people don\u2019t even know where our islands are and, from the eyes of a traditional navigator, our people have a very, very deep concern because we are talking about decisions made far away that impact on our homes.\u201d \nThe Mua Voyage had been a massive logistical undertaking, said Tua. Years of preparation and navigational planning went into such a trip and it was critical to the voyagers that the world listened to their message and acted. The leaders of wealthy countries, he went on, need to start to think more like traditional navigators who recognize their vessels are mere specks in an enormous sea. Most importantly, and spoken like a true navigator, Tua says politicians must seek a different route to avoid the pending ecological crises that are beginning to befall the small island nations. \u201cThe world needs to find a different path.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Dame Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer for England, has likened the problem of antibiotic resistance to the risks presented by international terrorism. While this might sound like an exaggeration, the threat was actually, if anything, understated. Each year, the global number of deaths to which bacterial resistance contributes far outstrips those caused by terrorist attacks. \nWhile it is difficult to track the global impact of antibiotic resistance across all bacterial species, the World Health Organization estimates that for tuberculosis alone multi-drug resistance accounts for more than 150,000 deaths each year. Antibiotic resistance is no longer an abstract risk: this is now a war. \nIn the past hundred years, our expectations of life and survival have changed beyond all recognition. At the beginning of the twentieth century, life expectancy in the UK stood at around 47 years of age for a man and 50 for a woman, a number heavily affected by the very high rate of infant mortality in those days. Around a third of all deaths occurred in children under the age of five, largely because of infectious disease. \nIn contrast, a child born in Britain today has a better than one in four chance of reaching their 100th birthday. For this we have public health systems, vaccination and antibiotics to thank. It is by these means \u2013 the prevention and treatment of illnesses caused by microorganisms \u2013 that the real war against disease is principally won. \nElsewhere, we have pushed the limits of survival, notably in intensive care. This, the specialism in which I chose to train, is where antibiotic resistant organisms are most prevalent. Here, powerful antibiotics, essential in the treatment of life-threatening illness, are used routinely. These drugs decimate ordinary bacteria. But what they leave behind are hardy species that have begun to learn tricks that allow them to evade antibiotic drugs. \nAs a newly qualified doctor in the late 1990s, I learnt about Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus \u2013 the infamous MRSA \u2013 a bacterial species resistant to methicillin and all other penicillins. In the fight against it, there were a handful of exotic-sounding drugs \u2013 vancomycin and teicoplanin among them. These were supposed to be our last lines of defence, but antibiotic resistant bacteria became more and more common; as did species with new patterns of resistance. Drugs we had previously barely heard of became commonplace. New last-line drugs emerged to replace the old. We got used to this state of affairs; a steady escalation in the arms race between us and the bacteria. \nBut the balance has been shifting steadily. In our hospitals and our GP surgeries we have abused the drugs that gave us such a huge advantage over infectious disease, using them too often and too indiscriminately. And some of the worst abuses have occurred outside of healthcare, with antibiotics introduced into the food chain, through agriculture and the lacing of livestock feed with anti-bacterial drugs. We assumed that antibiotic therapy was an advantage we could enjoy forever. We became complacent that the pharmaceutical industry would continue to stay ahead of the game. \nBut this is no longer the case. New, more resistant species have been identified. The vancomycin that we used to rely on to treat MRSA infection was defeated. Vancomycin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (VRSA) emerged in our hospitals. And other bacterial species were learning the same trick. Enterobacteria, organisms usually found in the gut, had also acquired vancomycin resistance. Today, infections with formidable, highly resistant organisms are commonplace and the pharmaceutical industry is not keeping pace. Fewer and fewer new anti-microbial drugs are emerging from their production lines. It is becoming increasingly difficult to develop new drugs active against resistant strains. For every method of attack the pharmaceutical companies invent, bacteria rapidly evolve a defence. All of the simple approaches to the problem have been exhausted. \nAntibiotics have become drugs that are expensive to develop, that are only used in short courses and that quickly become ineffective due to the evolution of bacterial resistance. Consequently, the pharmaceutical industry\u2019s incentive to manufacture new drugs that can fight them is low. \nAlmost as soon as antibiotic use became widespread in the 1940s, the first evidence of bacteria resistance to antimicrobial therapy emerged. Initially, these were little more than curiosities. When they did infect patients, the numbers were so small that at first they were not enough to warrant much attention. But today, they have become a fact of medical life. Less than a century after the discovery of penicillin, we are beginning to lose the fight. \nSince the first MRSA deaths in otherwise healthy children in the US in 1998, the number of deaths from MRSA infection in the US each year has risen to tens of thousands \u2013 outstripping the number of deaths caused by AIDS. Bacterial resistance in hospitals is everywhere you look. This is a war like no other. There needs to be cultural change in our prescribing behaviours and more restraint in the use of antibiotics in farming and agriculture. And somehow, the pharmaceutical companies have to be convinced to chase the development of these less profitable drugs. \nWithin my working lifetime, the pattern of antibiotic resistance in healthcare has transformed from a rare but notable event to a problem of epidemic proportion. If we are to avoid a return to the pre-antibiotic time with all its excess mortality, we must be bold. To squander the advantage we have so recently gained against microorganisms in the fight for life would be unthinkable.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Imagine that you read a headline 'Fit in four minutes' in a health magazine. Would you believe it? Well, Dr Izumi Tabata\u2019s training programme \u2013 20 seconds of intensive effort, ten seconds of rest, repeat eight times \u2013 promises that it is possible to be fit with just 88 minutes of training a week. \nTabata remembers the first time he tested his training system on his university students in the early 1990s. \u201cAfter four minutes\u2019 hard exercise they were completely exhausted. They were almost dead! But after six weeks they saw the results and were surprised. We all were surprised.\u201d \nTabata created his training programme after he watched Japan\u2019s speed skating team in the early 1990s. He saw that short bursts of very hard exercise were as effective as hours of normal exercise. Tabata tried to prove this with a simple experiment. One group of students did an hour of cardiovascular exercise on an exercise bike five times a week. The other group did a ten-minute warm-up on the bike, then four minutes of Tabata training, four times a week \u2013 plus one 30-minute session of exercise with two minutes of Tabata. \nThe results were very surprising. After six weeks of testing, the group who did Tabata\u2019s plan \u2013 exercising for just 88 minutes a week \u2013 increased their anaerobic capacity by 28% and their VO 2 max by 15%. The other group, who trained for five hours every week, also improved their VO 2 max, but only by 10%. But their training had no effect on their anaerobic capacity. \nBut you have to work very, very hard. You can\u2019t sit on a machine, chewing gum and reading HELLO! magazine. You have to do intensive bursts of activity on an exercise bike or rowing machine, explosive bodyweight exercises, sprints and so on. Remember how you felt after doing a 100m sprint at school? Imagine doing eight sprints with only a ten-second break between them. \n\u201cFull effort at 170% of your VO 2 max is the basis of the programme,\u201d says Tabata. \u201cIf you feel OK afterwards you\u2019ve not done it properly. The first three repetitions will feel easy but the last two will feel impossible. In the original plan, we wanted eight repetitions, but some people could only do six or seven.\u201d \nOne person on an online forum wrote: \u201cMost people cannot do it correctly and they shouldn\u2019t even try.\u201d Tabata doesn\u2019t completely agree. \u201cEveryone can do it but beginners should start with educated trainers so that they don\u2019t work too hard,\u201d he explains. He also says that his programme burns an extra 150 calories in the 12 hours after exercise. Most people use it to get fit or to get even fitter, but the programme also burns fat. \nSo, it\u2019s a little surprising that at the moment only serious athletes are doing the programme. This may change because Tabata says there will soon be Tabata instructors and a series of DVDs at the end of the year. \u201cI decided to do this because I often go on YouTube and some people are doing it wrong because they don\u2019t understand how hard they need to work,\u201d says Tabata. \nSo, should we all start using Tabata in our fitness programmes? Richard Scrivener, a former rugby fitness coach, says that you should not stop your usual training; Tabata training is something extra. \u201cRunners, for example, need to run a lot of miles in their training,\u201d he says. \u201cBut they could do fewer long runs by introducing Tabata training. This will give their bodies the chance to rest and recover, especially if they have injuries.\u201d \nGym fans can benefit by doing three strength sessions and three Tabatas a week. And the rest of us can slowly increase the number of sessions, but we know that it will never get easier because every session needs maximum effort. That\u2019s the programme: it is hard \u2013 but it works.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nEmmanuel Limal used online dating sites a lot but he was tired of meeting women who werent ready to start a family, or at least wouldnt admit that they were. The 43-yearold actor, originally from France, had spent 20 years living in Copenhagen and looking for love in the hope of raising children. He tried to find someone online but was dismayed by the results.\nI got frustrated with everyone saying they were really active, always travelling or with a long list of hobbies, but no mention of children, Limal said. On some sites, there was an option to click saying: Id like kids someday, but you would read the persons profile and think: You will never have time! If someones going to the gym eight times a week and travelling every month, they are not putting a family first.\nLimal has a six-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, but coming from a big family  his father is one of 11  he has always wanted more children. I couldnt seem to meet anyone willing to prioritize starting a family. He said it was difficult to know when to mention wanting kids when he met someone new. Its the ultimate dating taboo, he said. Then one day I read a profile from a 38-year-old who said she knew it was really bad to admit but she wanted children. And I just thought: You shouldnt be ashamed of this.\nLimal borrowed money to pay for the setting up of Babyklar.nu  or baby-ready now in English. It works like a normal dating site but everyone is asked to be honest about their wish to start a family soon. We ask people if they are OK with someone who already has children and if they want another baby, Limal said. But we dont make them say how many children theyd like. That would be a bit too much like grocery shopping online.\nHe has had a very positive response to the site. We had 50 sign-ups an hour when we started in June and we are already hearing from couples who have met through the site and are now together. Im fully expecting the first Babyklar.nu baby by next summer. More men have signed up than women (53% to 47%), with comments such as Its so lovely to be able to say this out loud and I finally dare to be honest about what I want.\nThe site has come at the right time for the country of five million people. Danes are not having enough babies, according to a report from the Copenhagen hospital Rigshospitalet, and the current rate of 1.7 children per family is not enough to maintain Denmarks population. The usual reasons are given  women are leaving it too late and couples are living together without getting married and waiting to start families.\nNow, I hope, men and women who want to start a family but havent met the right person yet will have another option, says Limal. He says that this isnt just about baby farming: I want this to be about children and love. My goal is to pair up people who really want a family and a partner  and wholl stay together. Im a romantic at heart.\nThere are plans to launch the site in France and the UK later in 2013, but for now it is the Danes who are benefitting from it. Danes have no problem having children before marriage so things can move fast and, because the countrys so small, a Jutlander can date a Copenhagener without too much travel, Limal said. Whats more, Limal has finally found love. Ive met a nice woman and she wants a baby too  so we shall see.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"The Taliban sent a gunman to shoot Malala Yousafzai in October 2012 as she went home on a bus after school. They wanted to silence the teenager and end her campaign for girls\u2019 education. \nNine months and many operations later, she stood up at the United Nations on her 16th birthday. \u201cThey thought that the bullet would silence us. But they failed,\u201d she said. \nIt was an unusual 16th birthday. Malala didn\u2019t blow out candles on a cake; she sat at the United Nation in the central seat where world leaders usually sit. \nShe listened quietly as Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, described her as \u201cour hero, our champion\u201d; and as the ex-British prime minister and now UN education envoy, Gordon Brown, said \u201cthe words the Taliban never wanted her to hear: happy 16th birthday, Malala \u201d. \nThe event was named Malala Day after the girl from Mingora in Pakistan. She became famous after she wrote a blog for the BBC Urdu service \u2013 in the blog, she described her difficult experiences of trying to get an education under the power of the Taliban. \nWhen she was 11, she asked the US special representative to Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, to help in her campaign against the Taliban, who wanted to stop education for girls. By 14, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, suggested her for the International Children\u2019s Peace Prize, and, by 15, she became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize nominee in history. \nThen she got death threats, and, on 9 October 2012, after a meeting of Pakistani Taliban leaders, the gunman came to kill her. \nShe has had many operations in Pakistan and the UK after the shooting on the bus. She now lives with her family in Birmingham, England, and does what the Taliban tried to stop her doing: she goes to school every day. \u201cI am not against anyone,\u201d she said. \nAnd she doesn\u2019t want \u201cpersonal revenge against the Taliban or any other terrorist group.\u201d \nMalala replied to the violence of the Taliban with words against bullets. \u201cI do not even hate the Talib who shot me. Even if there was a gun in my hand and he stood in front of me, I would not shoot him.\u201d \n\u201cThe extremists are afraid of books and pens,\u201d the teenager continued. \u201cThe power of education frightens them. They are afraid of women. The power of the voice of women frightens them.\u201d \nShe talked about the attack in June on a hospital in Quetta, capital of Baluchistan, and killings of female teachers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. \u201cThat is why they are blasting schools every day \u2013 because they were and they are afraid of change, afraid of the equality that we will bring to our society.\u201d The \u201cStand with Malala\u201d petition, that is asking for education for the 57 million children around the world who do not go to school, has got more than four million signatures \u2013 more than a million were added after Malala\u2019s speech. \nAt the start of her speech, Malala said: \u201cI don\u2019t know where to begin my speech. I don\u2019t know what people are expecting me to say.\u201d She did not have to worry.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"From all across Rwanda, and even parts of neighbouring Burundi, people flock to the southern town of Butare to a little shop called Inzozi Nziza (Sweet Dreams). They come for a taste of the unknown, something most have never tasted \u2013 the sweet, cold, velvety embrace of ice cream. \nHere, at the central African country\u2019s first ice- cream parlour, customers can buy scoops in sweet cream, passion fruit, strawberry and pineapple flavours. Toppings include fresh fruit, honey, chocolate chips and granola. Black tea and coffee are also on sale. \nThe shop, which has \u201cice cream, coffee, dreams\u201d across its signage, is milking local curiosity about the dessert \u2013 and \u201cchanging lives\u201d in the process, says Inzozi Nziza\u2019s manager, Louise Ingabire. \n\u201cIce cream is important,\u201d she says between mouthfuls of a honey-flavoured offering. \u201cSome Rwandans like ice cream, but it\u2019s a new thing. We still have some work to do, to tell others that they\u2019ll enjoy it.\u201d \nTrue to Inzozi Nziza\u2019s motto, the shop can certainly make dreams come true. \u201cI didn\u2019t have a job before: I just stayed at home. Now, I have a vision for the future. I am making money and I can give some of it to my family,\u201d says the 27-year-old. \nButare, which has 89,600 residents and is located 135km south of the capital, Kigali, is the home of the National University of Rwanda. Inzozi Nziza has become a hub for tired students looking to treat themselves to something cool and different. \n\u201cIt\u2019s something uniting people here,\u201d Kalisa Migendo, a 24-year-old agriculture student, says. \u201cIf you need to go out and talk to a friend, a girl or a boy, you come to Inzozi Nziza for an ice cream.\u201d \nMost of the ingredients are sourced locally and the milk comes from a depot in nearby Nyanza. The vanilla beans and cocoa are imported. \nInzozi Nziza was opened by the theatre director Odile Gakire Katese. She met Alexis Miesen and Jennie Dundas, co-founders of Blue Marble Ice Cream in Brooklyn, New York, and formed a partnership to open the shop in 2010. \n\u201cAn ice-cream shop, Katese proposed, might help to put the human pieces back together by rebuilding spirits, hopes and family traditions,\u201d Miesen says. \nAt the start, Miesen and Dundas owned the shop in partnership with its staff and had shares in the business, which is a cooperative and non-profit. They did not set financial targets, but waited for 18 months before they transferred their shares to the women, who had by then proved their business credentials. \nThe shop\u2019s success is no exception, says Fatuma Ndangiza, deputy chief executive of the Rwanda Governance Board. \u201cSmall businesses are mostly managed by women but when it comes to big business where you have to compete for big tenders, very few women are there. Women are newcomers to big business,\u201d she points out. \u201cWe have more women entrepreneurs. It\u2019s an area where women are taking an interest, both in and outside Kigali.\u201d \nThough ice cream is somewhat new to Rwanda, Ndangiza is enthused by the idea of the shop. \u201cI think it\u2019s great. It requires a lot of skills and changing people\u2019s mindsets because selling and eating ice cream is not part of our culture. I think being able to innovate and introduce this on the market, and the process of making it, is quite interesting.\u201d \nThe Butare shop employs nine women, who spend their spare time practising with Ingoma Nshya, Rwanda\u2019s first and only female drumming troupe, which was established by Katese ten years ago. \nThe musicians are Hutu and Tutsi women, some survivors of the 1994 genocide, during which almost a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. \nSome members of Ingoma Nshya are widows, some orphans. Others have been affected by the massacre in different ways. \nHistorically, says Ingabire, Rwandan women were forbidden to drum and many people considered the drums too heavy for women to carry. \u201cBut it\u2019s something which brings unity.\u201d \nIngabire\u2019s father, two siblings and many cousins were killed in the genocide. \u201cSome of us are survivors; some know someone who was killed,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I\u2019m drumming with them, it gives me power because we\u2019re still alive and survivors.\u201d \nThe popular eatery features in a documentary by Rob and Lisa Fruchtman, sibling film-makers. Sweet Dreams, which tells the story of how the women have forged a promising post-genocide future, also includes the female drummers. \nThe film, which has been screened in more than a dozen countries, including the US, UK and several African states, premieres in Rwanda in 2014. \u201cWe feel the film is about resilience, hope, bravery, resourcefulness and the ability to change the course of your own life,\u201d says Lisa Fruchtman, who won an Academy Award for film- editing in 1984.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nAngry waiters are asking for public support in a battle to keep their tips. PizzaExpress branches are to be targeted by protesters, in an attempt to get the restaurant chain to stop taking a proportion of tips for staff that have been paid on credit and debit cards. Campaigners have also started an online petition in the hope that restaurant-goers will support their demands.\nPizzaExpress keeps, as an admin fee, 8p out of every 1 paid when tips are given by card. This is a policy that has made some employees angry. The chain, which has 430 branches around the UK and is particularly popular with families, makes around 1m a year from the practice, according to the union Unite.\nWe believe this 8% fee is unfair and that, if the chain values its staff, it should be paying them the total tips they are given by customers, said Chantal Chegrinec of Unite. We are starting with PizzaExpress but they are not the only ones and we will turn our attention to other companies after this.\nThe protests are being organized by local branches of Unite. The  rst is taking place at the British Museum branch of PizzaExpress in London. The union has also written to the restaurant chains CEO. Unite began the campaign following a survey of its PizzaExpress members after the chain was sold to a Chinese company in 2014. One of the top issues was the 8% deduction from their tips.\nOne disgruntled PizzaExpress employee, who wants to remain anonymous, said that the admin fee was costing her 3 a night. I have worked at PizzaExpress for 15 years, she said in a letter to Unite. After all this time, Im still only paid the national minimum wage of 6.50 an hour. So you see my colleagues and I are very reliant on customer tips to top up our low wages. I work hard and am good at my job but, when PizzaExpress thinks it can get away with taking a percentage of our hard-earned tips left on a card, I get upset.\nAsk and Zizzi, two other restaurant chains, also deduct 8% of the tips paid by card. But other chains deduct even more. Cafe_ Rouge, Bella Italia and Belgo deduct 10%; so do Strada and Giraffe.\nA spokesperson for PizzaExpress said that its admin charge was to cover the cost of running a tronc  a pay arrangement used to distribute tips among staff. We made big efforts to set up this tronc system, which is run by staff. They independently decide how tips made by electronic card payment are distributed between the restaurant teams; it is a system run by employees for the employees, she said.\nThe chain, which sells 29m pizzas a year in its UK restaurants, denied that it pro ts from the admin fee. But other restaurant groups do not deduct an admin fee from tips. Wagamama, Pizza Hut and TGI Friday all take nothing. Frankie & Bennys, Chiquitos and Garfunkels used to charge 10% but they stopped doing this several years ago.\nUnite recently targeted ten PizzaExpress restaurants in south London  they distributed lea ets to customers who were shocked and disgusted by the practice. PizzaExpress says the charge is mentioned in small print at the bottom of its menus. But the employee who wrote to Unite said that, when she mentioned the charge to customers, they were always surprised. Most customers would then pay the tip in cash. Almost 6,000 people have signed Unites online petition.\nOne waiter, who doesnt work for PizzaExpress but has worked for 11 years for another restaurant chain, said that at least a third of his income is from tips. He doesnt want to be identi ed because he is scared there will be reprisals. I work in a busy London branch and, on an average night, I serve 150 people and earn 40 to 50 in tips, he says. That might sound like a lot but that money is crucial to me because my basic pay is only 6.50 an hour.\nConservative MP Andrew Percy has asked for a change in the law that would give restaurant staff more control over tips. He said he plans to raise the issue in parliament.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nIllegal downloading is a kind of moral squalor and theft, as much as putting your hand in someones 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.\nThe technical brilliance is so dazzling that people cant see the moral squalor of what theyre doing, he writes. It is outrageous that anyone can steal an artists work and get away with it. It is theft, just as putting your hand in someones pocket and taking their wallet is theft.\nHis article comes after music industry leaders met British Prime Minister David Cameron in Downing Street to discuss the issue of web piracy.\nPullman, 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.\nPullman is writing in the next issue of the campaign groups 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 others 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, its obscurity.\nIndex on Censorship agrees. The magazines editor, Rachael Jolley, said: Existing copyright laws dont 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.\nThe 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.\nOfcom 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.\nFollowing 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 its there to protect. We hope his influence and the prime ministers support for copyright will influence the approach of the UKs intellectual property office.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Cities don\u2019t often move. But that\u2019s exactly what Kiruna, an Arctic town in northern Sweden, has to do. It has to move or the earth will swallow it up.\n\u201cIt\u2019s a terrible choice,\u201d 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. \u201cEither the mine must stop digging, and then there will be no jobs, or the city has to move.\u201d\nKiruna 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. \u201cThe town is here because of the mine,\u201d says Deputy Mayor Niklas Siren.\nLocated 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\u2019s 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.\nIn 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.\n\u201cThe people of Kiruna have waited for ten years,\u201d says Viktoria Walldin, a social anthropologist whoworks with the architects. \u201cThey have put their lives on hold, unable to make major decisions like buying a house, redecorating, having a child or opening a business.\u201d\nAt last, the city finally has a plan. Lindstedt has a plan that shows the town\u2019s streets and squares beginning to move east along a new high street. By 2033, the whole city will be far away from the mine.\nThey 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\u2019s red wooden church was built in 1912 and once voted Sweden\u2019s most beautiful building \u2013 it will be in the centre of a new park. But they will not save everything.\n\u201cI spoke to an old lady who walks past the bench every day where she had her first kiss,\u201d says Walldin. \u201cIt\u2019s things like that \u2013 the hospital where your first child was born, for example \u2013 that are important to people and all that\u2019s going to disappear.\u201d\nThe project will get \u00a3320 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.\n\u201cPeople here pay very low rents and have very high incomes but, in future, this will change\u201d 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.\nIf 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\u2019 plan shows multi-storey apartment blocks around shared courtyards in long straight streets.\nIt 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.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nBarack Obama flew back to Washington and his desk in the Oval Office on Wednesday, hours after delivering an election victory speech in Chicago in which he asked the country to unite behind him.\nUnlike after his election in 2008, the President is unlikely to get a honeymoon period.\nBoth the Republican House Speaker, John Boehner, and the Democratic Leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, spoke about a need to work together to resolve the economic crisis. But it could become one of the biggest battles yet between the White House and Congress under Obamas presidency.\nWhile Obama easily beat his Republican opponent Mitt Romney, holding swing state after swing state, the election showed again how divided America remains.\nWhile the inauguration is not until January, in effect Obama started his second term on Wednesday. Having disappointed many supporters in his first term, he now wants to establish a legacy that will transform him from a middling president into a great one.\nAs well as overseeing what he hopes will be continued economic recovery, he hopes to address issues from immigration reform to investment in education and climate change, and, in foreign policy, from Iran to Israel-Palestine.\nHe comfortably won more than the required 270 electoral college votes, and he also won a higher share of the popular vote.\nBoehner, in a statement, sounded conciliatory. He talked about the need for both parties to find common ground and take steps together to help our economy grow and create jobs, which is critical to solving our debt.\nReid, also sounded conciliatory, saying: I look at the challenges that we have ahead of us and I reach out to my Republican colleagues in the Senate and the House. Lets come together. We know what the issues are; lets solve them.\nThe trouble will come when talks move to detail: the Republicans want to protect military spending while the Democrats want cuts. Obama wants tax increases on households earning more than $250,000; Boehner has rejected any tax increases.\nIn the presidential race, Romney won only one of the swing states, North Carolina, while Obama held New Hampshire, Virginia, Ohio, Wisconsin, Nevada, Iowa and Colorado.\nIn his victory speech in Chicago, Obama referred to the long queues to vote and said there was a need for electoral reform.\nHe returned to the soaring rhetoric that was his trademark during the 2008 election but which was not seen in 2012 because his campaign team decided it was inappropriate.\nBut now that he has won, he returned to famous lines from earlier speeches, such as his 2008 slogan about hope.\nObama told the ecstatic crowd of supporters: Tonight in this election, you, the American people, reminded us that while our road has been hard, while our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back. And we know in our hearts that for the United States of America the best is yet to come. In a speech that lasted more than 25 minutes, Obama paid emotional tribute to his wife, Michelle, and his daughters, Malia and Sasha  as well as to his Vice-President, Joe Biden. Then he returned to the message that first brought him to national attention.\nWe are not as divided as our politics suggests, he said. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are, and forever will be, the United States of America.\nObama made clear he had an agenda in mind for his second term. He mentioned changes in the tax code, immigration reform and, as he put it, an America that isnt threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.\nJust before, Romney had phoned the President to concede. He said, This is a time for great challenges for America and I pray the President will be successful in guiding our nation.\nThe campaign almost throughout has been a referendum on Obama. Despite the slow economy recovery and a high unemployment level, Americans decided not to change presidents.\nHistorically, it would have been a disappointment for African Americans and many white liberals if the first black presidency had ended in failure.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"The Greek island of Agios Efstratios is very remote. It has been forgotten by the banks, the government and most of the modern world. It doesn\u2019t have a single ATM or credit-card machine. Before the economic crisis in Greece, the people of this peaceful island in the northern Aegean lived quite well. The few rooms to rent were fully booked every summer with people enjoying its empty beaches, clear seas and fresh seafood.\nBut the island still uses only cash so the closure of the Greek banks has had a serious effect. Local people have to make nine-hour round trips to the nearest big island to get cash. Greek visitors say they don\u2019t have enough cash to come. \u201cTourist numbers have reduced by 80% this year,\u201d said Mayor Maria Kakali, in an office in the village where she grew up. The village has about 200 people. \u201cEven people born here and living in Athens, who have their own places on the island, aren\u2019t coming.\u201d\nKakali has asked the government and a major Greek bank to install an ATM and this should arrive soon. But tourism is the main business on the island and she feels the ATM may come too late for this season. \u201cWe have almost no reservations in August, when usually we are full.\u201d But there is an even bigger crisis ahead \u2013 the government has said it will end a tax break for islands.\nThe tax break was created to help people on islands survive when lots of people were emigrating. Islands that are popular with tourists, such as Mykonos, fear that losing the tax break will make things very hard for them. But, for Agios Efstratios, it is a much bigger problem. \u201cIf we have to pay a tax of 23%, we will all die on the island,\u201d says Kakali.\nFood and fuel are already more expensive than on mainland Greece. Even in summer, the island has only three shops, two restaurants and not one official hotel. \u201cThis is an expensive island. Everything, even milk or bread, takes a long time to reach us and so is very expensive,\u201d said Provatas Costas, a 58-year-old fisherman.6 Things are also difficult for the island of Lemnos, the closest large neighbour of Agios Efstratios. People saw the islands as remote for years partly because the only way to get there was by slow and unreliable ferries. In 2015, they finally had new, efficient ferries and this brought many new visitors to explore these islands. But, then, the bank controls began. \u201cIt started as the best season in 30 years and, in one week, it became the worst,\u201d said Atzamis Konstantinos, a travel agent in Lemnos.\nLemnos has wild beaches, where you can swim and sunbathe almost alone, a small nightlife scene and many cultural sites. It is the eighth largest island in Greece so it will have to pay the tax increases in autumn 2015. But Lemnos is far less wealthy than many smaller islands. It has just over 3,000 beds for visitors \u2013 Rhodes, for example, has tens of thousands of beds. \u201cWe have been suffering economically in recent years and now we will suffer more,\u201d said Lemnos Mayor, Dimitris Marinakis.\nIf taxes go up, more young people will leave, warns Mayor Kakali. Because it is one of the smallest islands, Agios Efstratios will not have to pay the tax increase until 2017. And Kakali hopes the situation in Greece will change before then. But, if not, she plans to travel to Athens to remind the distant government what the tax rise would cost.\n\u201cThe government doesn\u2019t pay much attention to the islands of the north Aegean,\u201d she said, \u201cso I would take all the kids from our school to the gates of parliament, to tell them: \u2018There is still life in these islands\u2019.\u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nAccording to a report by the World Health Organization (WHO), 35.6% of all women around the world will experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, usually from a male partner. The report reveals the shocking extent of attacks on women from the men with whom they share their lives, with 30% of women being attacked by partners. It also finds that a large proportion of murders of women  38%  are carried out by their partners.\nThe highest levels of violence against women are in Africa, where nearly half of all women  45.6%  will suffer physical or sexual violence. In low- and middle-income Europe, the proportion is 27.2%. However, wealthier nations are not always safer for women  a third of women in high-income countries (32.7%) will experience violence at some stage in their lives. 42% of the women who experience violence suffer injuries, which can bring them to the attention of healthcare staff. That, says the report, is often the first opportunity for violence in the home to be discovered and for the woman to be offered help. Violence has a significant effect on womens health. Some arrive at hospital with broken bones, while others suffer pregnancy-related complications and mental illness.\nThe two reports from the WHO  one is on the extent of violence, the other offers guidelines to healthcare staff on helping women  are the work of Dr Claudia Garcia-Moreno, lead specialist in gender, reproductive rights, sexual health and adolescence at WHO, and Professor Charlotte Watts, an epidemiologist who specializes in gender, violence and health, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.\nFor the first time, we have compared data from all over the world on the extent of partner violence and sexual violence by non-partners and the impact of these sorts of violence on health, said Garcia-Moreno. These included HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, depression, alcoholism, unwanted pregnancies and lowbirthweight babies.\nThere were variations in the rates of violence against women in different regions of the world but, said Garcia-Moreno, in whatever region we looked at, it is unacceptably high. Data from 81 countries shows that, even in high-income countries, 23.2% of women will suffer physical and\/or sexual violence from a partner in their lives. The global figure for women attacked by partners was 30%.\nMore sexual assaults and rapes by acquaintances or strangers are reported in high-income countries than elsewhere  the report says that 12.6% of women in wealthy countries will be sexually attacked by a non-partner in their lives, which is higher than the African rate of 11.9%. But, the data on such crimes is not well collected in all regions.\nThe authors say that their previous research shows that better-educated women and working women are less likely to suffer violence, although not in all regions. There is a need to question social norms, said Watts. What is societys attitude concerning the acceptability of certain forms of violence against women? she asked. In some societies, it is not OK  but not all.\nI think the numbers are a wake-up call for all of us to pay more attention to this issue, said Garcia-Moreno. Over the past ten years, there has been increasing recognition of the problem, she said, but we have to recognize that it is a complex problem. We dont have a vaccine or a pill.\nThe new WHO clinical and policy guidelines recommend healthcare staff should be trained to recognize the signs of domestic violence and sexual assault, but they do not recommend general screening  that is, asking every woman who arrives in a clinic whether she has been subjected to violence.\nBut, if you see a woman coming back several times with injuries she doesnt mention, you should ask about domestic violence, said Garcia-Moreno. When I was training in medical school, it wasnt something you learned or knew about. Years later, I was sometimes in a situation where I could tell there was something else wrong with the woman I was interviewing, but didnt know that domestic violence was the issue. Now, I think I would do the interview very differently.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"More than a third of all women worldwide \u2013 35.6% \u2013 will experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, usually from a male partner, according to the first comprehensive study of its kind from the World Health Organization (WHO). The report reveals the shocking extent of attacks on women from the men with whom they share their lives, with 30% of women being attacked by partners. It also finds that a large proportion of murders of women \u2013 38% \u2013 are carried out by intimate partners. \n\u201cThese findings send a powerful message that violence against women is a global health problem of epidemic proportions,\u201d said Dr Margaret Chan, director general of the WHO. \u201cWe also see that the world\u2019s health systems can and must do more for women who experience violence.\u201d \nThe highest levels of violence against women are in Africa, where nearly half of all women \u2013 45.6% \u2013 will suffer physical or sexual violence. In low- and middle-income Europe, the proportion is 27.2%. Yet, wealthier nations are not necessarily always safer for women \u2013 a third of women in high-income countries (32.7%) will experience violence at some stage in their lives. Of the women who suffer violence, 42% sustain injuries, which can bring them to the attention of healthcare staff. That, says the report, is often the first opportunity for violence in the home to be detected and for the woman to be offered help. Violence has a profound effect on women\u2019s health. Some arrive at hospital with broken bones, while others suffer pregnancy-related complications and mental illness. \nThe two reports from the WHO \u2013 one on the prevalence of violence, the other offering guidelines to healthcare staff on helping women \u2013 are the work of Dr Claudia Garcia-Moreno, lead specialist in gender, reproductive rights, sexual health and adolescence at WHO, and Professor Charlotte Watts, an epidemiologist who specializes in gender, violence and health, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. \n\u201cFor the first time, we have compared data from all over the world on the magnitude of partner violence and sexual violence by non-partners and the impact of these sorts of violence on health,\u201d said Garcia-Moreno. These included HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, depression, women turning to alcohol, unwanted pregnancies and low-birthweight babies. \nThere were variations in the rates of violence against women in different regions of the world but, said Garcia-Moreno, \u201cin whatever region we looked at, it is unacceptably high\u201d. Even in high-income countries, 23.2% of women will suffer physical and\/or sexual violence from a partner in their lives, their data from 81 countries shows. The global figure for women attacked by partners was 30%. \nMore sexual assaults and rapes by acquaintances or strangers are reported in high-income countries than elsewhere \u2013 the report says that 12.6% of women in wealthy countries will be sexually attacked by a non-partner in their lives, which is higher than the African rate of 11.9%. But, the data on such crimes is not well collected in all regions. \nThe authors say that their previous research shows that better-educated women are less likely to suffer violence, as are those who have jobs, although not in all regions. There is a need to tackle social norms, said Watts. \u201cWhat is society\u2019s attitude concerning the acceptability of certain forms of violence against women?\u201d she asked. \u201cIn some societies, it is not OK \u2013 but not all.\u201d \n\u201cI think the numbers are a wake-up call for all of us to pay more attention to this issue,\u201d said Garcia-Moreno. Over the past decade, there has been increasing recognition of the problem, she said, but \u201cone has to recognize that it is a complex problem. We don\u2019t have a vaccine or a pill \u201d. \nThe new WHO clinical and policy guidelines recommend training for healthcare staff in recognizing the signs of domestic violence and sexual assault, but they rule out general screening \u2013 there is not a case for asking every woman who arrives in a clinic whether she has been subjected to violence. \n\u201cBut, if you see a woman coming back several times with undisclosed injuries, you should be asking about domestic violence,\u201d said Garcia-Moreno. \u201cWhen I was training in medical school, it wasn\u2019t something you learned or knew about. Years later, I was sometimes in a situation where I could tell there was something else going on in the woman I was interviewing, but didn\u2019t have any sense that domestic violence was the issue. Now, I think I would handle the interview very differently.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"The controversial auction of a Banksy mural that disappeared from the wall of a north London shop in mysterious circumstances was dramatically halted just moments before it was due to go under the hammer. \nSlave Labour, a spray-painted artwork depicting a child making Union Flag bunting and seen as a critical social commentary on last year\u2019s diamond jubilee, was expected to sell for about $700,000 in a sale of street and contemporary art in Florida. \nBut auctioneer Frederic Thut, the owner of the Fine Arts Auction Miami art house, who had refused all week to divulge the identity of the seller or how it came to be listed for sale through his gallery, announced that the piece, along with a second work by the secretive British street artist, had been withdrawn. \nHe would not give a reason, but community leaders in Haringey, who led a vocal campaign to stop the sale of the artwork that was prised from the wall of a Poundland in Wood Green, were jubilant. \n\u201cOne of our two demands was that it doesn\u2019t sell and the other was that we get it back again, so we\u2019re halfway there,\u201d said Alan Strickland, a Haringey councillor. \n\u201cI will be writing to the auction house as a matter of urgency to clarify what happened and what will happen next, but for now we are really pleased that because of the pressure and the strong views of the people of Wood Green, a community campaign in London has had an impact in the US. It\u2019s a real victory for the people.\u201d \nClaire Kober, Leader of Haringey Council, wrote to Arts Council England and the Mayor of Miami, Tom\u00e1s Regalado, to ask them to intervene to stop the sale but it appears the decision to withdraw the item came from the gallery owners in consultation with their lawyers. The FBI refused to confirm reports they were asked to investigate. \nSeveral hours after the conclusion of the auction, the auction house issued a brief statement claiming it had persuaded the owners of the two Banksys to pull them from the sale. \u201cAlthough there are no legal issues whatsoever regarding the sale of lots six and seven by Banksy, FAAM convinced its sellers to withdraw these lots from the auction.\u201d \nAbout 30 potential buyers attended the sale of 106 lots listed in the catalogue for the modern, contemporary and street art sale in Miami\u2019s trendy Wynwood neighbourhood. The three-hour auction continued with other early lots selling in excess of their asking prices. \nCritics have accused the auction house of dealing in stolen property but Thut insisted earlier in the week that the seller, who he described as a \u201cwell known collector \u201d, was the rightful owner and that the sale was legal. \nHe added that his gallery had been inundated with emails and phone calls from the UK, saying that many of them were abusive or offensive, but said he supported the inclusion of the pieces in the sale because it would preserve them. \nThe second Banksy due to be auctioned, a 2007 artwork entitled Wet Dog that was removed from a Bethlehem wall and is estimated to be worth up to $800,000, disappeared from the auction house\u2019s online catalogue at lunchtime on Saturday, but Slave Labour was still listed for sale right up to the 3pm start time. \nThut said the two pieces, supplied to him by separate owners, neither of them British, were important works in the street art scene and deserved buyers \u201cwhose first interest is in art and its preservation \u201d. \nHe said he would maintain the privacy of the collector who put it up for sale. \u201cWe respect our clients and their confidentiality. It\u2019s not our decision to have [the Banksy] returned. We only sell it. We do not have control of it.\u201d \nA spokesperson for Poundland said it had no idea who removed the 4ft x 5ft slab from the side of the shop it rents in Turnpike Lane. Lawyers for the owner of the building, a company called Wood Green Investments Ltd, have refused to confirm if it had anything to do with the episode. \nBanksy himself has not commented on the Slave Labour furore, but has previously condemned those who have tried to sell his artwork, speaking out before the proposed sale of five of his pieces at a 2011 auction in New York. None found a buyer. \nStephan Keszler, the dealer behind that auction, believes selling Banksy\u2019s works without his permission is legitimate. \n\u201cHe does something on other people\u2019s property without asking. The owner of the property can do whatever they want with it,\u201d Keszler said.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Maria is waiting on a black plastic chair. When she is called, she picks up a brown paper bag full of food: pasta, eggs and cornflakes. She can also choose between butternut squash or carrots as this week\u2019s vegetables.\nMaria is the 34th \u201cclient\u201d today at East Hampton Food Pantry, very close to some of the most expensive houses in the world.\nEvery day in the winter, more than 400 families collect their weekly food parcel from the food pantry. The food helps them get through the cold, dark Long Island winter.\nThe Hamptons are historic, oceanfront towns and villages 100 miles from Manhattan, New York. In the summer, it is full of billionaires. But, in early September, the rich and famous shut up their mansions and go back to Manhattan or Beverly Hills. The people who live here all year are mostly immigrants.\n\u201cThe people who come here are rich and famous but we who live here are not,\u201d says Maria. She works 14-hour days in the summer cleaning mansions. She often has no work at all in the winter.\nMaria laughs when asked if she has enough money. \u201cThere is no work in the winter, only in the summer,\u201d says Maria. She, like many of the workers in the Hamptons, is from Latin America. \u201cHere, lots of people live in a single room because they can\u2019t pay the rent.\u201d\nLots of her friends can\u2019t pay for heating or medicine and many would be hungry if they did not get food from the East Hampton Food Pantry, she says.\nVicki Littman, chairperson of the East Hampton Food Pantry, which gave more than 31,000 food parcels in 2015, says there are more and more people coming to the food pantry.\nLittman says that, when she talks to the people who come for the summer about the food pantries, they are always shocked. They know only the glamorous side of the Hamptons: the big parties and the beaches and mansions.\n\u201cBut, what the rich people don\u2019t know is that the gardeners, the nannies, the waitresses, they all need their summer earnings to get them through the winter.\u201d\nHousing is the biggest cost in the Hamptons. Larry Cantwell, who has lived in East Hampton all his life, says homes often cost more than $25 million. \u201cIt is very difficult to find your first home here,\u201d Cantwell says. \u201cIf you can find a home to buy anywhere in East Hampton for less than $500,000, you\u2019re very lucky.\u201d\nCantwell says more than half the town\u2019s homes are empty for most of the year. The population goes from 80,000 in August to 10,000 in the winter months.\n\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of wealth here but almost all of that wealth is in second homes only used in the summer,\u201d says Cantwell, the son of a fisherman father and a house-cleaner mother. \u201cBut, the rest of us live here all year.\u201d\n\u201cThere are famous and very wealthy people but also hard-working and poor people. You\u2019ve got to remember that this used to be a farming and fishing community \u2013 a real working-class community.\u201d\nEddie Vallone, 22, says, \u201cPeople only see the Hamptons as a rich town but there are a lot of problems here, especially drugs. It\u2019s hard to understand. You think, \u2018OK, the summer is over. What am I going to do for the winter?\u2019\u201d Vallone says, \u201cI want to work but there\u2019s no work.\u201d\nVallone works cleaning swimming pools. He says that, if he is careful, he can make his summer earnings last until November. \u201cBut, work doesn\u2019t start again until May or the beginning of June.\u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Two mothers in South Africa have found out that they are raising each other \u2019s daughters after someone switched them at birth by mistake in a hospital in 2010.\nOne 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. \nHenk Strydom, a lawyer for one of the mothers, said the switch was a tragedy that will probably not have a happy ending.\nBoth mothers gave birth at the Tambo Memorial Hospital in Boksburg, east of Johannesburg, on the same day in 2010.\nIn 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, \u201cA DNA test was done. They found that it was not his baby and not her baby. She was devastated. She didn\u2019t know what to do.\u201d\nShe met the other mother and now they go to joint counselling sessions, organized by the hospital. Here, both mothers met their biological daughters. \nStrydom said about the mother: \u201cYou can see it\u2019s 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.\u201d\nThe woman became unhappy and asked the children\u2019s court to give her custody of her biological child, but the other mother refused.\n\u201cIt\u2019s a tragedy. She wants the baby back, but it\u2019s four years later: you can understand that the other mother doesn\u2019t want to give up her baby, \u201d Strydom said.\nThe High Court in Pretoria has asked the University of Pretoria\u2019s Centre for Child Law to \ufb01nd out what will be best for the children.\nStrydom added: \u201cWhatever happens, someone won\u2019t be happy. \u201d\nKarabo Ngidi, a lawyer with the centre, said: \u201cWe must do what is best for the children. Biology is important but it is not the only important thing.\u201d\nIt is not the \ufb01rst 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.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have won the first part of their fight for privacy. A French magazine was told to stop selling or reusing photos of the royal couple. The pictures show the duchess sunbathing topless while on holiday in the south of France. \nIt is possible that the magazine editor and the photographer or photographers will also have to go to a criminal court. \nThe French magazine Closer was told to give digital files of the pictures to the couple within 24 hours. \nCloser\u2019s publisher, Mondadori Magazines France, was also told to pay \u20ac2,000 in legal costs. The magazine will have to pay \u20ac10,000 for every day it does not give the couple the files. \nThe court decided that every time Mondadori \u2013 the publishing company owned by the ex Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi \u2013 publishes a photograph in the future in France, they will get \u20ac10,000 fine. \nThe couple welcome the judge\u2019s decision. \u201cThey always believed the law was broken and that they had a right to their privacy.\u201d \nThe royal couple are pleased with the decision, but they want to have a much more public criminal trial against the magazine and photographer or photographers. \nUnder French law, if you do not respect someone\u2019s privacy, you may have to spend a maximum of one year in prison and pay a fine of \u20ac45,000. \nThis punishment would send a message to the world and, the couple hope, stop paparazzi taking photos like this in the future. \nOn Saturday the Irish Daily Star also published the photos. And the Italian celebrity magazine Chi published a special edition of 26 pages with the photos of the future queen.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nIt began with a bogus scallop, but a menu scandal that has affected some of Japans top hotels and department stores now threatens the international reputation of the countrys food.\nSince 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\nThe 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.\nOne of the worst menu misdemeanours was a red salmon caviar dish that was actually the less luxurious eggs of the flying fish.\nThe hotel groups 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.\nDays later, Desaki resigned, saying that the hotel group had betrayed our customers. One of the hotels head chefs later declined a medal of honour he was going to receive from the government.\nThe company has so far refunded 20 million yen to more than 10,000 consumers. The final bill is expected to reach 110 million yen.\nConsumers who believed they had eaten expensive kuruma shrimps were told they had in fact eaten the much cheaper black tiger version.\nThe 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.\nThe 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.\nThe 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.\nWe deeply apologize for betraying the expectations and confidence of our clients, it said in a statement.\nThe 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.\nEven the governments top spokesman, Yoshihide Suga, commented on the scandal. This inappropriate labelling has resulted in the loss of trust among consumers, he told reporters.\nThe 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.\nOne local newspaper had the headline, Japans proud food culture in tears, while the newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun said it was shocked by the industrys lack of morals.\nIndustry experts said the global financial crisis in 2008 had forced luxury hotels to cut costs while attempting to woo diners with detailed menu descriptions.\nMenu descriptions were created to meet consumers preferences, and, when they couldnt get the ingredients on the menu, hotels just used food from different places, Hiroshi Tomozawa, a hotel and restaurant consultant, told Kyodo News.\nThe industrys biggest problem will come from Japans 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.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"They call him the Robin Hood of the banks. He is a man who took out loans for almost half a million euros and never paid the money back. Enric Duran gave the money to projects that created and supported alternatives to capitalism.\nDuran has spent 14 months in hiding. He will not say he is sorry, even though he might go to prison for what he has done. \u201cI\u2019m proud of what I\u2019ve done,\u201d he said in an interview by Skype from a secret location.\nFrom 2006 to 2008, Duran took out 68 loans from 39 banks in Spain. He gave the money to social activists. They used the money to pay for speaking tours against capitalism and TV cameras for a media network. He said that these social activists didn\u2019t have enough money but, at the same time, constant economic growth created money from nothing.\nThe loans he took out dishonestly from banks were his way of showing that this situation was wrong, he said. He started slowly. He tried to take out bank loans using his real details. The banks said no.\nThen, he learnt how to get money from the banks. \u201cI was learning all the time.\u201d By the summer of 2007, he learnt how to make the system work \u2013 he took out loans under the name of a false television production company. This way, he got a lot of money. \u20ac492,000, to be exact.\nDuran was arrested in Spain in 2009. He spent two months in prison; then, they let him out on \u20ac50,000 bail. In February 2013, with the possibility of eight years in prison, he decided to run away.\nHis actions in 2006 to 2008 made many people notice the anti-capitalist movement for the first time. This happened at a time when many Spanish people were looking for alternatives to a system that has caused problems in their lives.\nIn today\u2019s Spain, thousands of people support the anti-capitalist movement and groups such as the Indignados.\nDuran says he does not want to give back the money to the banks but he can offer them something. He learnt a lot in the years when he was taking loans out dishonestly, so he can show the banks how they can improve things for people in general and for bank workers.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nThousands of people protested on Australias beaches against a shark cull that is being carried out in Western Australia. They called on the states prime minister to end the policy, and RSPCA Australia and Virgin Atlantic owner Richard Branson spoke out against it. The catching and killing of sharks longer than three metres began after what the state government called an unprecedented number of shark attacks on Western Australias coast. A 35-year-old surfer, killed in November 2013, was the sixth person to die from a shark attack in two years.\nHowever, the whole of Australia has had an average of just one shark-related death a year for the last 50 years. Kate Faehrmann, of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, said from a protest in the state capital, Perth: Weve always said that this policy wont work. Drumlines used to catch the sharks kill sharks whether theyre one, two, three metres or more, as well as dolphins, turtles and other things. Thats why the community doesnt want it.\nThousands of people protested on beaches in the cities of Perth, Sydney and Adelaide, and at beaches in Victoria and Queensland. Faehrmann said the protests had shown that Australians wanted sharks protected: Whats amazing is so many people in Australia love sharks. This has demonstrated something about the national psyche; that, despite all the fear, thousands of people are coming out across the country to say, Thats their ocean. We respect them, we love them and we dont want them killed. Anthony Joyce, a surfer who once had his foot caught in a sharks mouth, said: The number of sharks they are going to kill is going to make no difference.\nThe state government has refused to say how many sharks have been killed, though there have been reports of sharks smaller than three metres being released after getting caught on drumlines,  oating drums  xed to the sea bed with bait hanging on hooks underneath them. Conservationists say there is no evidence the cull will reduce the number of shark attacks on humans, because no previous cull has only used drumlines. Researchers at the University of Western Australia say the increased number of shark attacks in the state is probably because the state has the fastest-growing population in Australia, not because of a rising number of sharks.\nRichard Peirce, of the UK-based conservation charity, the Shark Trust, said that the cull would be ineffective and could bring more predators towards the coast. The activity in Western Australia is compounding the human tragedy of shark attacks. It is very sad that a government has ignored the best advice and chosen an approach that is ineffective and counterproductive, he said. People often dont consider that that drumlines are indiscriminate  even if monitored through the day, leaving the lines in at night has the potential to attract other predators into the area, attracted by those sharks and other species hooked and injured.\nWorldwide, in 2012, there were 80 attacks by sharks, seven of which were fatal, compared to nearly 100m sharks killed by humans each year. RSPCA Australia said in a statement that it believes the cull is unjusti ed. There is no evidence that the increase in attacks is a result of increasing shark numbers. Instead, it is consistent with a changing population and human behaviour; that is, there are greater numbers of people in the water, it said.\nRichard Branson said the policy was not working. Im sure one of the reasons Western Australia Premier, Colin Barnett, did it was because he was thinking it would encourage tourism. Its going to do quite the reverse, I think. Youre advertising a problem that doesnt exist in a major way and youre deterring people from coming to Perth and your beautiful countryside around it. All youre going to achieve, I think, is to worry people unnecessarily.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Throughout a momentous day at Liverpool\u2019s Anglican Cathedral for the families of the 96 people who died so needlessly at Sheffield Wednesday\u2019s Hillsborough football ground, one phrase dominated above all else: the truth. These were the words most infamously abused by a headline in The Sun newspaper, above stories which we now know, in extraordinarily shocking detail, were fed by the South Yorkshire Police to deflect their own culpability for the disaster on to the innocent victims. \nMargaret Aspinall, whose son James, then 18, died at what should have been a joyful day out, an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, said the families had been forced to fight, for 23 years, for just that: the truth. Aspinall, Chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, said that, although the families\u2019 loss would never fade, she was \u201cdelighted\u201d at the unequivocal, \u201cprofound\u201d apology given for Hillsborough\u2019s savage failings by David Cameron. \nThe Hillsborough Independent Panel had inspected 450,000 documents generated by the police, Sheffield Wednesday and all other bodies responsible, and delivered its remarkable 395- page report indicting official failings and vindicating the victims and football supporters. \nSome of what happened to cause the disaster, and the police\u2019s subsequent blame-shifting, has been exposed before. But the depth of what the families call a cover-up, in particular the deliberate police campaign to avoid its own responsibilities and falsely blame the supporters, was still startling. \nIn a concerted campaign \u2013 led, the panel found, by the Chief Constable, Peter Wright \u2013 the South Yorkshire Police put out their story that drunken supporters or those without tickets had caused the disaster. The victims had their blood tested for alcohol levels. This was \u201can exceptional decision \u201d, the panel said, for which it found \u201cno rationale \u201d. When victims had alcohol in their blood, the police then checked to find if they had criminal records. \nThe report, substantially authored by Professor Phil Scraton of Queen\u2019s University, Belfast, and unanimously agreed by the panel of eight experts, found there was \u201cno evidence \u2026 to verify the serious allegations of exceptional levels of drunkenness, ticketlessness or violence among Liverpool fans \u201d. \nThe report found that even as the nightmare began for the families of the victims, Wright was meeting his police federation in a Sheffield restaurant to prepare \u201ca defence\u201d and \u201ca rock- solid story \u201d. The Secretary of the South Yorkshire Police Federation branch, Constable Paul Middup, told the restaurant meeting before Wright turned up: \u201cThe Chief Constable had said the truth could not come from him, but had given the secretary a totally free hand and supported him,\u201d as had many senior officers. \nThe meeting was held just four days after the disaster. It was the day that The Sun splashed its headline \u201cThe Truth\u201d over lies fed to it by four senior South Yorkshire police officers. Middup was encouraged to continue this police campaign of defaming Liverpool supporters for supposed drunkenness and misbehaviour and \u201cto get the message \u2013 togetherness \u2013 across to the force \u201d. \nThe panel\u2019s report sustained the allegation made in parliament that the orchestrated changing of junior officers\u2019 statements by senior South Yorkshire police officers amounted to a \u201cblack propaganda unit \u201d. The officers\u2019 statements, presented as official police accounts to the subsequent inquiry, were changed to delete criticism of the police themselves on the day, and, largely, emphasize misbehaviour by supporters. The panel found that 116 of 164 statements were amended \u201cto remove or alter comments unfavourable to South Yorkshire police \u201d. \nThe police had claimed this was done only to remove \u201cconjecture\u201d and \u201copinion\u201d from the statements, but the panel had no doubt the operation, to craft a case rather than deliver truthful police accounts, went further. \u201cIt was done to remove criticism of the police,\u201d Scraton said. \nThis propaganda did not convince the original inquiry, which ruled as quickly as August 1989 that the police stories of fan drunkenness and misbehaviour were false, and criticized the police for making the claims. The report revealed that Sheffield Wednesday\u2019s football ground was unsafe in crucial respects, that the Football Association had selected it as the venue for the match without even checking if Hillsborough had a valid safety certificate, which it did not. \nIn that landscape of neglect, it was the mismanagement of the crowd by the police, commanded by an inexperienced Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield, that was \u201cthe prime cause\u201d of the disaster. The police lost control outside the ground, where 24,000 Liverpool fans had to be funnelled through just 23 turnstiles, so Duckenfield ordered a large exit gate to be opened and a large number of people to be allowed in. His \u201cblunder of the first magnitude \u201d, according to the inquiry, was the failure to close off the tunnel that led to the already overcrowded central section of the Leppings Lane terrace. \nThe inquiry report established this but the police, undaunted, repeated their claims to the subsequent inquest. Its procedure was marked by the coroner\u2019s decision not to take evidence of what happened after 3.15pm on the day of the disaster, thereby excluding an emergency response the panel found to have been chaotic. The finding that 41 of the 96 who died could possibly have been saved had the police and ambulance service done their jobs decently is damning of those bodies and, Aspinall said, difficult for the families to contemplate. \nIn the light of the panel\u2019s report, the Attorney General will now consider whether to apply to the High Court for the inquest verdict of accidental death to be quashed and a new inquest held. There may be prosecutions too, after all these years, of Sheffield Wednesday, South Yorkshire Police and Sheffield City Council, which failed in its duty to oversee the safety of the football ground. Trevor Hicks, the President of the HFSG, both of whose teenage daughters, Sarah and Victoria, died in the crush, said: \u201cThe truth is out today. Tomorrow is for justice.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate\nThe controversial auction of a Banksy mural that disappeared from the wall of a north London shop was dramatically stopped just moments before it was going to be sold.\nSlave Labour is a spray-painted artwork showing a child making British flags and is seen as a critical social commentary on last years diamond jubilee. It was expected to sell for about $700,000 in a sale of street and contemporary art in Florida.\nBut auctioneer Frederic Thut, the owner of the Fine Arts Auction Miami art house, who had refused all week to give the name of the seller, announced that Slave Labour, together with a second work by the secretive British street artist, had been removed from sale at the auction.\nHe would not give a reason, but community leaders in Haringey, London, who led a campaign to stop the sale of the artwork that was removed from the wall of a Poundland shop in Wood Green, were extremely happy\nOne of our two demands was that it doesnt sell and the other was that we get it back again, so were halfway there, said Alan Strickland, a Haringey councillor.\nI will be writing to the auction house to clarify what happened and what will happen next, but for now we are really pleased that a community campaign in London has had an impact in the US. Its a real victory for the people.\nClaire Kober, Leader of Haringey Council, wrote to Arts Council England and the Mayor of Miami, Toms Regalado, to ask them to stop the sale, but it appears the decision to remove the item from sale came from the gallery owners.\nSeveral hours after the auction, the auction house said it had persuaded the owners of the two Banksys to remove them from the sale. Although there are no legal issues whatsoever regarding the sale of lots six and seven by Banksy, FAAM convinced its sellers to remove these lots from the auction.\nCritics have accused the auction house of buying and selling stolen property but Thut said that the seller, who he described as a well known collector, was the rightful owner and that the sale was legal.\nHe added that his gallery had received many emails and phone calls from the UK, but said he supported selling the two pieces of artwork because it would preserve them.\nThe second Banksy to be auctioned, a 2007 artwork called Wet Dog that was removed from a Bethlehem wall and is estimated to be worth up to $800,000, was removed from the auction houses online catalogue, but Slave Labour was still listed for sale right up to the 3pm start time.\nThut said the two pieces, supplied to him by separate owners, neither of them British, were important works in the street art scene and deserved buyers whose first interest is in art and its preservation.\nA spokesperson for Poundland said it had no idea who removed the 4ft x 5ft mural from the side of one of its shops in London.\nBanksy himself has not commented on the Slave Labour controversy, but he has previously condemned people who have tried to sell his artwork. He spoke out before five of his pieces were going to be sold at a 2011 auction in New York. None found a buyer.\nStephan Keszler, the dealer at that auction, believes selling Banksys works without his permission is legitimate.\nHe does something on other peoples property without asking. The owner of the property can do whatever they want with it, Keszler said.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Facebook has lost millions of users per month in its biggest markets, independent data suggests, as alternative social networks attract the attention of those looking for fresh online playgrounds. \nAs Facebook prepares to update investors on its performance in the first three months of the year, with analysts forecasting revenues up 36% on last year, studies suggest that its expansion in the US, UK and other major European countries has peaked. In the last month, the world\u2019s largest social network has lost 6m US visitors, a 4% fall, according to analysis firm Socialbakers. In the UK, 1.4m fewer users checked in in March, a fall of 4.5%. The declines are sustained. In the last six months, Facebook has lost nearly 9m monthly visitors in the US and 2m in the UK. \nUsers are also switching off in Canada, Spain, France, Germany and Japan, where Facebook has some of its biggest followings. A spokeswoman for Facebook declined to comment. \n\u201cThe problem is that, in the US and UK, most people who want to sign up for Facebook have already done it,\u201d said new media specialist Ian Maude at Enders Analysis. \u201cThere is a boredom factor where people like to try something new. Is Facebook going to go the way of MySpace? The risk is relatively small, but that is not to say it isn\u2019t there.\u201d Alternative social networks such as Instagram, the photo-sharing site that won 30m users in 18 months before Facebook acquired the business, have seen surges in popularity with younger age groups. \nPath, the mobile phone-based social network founded by former Facebook employee Dave Morin, which restricts its users to 150 friends, is gaining 1m users a week. It has recently topped 9m users, with 500,000 Venezuelans downloading the app in a single weekend. \nFacebook is still growing fast in South America. Monthly visitors in Brazil were up 6% in the last month to 70m, according to Socialbakers, whose information is used by Facebook advertisers. India has seen a 4% rise to 64m \u2013 still a fraction of the country\u2019s population, leaving room for further growth. \nBut in developed markets, other Facebook trackers are reporting declines. Analysts at Jefferies bank have developed an algorithm that interfaces directly with Facebook software and it \u201csuggests user levels in [the first quarter] may have declined from peak\u201d. \nJefferies saw global numbers peak at 1.05bn a month in January, before falling by 20m in February. Numbers rose again in April. The network has now lost nearly 2m visitors in the UK since December, according to research firm Nielsen, with its 27m total flat on a year before. \nThe number of minutes Americans spend on Facebook appears to be falling, too. The total was 121 billion minutes in December 2012, but that fell to 115 billion minutes in February, according to comScore. \nAs Facebook itself has warned, the time spent on its pages from those sitting in front of personal computers is declining rapidly because we are switching our screen time to smartphones and tablets. \nWhile smartphone minutes have doubled in a year, to 69 a month, that growth is not guaranteed to compensate for dwindling desktop usage. \nFacebook is the most authoritative source on its own user numbers, and the firm will update investors on its performance for the quarter. Wall Street expects revenues of about $1.44bn, up from $1.06bn in 2012. \nShareholders will be particularly keen to learn how fast Facebook\u2019s mobile user base is growing, and whether advertising revenues are increasing at the same rate. \nMobile usage represented nearly a quarter of Facebook\u2019s advertising income at the end of 2012, and the network had 680m mobile users a month in December. \nThe company warned in recent stockmarket filings that it might be losing \u201cyounger users\u201d to \u201cother products and services similar to, or as a substitute for, Facebook\u201d. \nWary of competition from services that were invented for the mobile phone rather than the PC, founder Mark Zuckerberg has recently driven through a series of new initiatives designed to appeal to smartphone users. The most significant is Facebook Home, software that can be downloaded onto certain Android phones to feed news and photos from friends \u2013 and advertising \u2013 directly to the owner\u2019s locked home screen.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Vienna is the world\u2019s best city to live in, Baghdad is the worst and London, Paris and New York do not even make it into the top 35, according to international research into quality of life. \nGerman-speaking cities dominate the rankings in the 18th Mercer Quality of Life study, with Vienna joined by Zurich, Munich, Dusseldorf and Frankfurt in the top seven. \nParis has tumbled down the league, falling ten places to 37th, just ahead of London at 39th, almost entirely because of the city\u2019s vulnerability to terrorist attacks. \nThe study examined social and economic conditions, health, education, housing and the environment, and is used by big companies to assess where they should locate and how much they should pay staff. \nViennese-born Helena Hartlauer, 32, said she was not surprised at her city\u2019s top position. The municipality\u2019s social democratic government has a long tradition of investing in high-quality social housing, making Vienna almost uniquely affordable among major cities. \n\u201cI live in a 100sq-metre turn-of-the-century apartment in a good area about 20 minutes\u2019 walk from the city centre. But my rent is just \u20ac800 (\u00a3625) a month.\u201d An equivalent apartment in London would cost upwards of \u00a32,000 and even more in New York, ranked 44th in the table. \nUS cities perform relatively poorly in the study, largely because of issues around personal safety and crime. The highest ranking city in the US is San Francisco, at 28th; Boston is 34th. Canadian cities, led by Vancouver, far outrank their US rivals in the table. \n\u201cYou don\u2019t realize how safe Vienna is until you head abroad,\u201d said Hartlauer. \u201cWe also have terrific public transport, with the underground working 24 hours at weekends, and it only costs \u20ac1 per trip.\u201d \nVienna benefited enormously from the fall of the Berlin Wall, becoming the gateway to Eastern European countries that often have historic ties to the former Austro-Hungarian empire. \n\u201cOur big USP is our geographical location,\u201d said Martin Eichtinger, Austrian ambassdaor to London, who lived in Vienna for 20 years. \u201cThe fall of the Berlin Wall helped define Vienna as the hub for companies wanting to do business in Central Europe.\u201d \nAccording to the World Bank, Austria has one of the highest figures for GDP per head in the world, just behind the US and ahead of Germany and Britain, although quite some way below neighbouring Switzerland. \nZurich in Switzerland is named by Mercer as having the world\u2019s second highest quality of life but the Viennese say their city is far more fun. \u201cThere are more students in Vienna than any other German-speaking city,\u201d said Hartlauer. \u201cIt\u2019s a very fast growing, young and lively city,\u201d she added \u2013 though she conceded she works for the city\u2019s tourist board. \nVienna has long been overlooked by British weekend city break tourists, who instead flock to Barcelona or Berlin and tend to think of Austria as somewhere for skiing, lakes and mountains. But, after an increase in budget flights from regional British cities such as Manchester and Edinburgh, Vienna is fast catching up as a popular destination. In 2015, there were 588,000 British visitors to Vienna, up 18% on the year before. The flow is both ways; Eichtinger said London has become the number one city destination for Austrian visitors. \n\u201cVienna has ranked top in the last seven published rankings,\u201d said Mercer. \u201cIt scores highly in a number of categories; it provides a safe and stable environment to live in, a high level of public utilities and transport facilities and good recreational facilities.\u201d \nThe European migrant crisis, which has seen large numbers of refugees and asylum seekers pass through Vienna en route to Germany, has had little impact on the city of nearly 1.8 million people, said Eichtinger. \u201cWe have managed to accommodate 90,000 refugees in Austria but the numbers have slowed in recent months.\u201d London has never been in the quality-of-life top ten, says Mercer, damaged by its poor scores for air pollution, traffic congestion and climate. After London, Edinburgh is the next-ranking British city, in 46th place. \nParis has suffered the biggest fall in the most recent rankings. \u201cParis remained stable for several years but has, this year, dropped ten places in the overall ranking,\u201d said Mercer. \n\u201cThe drop was essentially due to the terrorist attacks in 2015. However, it is important to highlight that safety issues are a very highly weighted factor within the \u2019basket\u2019 so any small adjustments can have a big impact on the ranking.\u201d \nAuckland in New Zealand was the highest ranking English-speaking city in the survey, in third place, followed by Vancouver in fifth. Australian cities also perform very highly in the survey, with Sydney 10th and Melbourne 15th. The Economist has consistently ranked Melbourne as the world\u2019s most liveable city, although its survey has been criticized as too Anglocentric. \nWar and political unrest are behind all the worst-ranked cities in the world. Surprisingly, Damascus is named as only the seventh worst, ranked better than not just Baghdad but also Bangui in Central African Republic, Sana\u2019a in Yemen, Port-au-Prince in Haiti, Khartoum in Sudan and N\u2019Djamena in Chad.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Chemists have waited a long time to find a new element and, now, researchers in Japan, Russia and the US have discovered four. The four new elements will be added to the periodic table. They are the first elements to be added since 2011, when elements 114 and 116 were included. The new elements, all very radioactive, complete the seventh row of the periodic table. \nThe International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is the global organization that controls chemical names. IUPAC confirmed the new elements on 30 December, 2015. The scientists who found them must now think of formal names for the elements, which have the atomic numbers, 113, 115, 117, and 118. The atomic number is the number of protons in an element\u2019s atomic nucleus. \nIUPAC said that a Russian-American team of scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California had discovered elements 115, 117 and 118. The organization said a team of scientists from the RIKEN Institute in Japan discovered element 113. The decision means Japan becomes the first Asian country to name an element. Under IUPAC rules, new elements can be named after mythological concepts, minerals, a place or country, or a scientist. \nIn 2012, scientists chose the formal name flerovium for element 114, after the Flerov Lab at Dubna\u2019s Joint Institute of Research. And they chose the formal name livermorium for element 116, after the Lawrence Livermore Lab in the US. \nThe elements were discovered there. Kosuke Morita, who led the research at RIKEN, said his team now planned to \u201clook to element 119 and beyond\u201d. Jan Reedijk of IUPAC said: \u201cChemists want to see the periodic table finally completed down to the seventh row.\u201d \nThe Japanese team is considering three names for element 113: japonium, rikenium and nishinarium, after the Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science, where they found the element. Polly Arnold, professor of chemistry at Edinburgh University, said, \u201cThis is very difficult and slow work. The work helps us understand radioactive decay. If we understand it better, hopefully we can find a better way to deal with nuclear waste and things that are important in the real world. And, when they build the equipment to make these discoveries, it also leads to fantastic improvements in technology.\u201d \nScientists must find new names for the elements but, also, they must suggest two-letter symbols for the elements. When IUPAC has received the researchers\u2019 suggestions, they will tell the public so that people can comment on the names. That allows scientists and others to find any problems with the names. In 1996, someone suggested the symbol Cp for copernicium, or element 112, but it was changed to Cn, when scientists complained that Cp was already the symbol for another substance. \nTo discover the elements, researchers at the three labs crashed lighter nuclei into one another and looked for the radioactive decays that should come from the new elements. 113 and 115 are probably metals. 117 could be a metalloid \u2013 a material with some metallic characteristics. The fourth element, 118, may be a gas. \nPaul Karol, chair of the IUPAC panel that checked the elements, said: \u201cIt will be a long time before we can find practical uses for the new elements.\u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"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\u2019s \u201cOuallywood\u201d 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. \nNow, the trading city, nicknamed the \u201cdoor of the desert\u201d, is the location for another blockbuster \u2013 a complex of four linked solar mega-plants, which, alongside hydro and wind, will help provide nearly half of Morocco\u2019s electricity from renewables by 2020 with, it is hoped, some spare to export to Europe. The project is a key plank in Morocco\u2019s ambitions to use its untapped deserts to become a global solar superpower. \nWhen 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. \nThe 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\u2019s deserts receive enough energy in a few hours to provide for humanity\u2019s 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. \nAs 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. \nWhen they are finished, the four plants at Ouarzazate will occupy a space as big as Morocco\u2019s 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. \nMorocco\u2019s 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\u2019s deserts boom was triggered by more immediate concerns, she said. \n\u201cWe 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,\u201d el-Haite told the Guardian. \u201cWe 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?'\u201d \nSolar energy will make up a third of Morocco\u2019s renewable energy supply by 2020, with wind and hydro taking the same share each. \n\u201cWe are very proud of this project,\u201d el-Haite said. \u201cI think it is the most important solar plant in the world.\u201d \nEach 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. \nThe 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. \nTechnicians say that the Noor 2 and 3 plants, due to open in 2017, will store energy for up to eight hours \u2013 opening the prospect of 24\/7 solar energy in the Sahara and the surrounding region. \n\u201cThe biggest challenge we faced was being able to finish the project on time with the performance level we needed to achieve,\u201d said Rashid al-Bayad, the project director. \nBut, even as the first phase of the project nears completion, Morocco is eyeing grander international ambitions. \u201cWe are already involved in high tension transportation lines to cover the full south of Morocco and Mauritania as a first step,\u201d says Ahmed Baroudi, manager of Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 d\u2019Investissements Energ\u00e9tiques, the national renewable energy investment firm. But he says the project\u2019s ultimate impact will go far wider \u2013 even as far as the Middle East. \u201cThe ultimate objective given by his majesty the king is Mecca.\u201d \nWhether 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. \n\u201cWe believe that it\u2019s possible to export energy to Europe but, first, we would have to build the interconnectors which don\u2019t yet exist,\u201d said Maha el-Kadiri, a Masen spokeswoman. \u201cSpecifically, we would have to build interconnections, which would not go through the existing one in Spain, and, then, start exporting.\u201d \nSpain 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\u2019s power can be transported abroad by cable by 2020. \nIn 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. \u201cWe are at the avante-garde of solar,\u201d el-Kadiri says. \nAbout $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\u2019s unelected ruler, King Mohammed VI, have prevented the cost from being transferred to energy consumers. \nOne 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. \nFor 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. \n\u201cWe\u2019ve done the construction and, now, we will see how these projects look when they start,\u201d she says. \u201cIt is exactly like the preparation for a grand performance.\u201d \nA global audience will be watching with interest.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"\u201cI got a Dyson vacuum cleaner but I don\u2019t even know if I want it,\u201d said 56-year-old Louise Haggerty, as she left the Black Friday sales at one o\u2019clock in the morning. \u201cIt was crazy in there. It was absolutely disgusting, disgusting.\u201d \nHaggerty went with a friend to a 24-hour Sainsbury\u2019s supermarket in north-east London. She hoped to buy a bargain flat-screen TV. \u201cBut so many people pushed in the queue that we didn\u2019t have a chance,\u201d she said. \u201cThe poor woman who was second in the queue was pushed out by a crowd of youths. She didn\u2019t get anything. People were behaving like animals \u2013 it was horrible,\u201d she said. \u201cI only saw two security guards.\u201d \nHaggerty was frustrated when she was unable to buy a TV, which was reduced from \u00a3299.99 to \u00a3149.99, so rushed to pick up a vacuum cleaner, which was reduced from \u00a3319.99 to \u00a3159.99. \u201cI don\u2019t even know how much it costs. I don\u2019t know even know if I\u2019m going to buy it. I just wanted something,\u201d she said. \u201cThere are young men in there with three, four, five tellies. It\u2019s not fair.\u201d \nOne of those young men was Andy Blackett, who had two trolleys full of bargains. \u201cI got two coffee makers, two tablets, two TVs and a stereo,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t know the prices but I know they\u2019re bargains.\u201d But his friend Henry Fischer wasn\u2019t as successful. \u201cSomeone snatched my telly from me \u2013 it\u2019s because I\u2019m the smaller one.\u201d \nMore than 12 police officers attended a Tesco store in another part of London because fights started between eager and frustrated shoppers. Tesco delayed the sale of its most popular sale items \u2013 TVs \u2013 for almost an hour until police brought the situation under control. One police officer said the manager did not provide enough security and suggested the sale should be stopped completely. \nPolice were called to several other stores just before the doors opened at midnight. Manchester Police said they arrested at least two people at Black Friday sales events. South Wales Police also said they received calls from staff at Tesco stores because so many people came to the sales that they became worried. \nOne of the first people to buy a flat-screen TV, when TV sales began just before 1am, was James Alled. He bought two and was already trying to sell one of them to someone further down the queue. \u201cI bought them for \u00a3250 each. I\u2019ll sell it to you for \u00a3350, \u00a3300 cash,\u201d he said. Further back in the queue, Christine Ball, 62, wasn\u2019t impressed. \u201cI got here at 10.15pm and I\u2019m further back now than when I got here\u201d she said. \u201cThese people don\u2019t know what a queue is.\u201d \nBall had not heard of the Black Friday sales, which come from the US, until now. She came out especially to buy her grandson a TV for Christmas. \u201cNot one of those massive ones; just a normal one at \u00a3100 or so,\u201d she said. \nMel Mehmet, 23, went to Black Friday sales in 2013 so she knew there would be queues. But she said the atmosphere in Tesco scared her this time. \u201cIt\u2019s crazy to have a sale at midnight \u2013 the police have more important things to do at night than come to sales. We\u2019re going to PC World in the morning \u2013 their sale starts at 8am.\u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nIn the Arctic regions of Canada, the summer sun shines for more than 20 hours a day. For some, its a welcome change from the constant darkness of winter. But, for the small but growing Muslim community of Iqaluit, Nunavut, life in the land of the midnight sun is a real challenge during the month of Ramadan, when Muslims typically fast from sunrise to sunset.\nI havent fainted once, said 29-year-old Abdul Karim, one of the few in the area who has carefully timed his Ramadan fast to the Arctic sun since moving from Ottawa in 2011. This year, that means eating at about 1.30am before the sun rises and breaking his fast at about 11pm when the sun sets. The only reason to stop would be if it hurts my health, Karim said.\nIt is nearly the end of Ramadan for Muslims around the world. Fasting is important but, during the holy month, in every Muslim community, there is also a focus on community work, prayer and reflection. But, in Iqaluit and the other Muslim communities in the Arctic, the long days have forced a change in how they fast.\nMost Muslims in Iqaluit follow the timetable followed by Muslims in Ottawa, about 1,300 miles south  this follows the advice of Muslim scholars who have said Muslims in the far north should observe Ramadan using the timetable of Mecca or the nearest Muslim city. It still means fasting for around 18 hours a day, said Atif Jilani, who moved to Iqaluit from Toronto. The days are long, but its more manageable.\nMany in the community of 100 people break their fast together  they gather in the citys brand new mosque for nightly suppers. As they tuck into traditional food such as dates and goat or lamb curries, the sun shines brightly through the windows.\nIts a similar situation across Canadas most northern mosques during Ramadan, as Muslims deal with the countrys unique geography. In recent years, much of the community has chosen to follow the Ramadan timetable of Edmonton, in Alberta. Some follow the timings of Mecca, for example Awan, a father of two young children, including a 12-year-old who recently started fasting. He hopes to encourage his son with the more manageable timetable of about 15 hours of fasting compared with about 18 hours in Edmonton. If I fast Edmonton times, my son might say, Papa, you are really insane. What are you doing? he said.\nFor the 100 or so Muslims in Inuvik, a small town 125 miles north of the Arctic Circle, it is impossible to follow the local movements of the sun. They have also been following Edmontons timetable. We currently have 24 hours a day of sun, said Ahmad Alkhalaf. Theres no sunrise or sunset.\nThey were already following the Edmonton schedule in 2001 when he moved from Toronto to the small northern community of 3,500 people. My first Ramadan here was in December. Theres no sun at that time; its dark all day and night. So we used Edmonton time.\nAt times, it can be difficult to follow the clock rather than what is happening outside, Alkhalaf said. Youre supposed to break your fast when its dusk but we eat when the sun is up. Its not usual to have iftar [the meal that breaks the fast] when the sun is up, he said.\nIn Inuvik, where most of the population is Inuit, the Muslim community has tried to strike a balance between Ramadan and the local culture and traditions. The iftar meal includes dates and curries  as well as local game such as reindeer. We make a soup or curry, but instead of using beef, we use reindeer.\nIn Iqaluit, as the Muslim community prepares to mark the end of Ramadan, some reflect that 2016s timing  stretching across some of the longest days of the year  has made it one of the more difficult of recent years. Its particularly true for those like Karim who have followed the local sunrise and sunset carefully. But, his efforts will be rewarded in future years, said Karim, thanks to the lunar calendar. Ramadan will eventually fall during winter and, in Iqaluit, the sun will rise and set within a few hours each day. Ill follow those hours, too, he said with a laugh. Oh yes, definitely.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nGalina Zaglumyonova was woken in her flat in central Chelyabinsk by an enormous explosion that blew in the balcony windows and shattered pots containing her houseplants. When she jumped out of bed, she could see a huge vapour trail hanging in the morning sky and hear car alarms from the street below.\nI didnt understand what was going on, said Zaglumyonova. There was a big explosion and then a series of little explosions. My first thought was that it was a plane crash.\nWhat she had actually witnessed was a ten-tonne meteorite that fell to Earth in a series of fireballs just after sunrise.\nOfficials said almost 1,200 people had been injured, with more than 40 taken to hospital  most as a result of flying glass shattered by the sonic boom created by the meteorites fall. There were no reported deaths.\nThe meteorite entered the atmosphere travelling at a speed of at least 33,000mph and broke up into pieces between 18 and 32 miles above the ground, according to a statement from the Russian Academy of Sciences.\nThe event caused panic in Chelyabinsk, a city of more than one million people to the south of Russias Ural mountains. A video showed the pieces of meteorite glowing more brightly as they approached the moment of impact. The vapour trail was visible for hundreds of miles around, including in neighbouring Kazakhstan.\nTatyana Bets was at work in the reception area of a hospital clinic in the centre of the city when the meteorite hit. First we noticed the wind, and then the room was filled with a very bright light and we could see a cloud of smoke in the sky, she said. Then, after a few minutes, the explosions came.\nAt least three craters were discovered, according to the Ministry of the Interior. One crater was more than six metres wide and another piece of the meteorite broke through the thick ice of a nearby lake.\nIn Chelyabinsk itself, schools and universities were closed and many other staff told to go home early. About 200 children were among the injured.\nA steady stream of lightly injured people, most suffering cuts from flying glass, came into the clinic where Bets works. She said a nearby building for college students was particularly badly affected and many of the students were brought in. There were a lot of girls in shock. Some were very pale and many of them fainted, she said.\nEarly estimates suggested more than 100,000 square metres of glass had been broken and 3,000 buildings hit. The total cost of the damage in the city was being valued at more than one billion roubles (20m).\nThe meteorite over Chelyabinsk arrived less than a day before asteroid 2012 DA14 was expected to pass Earth very closely (about 17,510 miles). But experts said the two events were not connected.\nThere were lots of rumours and conspiracy theories, however, in the first few hours after the incident. Reports on Russian state television and in local media suggested that the meteorite was blown apart by local air defence units at an altitude of more than 15 miles.\nThe ultra-nationalist leader of Russias Liberal Democrat party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, said it was not a meteorite but military action by the United States. Its not a meteorite falling  its a test of new American weapons, Zhirinovsky said.\nSome were quick to take advantage. Enterprising people were offering pieces of meteorite for sale through internet sites within a few hours of the impact.\nPresident Vladimir Putin and the Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, were informed about the incident, and Putin called a meeting with the head of the Emergency Situations Ministry. Its proof that not only are economies vulnerable but the whole planet, Medvedev said at an economic forum in Siberia.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Swedish prisons have long had a reputation around the world for being progressive. But are the country\u2019s prisons a soft option? \nThe head of Sweden\u2019s prison and probation service, Nils Oberg, announced in November 2013 that four Swedish prisons are to be closed due to an \u201cout of the ordinary\u201d decline in prisoner numbers. \nAlthough there has been no fall in crime rates, between 2011 and 2012 there was a 6% drop in Sweden\u2019s prisoner population, now a little over 4,500. A similar decrease is expected in 2013 and 2014. Oberg admitted to being puzzled by the unexpected dip, but expressed optimism that the reason was to do with how his prisons are run. \u201cWe certainly hope that the efforts we invest in rehabilitation and preventing relapse of crime has had an impact,\u201d he said. \n\u201cThe modern prison service in Sweden is very different from when I joined as a young prison officer in 1978,\u201d says Kenneth Gustafsson, governor of Kumla Prison, Sweden\u2019s most secure jail, situated 130 miles west of Stockholm. However, he doesn\u2019t think the system has gone soft. \u201cWhen I joined, the focus was very much on humanity in prisons. Prisoners were treated well \u2013 maybe too well, some might say. But, after a number of high-profile escapes in 2004, we had to rebalance and place more emphasis on security.\u201d \nDespite the hardening of attitudes toward prison security following the escape scandals, the Swedes still managed to maintain a broadly humane approach to sentencing, even of the most serious offenders: jail terms rarely exceed ten years; those who receive life imprisonment can still apply to the courts after a decade to have the sentence commuted to a fixed term, usually in the region of 18 to 25 years. Sweden was the first country in Europe to introduce the electronic tagging of convicted criminals and continues to strive to minimize short-term prison sentences wherever possible by using community-based measures, which have been proven to be more effective at reducing reoffending. \nThe overall reoffending rate in Sweden stands at between 30 and 40% over three years \u2013 to compare that with another European country, the number is around half that of the UK. One likely reason for the relatively low reoffending rate and the low rate of incarceration in Sweden (below 70 per 100,000 head of population) is that the age of criminal responsibility is set at 15. In the UK, for example, children aged ten to 17 and young people under the age of 21 record the highest reoffending rates: almost three quarters and two thirds, respectively. A good proportion of these offenders go on to populate adult jails. In Sweden, no young person under the age of 21 can be sentenced to life \u2013 this is not the case in many other countries \u2013 and every effort is made to ensure that as few juvenile offenders as possible end up in prison. \nOne strong reason for the drop in prison numbers might be the amount of post-prison support available in Sweden. A confident probation service \u2013 a government agency \u2013 is tasked not only with supervising those on probation but is also guaranteed to provide treatment programmes for offenders with drug, alcohol or violence issues. The service is assisted by around 4,500 lay supervisors \u2013 members of the public who volunteer to befriend and support offenders under supervision. \nGustafsson talks about broader goals and objectives for the Swedish justice department: \u201cIn 2013 and 2014, the priority of our work will be with young offenders and men with convictions of violent behaviour. For many years, we have been running programmes to help those addicted to drugs. Now, we are also developing programmes to address behaviours such as aggression and violence. These are the important things for our society when these people are released.\u201d I spoke to a former prisoner who now runs a social enterprise called X-Cons Sweden. Peter Soderlund served almost three years of a four-year sentence for drug and weapons offences before he was released in 1998. He was helped by a newly formed organization run by former prisoners called Kris (Criminals\u2019 Return Into Society). \n\u201cThe big difference between Kris and us is that we are happy to allow people who are still taking addiction medications to join us,\u201d he says. Both organizations work with the same goal: helping prisoners successfully reintegrate into society after they have been released. And what is life like for the prisoner in Sweden? \u201cWhen I was inside, I was lucky. In Osteraker Prison, where I served my sentence, the governor was enlightened. We were treated well. But I knew that not all Swedish prisons were like that. I met so many people in there who needed help \u2013 after I received help from Kris, I knew I wanted to help others. With X-Cons, we meet them at the gate and support them into accommodation and offer a network of support.\u201d \n\u201cIn Sweden, we believe very much in the concept of rehabilitation, without being naive of course,\u201d says Gustafsson. \u201cThere are some people who will not or cannot change. But, in my experience, the majority of prisoners want to change, and we must do what we can to help to facilitate that. It is not always possible to achieve this in one prison sentence. \n\u201cAlso, it is not just prison that can rehabilitate \u2013 it is often a combined process, involving probation and greater society. We can give education and training, but, when they leave prison, these people need housing and jobs.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nAccording to a new scientific 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 worlds governments consider to be dangerous.\nThe research indicates that fewer clouds form as the planet warms, which means less sunlight is reflected 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.\nProfessor 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 identified what controls the cloud changes and, second, it rejected the lowest estimates of future global warming and favoured the higher and more damaging estimates.\n4C would be catastrophic rather than simply dangerous, Sherwood said. For example, it would make life difficult, if not impossible, in much of the tropics and would guarantee the eventual melting of the Greenland ice sheet and some of the Antarctic ice sheet, with sea levels rising by many metres as a result.\nThe 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 Japans 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.\nScientists measure the sensitivity of the Earths 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:  wide range. The new research narrowed that range down to between 3C and 5C, by closely examining the biggest cause of uncertainty: clouds.\nComputer 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 reflect 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 significantly higher future temperatures than models that only included the nine-mile-high clouds.\nClimate sceptics like to criticize climate models for getting things wrong and we are the first to admit they are not perfect, said Sherwood. But what we are finding is that the mistakes are being made by the models 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.\nGlobal average air temperatures have increased quite slowly since a high point in 1998, which was caused by the ocean phenomenon El Nin_o. 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.\nSherwood accepts his teams work on the role of clouds cannot definitely 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.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nWe often see our colleagues and friends smoking an e-cigarette. But has vaping started to become less popular? Statistics suggest that vaping among smokers and recent ex-smokers, who are the vast majority of vapers, may already be declining. The  gures will be studied closely by the major e-cigarette companies, which have put millions of pounds into a technology that they thought was growing in popularity.\nFigures released in 2014 by the health charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) reveal that usage among adults in Britain of electronic cigarettes  which do not contain tobacco and produce vapour, not smoke  has tripled from 700,000 users in 2012 to 2.1 million in 2014.\nHowever,  gures collated by the Smoking Toolkit Study, a research organization that provides quarterly updates on smoking trends, show vapings appeal may be declining. Vaping rates among smokers and ex-smokers rose steadily until the end of 2013, when 22% of smokers and ex-smokers were vaping. But this proportion stopped rising in 2014 before dropping to 19% during the  nal quarter of the year. The drop is described as statistically signi cant by Professor Robert West, who collates the  gures for the Toolkit.\nSmokers are the key group for e-cigarette companies because seven out of ten vapers are smokers. Only around 1% of people who have never smoked have tried an electronic cigarette. Numbers who use e-cigarettes while continuing to smoke are going down, West said. Weve only been studying vaping for just over a year, so its a short time period, but we are not seeing growth in the number of long-term ex-smokers or never smokers using e-cigarettes. Vaping rates might change but, at this stage, it looks like theyre staying the same.\nThe fact that vaping has stopped growing in popularity in the UK seems to be at odds with what is happening in the US, where the technology has been promoted aggressively and where reports suggest it is growing in popularity. However, West questioned the interpretation of US data, which made little distinction between people who had once tried an e-cigarette and those who regularly vaped.\nExperts believe it is unlikely that vaping will become fashionable among young non-smokers. Only 1.8% of children are regular users, the ASH study found. Instead, e-cigarettes seem to be most popular among adults who want to quit. While the  gures published this month by Smoking In England show that the use of electronic cigarettes by smokers has stopped rising, their data also shows the huge increase in use since May 2011, said James Dunworth, of ecigarettedirect.co.uk. Our customers are still very happy with the product, and technology and innovation in hardware is improving user experience and helping them to switch from traditional cigarettes.\nE-cigarettes behave like a sort of nicotine patch, West agreed. They are more popular than nicotine patches and may or may not be more effective. One-third of quit attempts use e-cigarettes, which makes them by far the most popular method of stopping.\nHazel Cheeseman, director of policy at ASH, said it was too soon to say whether vaping had peaked. Although there are indications that the market hasnt grown in the UK for about a year, there doesnt seem to be a decline in the number of people using electronic cigarettes to help them quit smoking.\nThe European Commission (EC) is looking at increasing taxes on e-cigarettes, which could have an impact on their popularity. A new EC tobacco directive comes into force in 2016 that will limit the amount of nicotine in e-cigarettes to below their current levels. This may mean vapers will have to increase their usage to get the same effect, again something that may make e-cigarettes more expensive.\nWest suggested that policymakers should see e-cigarettes as an aid to stopping smoking and not have the same regulations for them as for smoking. There is a tendency among some local authorities and organizations to treat e-cigarettes as cigarettes and ban them in public places and outdoors, he said. It just sounds like youre having a go at vapers and that undermines the public health messages were trying to get out. We have to be careful not to stigmatize e-cigarettes.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"The regulation eight hours in the office is over. The most important work of the day is done; whatever is left can wait until the morning. This is the point many workers would think about heading for the door. \nYet, for millions of Japanese employees, the thought of clearing away their desks and being at home in time for dinner is enough to invite accusations of disloyalty. \nBut, after decades of giving companies carte blanche to milk every last drop of productivity from their workforce, a challenge to Japan\u2019s ingrained culture of overwork has come from the government, which is considering making it a legal requirement for workers to take at least five days\u2019 paid holiday a year. \nJapanese employees are currently entitled to an average 18.5 days\u2019 paid holiday a year \u2013 only two fewer than the global average \u2013 with a minimum of ten days, as well as 15 one-day national holidays. In reality, few come even close to taking their full quota, typically using only nine of their 18.5-day average entitlement, according to the labour ministry. While many British workers regard a two-week summer holiday as an inalienable right, workers in Japan have come to see a four-night vacation in Hawaii as the height of self-indulgence. \nThe move, to be debated in the current parliamentary session, comes after companies started encouraging employees to nap on the job to improve their performance. \nBy the end of the decade, the government hopes that, if passed, the law will push Japanese employees towards following the example set by British workers, who use an average of 20 days\u2019 paid annual leave, and those in France, who take an average of 25. \nJapan\u2019s unforgiving work culture may have helped turn it into an economic superpower, its corporate foot soldiers revered in the rest of the world for their commitment to the company, but this has often been to the exclusion of everything else. \nJapan\u2019s low birth rate and predictions of rapid population decline are partly blamed on the lack of time couples have to start families. More employees are falling ill from stress, or worse, succumbing to karoshi, death through overwork. \nDespite studies suggesting that longer hours in the office or workshop or on the factory floor do not necessarily make people more productive, today\u2019s workers are still nursing a collective hangover from the bubble years of the 1980s. \nAbout 22% of Japanese work more than 49 hours a week, compared with 16% of US workers and 11% in France and Germany, according to data compiled by the Japanese government. At 35%, South Korea\u2019s workaholics are even worse off. \nIn spending 14 hours a day at work and giving up many of her paid holidays, Erika Sekiguchi is not even an extreme example. The 36-year-old trading company employee used eight of her 20 days of paid vacation in 2014, six of which counted as sick leave. \u201cNobody else uses their vacation days,\u201d Sekiguchi said. \nShe faces the dilemma shared by her peers in companies across Japan: never to take time off to recharge or to risk inviting criticism for appearing to leave more committed colleagues in the lurch. \nYuu Wakebe, a health ministry official overseeing policy on working hours, who admits putting in 100 hours of overtime a month, blames the irresistible pressure to match one\u2019s colleagues, hour for hour. \u201cIt is a worker\u2019s right to take paid vacations,\u201d Wakebe said. \u201cBut working in Japan involves quite a lot of volunteer spirit.\u201d \nThat fear of being ostracized at work is being blamed for a rise in stress-related illness, premature death and suicide. According to official data, about 200 people die every year from heart attacks, strokes and other karoshi events brought on by punishing work schedules. \nThe prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is not known for taking long vacations. Yet even he has spoken out against the unreasonable demands companies place on their employees as they struggle to stay afloat in a more complex globalized market. Japan\u2019s working culture, Abe said recently, \u201cfalsely beatifies long hours\u201d.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"David Mitchell, a regular contender for the Man Booker literary prize, is used to his novels being picked over by the critics. So, it\u2019s something of a relief, says the British author, that his latest work \u2013 completed at 1am one Tuesday morning before a car arrived to take him to the airport to catch a flight to Norway \u2013 won\u2019t be seen by anyone until 2114. \nMitchell is the second contributor to the Scottish artist Katie Paterson\u2019s Future Library project, for which 1,000 trees were planted in 2014 in Oslo\u2019s Nordmarka forest. Starting with Margaret Atwood, who handed over the manuscript of a text called Scribbler Moon in 2015, each year for the next 100 years, an author will deliver a piece of writing that will only be read in 2114, when the trees are chopped down to make paper on which the 100 texts will be printed. \nEach author \u2013 their names revealed year by year and chosen by a panel of experts and Paterson, while she is alive \u2013 will make the trek to the spot in the forest high above Oslo, where they will surrender their manuscripts in a short ceremony. \n\u201cIt\u2019s a little glimmer of hope in a season of highly depressing news cycles, which affirms we are in with a chance of civilization in a hundred years,\u201d said Mitchell. \u201cEverything is telling us that we\u2019re doomed but the Future Library is a candidate on the ballot paper for possible futures. It brings hope that we are more resilient than we think: that we will be here, that there will be trees, that there will be books and readers, and civilization.\u201d \nMitchell said he found writing the book \u201cquite liberating because I won\u2019t be around to take the consequences of this being good or bad ... But, I\u2019m sandwiched between Margaret Atwood and no doubt some other brilliant writer. So, it better be good. What a historic fool of epochal proportions I\u2019d look if they opened it in 2114 and it wasn\u2019t any good.\u201d \nUsually, says Mitchell, who was shortlisted for the Man Booker for his novels number9dream and Cloud Atlas, he \u201cpolishes and polishes\u201d his writing. \u201cActually, I over-polish. But, this was very different \u2013 I wrote up to the wire. So, the first two-thirds were polished and the final third I didn\u2019t have time. And, it was a liberation.\u201d \nFuture Library creator, Paterson, whose past works have involved her mapping dead stars and compiling a slide archive of the history of darkness through the ages, asked the writers to tackle \u201cthe theme of imagination and time, which they can take in so many directions\u201d. Mitchell revealed only the name of the manuscript, From Me Flows What You Call Time, during a ceremony in the Norwegian woods next to where Paterson\u2019s 1,000 trees are planted. The title is taken from a piece of music by Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu but, other than admitting that \u201cit\u2019s somewhat more substantial a thing than I was expecting\u201d, the author would say nothing. \nHanding over his text in the forest, sheltered from the intermittent rain by an umbrella and amid the foot-high shoots of 1,000 pine trees, Mitchell read his damp audience of children and adults a short story and William Wordsworth\u2019s A slumber did my spirit seal. Its ending, \u201cRolled round in earth\u2019s diurnal course \/ With rocks, and stones, and trees\u201d, felt appropriate in this small section of forest, carpeted with blueberry bushes, which will be carefully tended to for the next 98 years before it is turned into Future Library\u2019s manuscripts. \n\u201cHow vain to suppose the scribblings of little old me will be of enduring interest to future generations. Yet, how low-key and understated, to slave over a manuscript that nobody will ever pat you on the back for and say: \u2018Nice one\u2019 or \u2018God, I loved the bit where she did that and he did this... \u2019\u201d Mitchell wrote in a piece for the Future Library. \nHis manuscript, now delivered, will be sealed and placed alongside Atwood\u2019s in a wood-lined room in Oslo\u2019s new public library, which will open in 2019. Watched over by a trust of experts until it is finally printed, it is now, says the novelist, \u201cas gone from me as a coin dropped in a river\u201d.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Sweden is the best country for older people; Afghanistan is the worst \u2013 but rich countries are not always better for people over 60 years old, says the first global study on ageing. Sweden\u2019s top ranking \u2013 followed by Norway, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada \u2013 is not a surprise, but the Global AgeWatch study gives some surprising results. \nThe US, the world\u2019s richest country, is only in eighth place, and the UK is in 13th place. Sri Lanka is 36th, far above Pakistan at 89th, although the countries have similar economies. Bolivia and Mauritius are in higher positions than the size of their economies suggests. Brazil and China are quite high, but India and Russia are much lower. \n\u201cThis study shows that history is important,\u201d said Mark Gorman, director of HelpAge International. \u201cThe top countries are what you would expect, but Scandinavian countries were not rich when they introduced pensions for everyone. Older people in Sri Lanka today have good basic education and health care \u2013 those countries decided to help older people. No country has enough money but, when they decide how to spend their money, they should not forget older people.\u201d \nThe study includes 91 countries and 89% of the world\u2019s older people. The study comes at a time of big population changes: by 2050, there will probably be two billion people aged 60 and over, which will be more than a fifth of the world\u2019s population. \nPopulation ageing \u2013 when older people are a larger and larger percentage of the population \u2013 is happening fastest in developing countries. More than two-thirds of older people live in poor countries; by 2050, this proportion will probably be about four-fifths. The fastest ageing countries \u2013 Jordan, Laos, Mongolia, Nicaragua and Vietnam \u2013 are in the lower half of the ranking, which suggests that politicians there need to look at the problem of ageing so that they can give enough support to their populations. There are also differences between men and women in ageing populations \u2013 women generally live longer than men. In 2012, for every 84 men aged 60 and over, there were 100 women. \nHowever, population ageing does not always mean more health care spending, according to the report, which shows the importance of long-term investments in education and health care for older people. Bolivia, ranked 46, is one of the poorest countries but it has introduced good policies for older people \u2013 a national plan on ageing, free health care and a pension for everyone. \nChile and Costa Rica introduced good basic health care many years ago and this has helped the ageing populations of those countries. A good education system is very useful later in life \u2013 basic literacy is very important for older people when they have to read and complete pensions documents. In the Philippines, the educational reforms introduced after independence in 1946 have helped older people \u2013 elementary and high school education became compulsory. The same is true for Armenia, which, like other countries of the ex-Soviet Union, had a strong education system. South Korea is a surprisingly low 67 in the ageing study, partly because it introduced a pension only recently. \nIt is clear that countries all over the world should do more to help their ageing populations.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nRace engineer A race engineer liaises between the driver and the mechanics.\nTypical salary: New graduates start at 25,000 to 30,000 and quickly progress to junior engineer roles, earning more than 40,000 with just a few years experience. Senior race engineers earn 50,000 to 90,000.\nWhat the job involves: A race engineer is the interpreter between the race-car mechanics and the driver, says race engineer Jamie Muir. The engineer takes feedback from the driver, analyses the data and makes decisions about the set-up needed for maximum performance, then passes this on to the mechanics.\nQuali cations: A university degree, typically in automotive\/mechanical engineering or motorsport technology. Hands-on experience is essential.\nTo succeed as a race engineer, you need ... to be able to deal with pressure.\nWorst thing about the job: The long hours. Race engineers work 24\/7, says Chris Aylett, CEO of the Motorsport Industry Association.\nEthical hacker Typical salary: A newly quali ed hacker can expect a minimum salary of 35,000 to 50,000. This rises to 60,000 to 90,000 at team-leader level.\nWhat the job involves: A company will pay an ethical hacker to hack into its computer system to see how well it might resist a real attack.\nQuali cations: You dont necessarily need a degree in computer science. The industry accepts individuals with a very wide range of academic quali cations and skills.\nTo succeed as an ethical hacker, you need ... a passion for technology and detail. You should also enjoy solving dif cult problems.\nWorst thing about the job: When you are called in to test the security of a new customers network and you discover that they have already been hacked.\nBomb-disposal diver Typical salary: In the private sector, you can earn up to 100,000 working just two months out of every three.\nWhat the job involves: Descending to the sea bed and searching for unexploded bombs, shells, grenades and landmines, then either safely recovering and collecting the weapons or securely disposing of them.\nQuali cations: To dive offshore, you must have diving quali cations. To be able to dispose of the bombs safely, youll also need an explosive- disposal quali cation and years of experience.\nTo succeed as a bomb-disposal diver, you need ... to stay calm in stressful situations. You work alone under water, with zero visibility and, if you dont like living in small con ned spaces with lots of other people, forget it.\nWorst thing about the job: Expect to be away from home at least six months of the year.\nSocial engineer Typical salary: Graduates start on 25,000 but salaries increase rapidly with quali cations and experience, rising to between 50,000 and 80,000, on average.\nThe job: Companies pay a social engineer to try to trick employees into giving them con dential information that allows the engineer to access sensitive company data or the companys computer network.\nQuali cations: Typically, social engineers have a degree in IT, although an understanding of psychology is useful. \nTo succeed as a social engineer, you need ... the con dence to lie convincingly and the ability to  t in almost anywhere without looking too out of place. You also need a strong sense of personal ethics and an understanding of the law.\nWorst thing about the job: Other people may misunderstand your job: social engineers are not spies but most people think they are.\nPower-line helicopter pilot Typical salary: 65,000\nThe job: To  y close to high-voltage power lines in a helicopter so that the lines can be inspected with a camera and any potential faults and issues can be identi ed by the power company.\nQuali cations: A private-helicopter-pilot licence, a commercial pilots licence and around 2,000 hours of experience  ying at low levels.\nTo succeed as a power line helicopter pilot, you need ... a steady hand and a cool head. Typically, pilots must  y beside the power line, sometimes as little as 20 feet away and just 30 feet off the ground.\nWorst thing about the job: There are no negatives, says helicopter pilot Robin Tutcher.\nPrivate butler Typical salary: 60,000 to 90,000\nThe job: A private butler can be called on by his or her employer to do anything from wardrobe management to chauffeuring and pet care. Typical duties include managing other staff, serving at every meal, running errands, looking after guests, booking restaurants, house security, housekeeping, cooking and anything else the household needs.\nQuali cations: You dont need any speci c quali cations but you can do a special course.\nTo succeed as a butler, you need ... to enjoy looking after other people.\nWorst thing about the job: Long hours and an unpredictable work schedule mean its dif cult to have a family life. Butlers also suffer from isolation, cultural differences with their employer and having to work for people who arent always nice.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"An octopus has made a brazen escape from the National Aquarium in New Zealand by breaking out of its tank, slithering down a 50-metre drainpipe and disappearing into the sea. \nIn scenes reminiscent of Finding Nemo, Inky \u2013 a common New Zealand octopus \u2013 made his dash for freedom after the lid of his tank was accidentally left slightly ajar. Staff believe that in the middle of the night, while the aquarium was deserted, Inky clambered to the top of his glass enclosure, down the side of the tank and travelled across the floor of the aquarium. \nRob Yarrell, national manager of the National Aquarium of New Zealand in Napier, said: \u201cOctopuses are famous escape artists. I don\u2019t think he was unhappy with us, or lonely, as octopuses are solitary creatures. But, he is such a curious boy. He would want to know what\u2019s happening on the outside. That\u2019s just his personality.\u201d \nOne theory is that Inky slid across the aquarium floor \u2013 a journey of three or four metres \u2013 and then, sensing freedom was at hand, into a drainpipe that led directly to the sea. The drainpipe was 50 metres long and opened onto the waters of Hawke\u2019s Bay, on the east coast of New Zealand\u2019s North Island. \nAnother possible escape route could have involved Inky squeezing into an open pipe at the top of his tank, which led under the floor to the drain. \u201cWhen we came in the next morning and his tank was empty, I was really surprised,\u201d said Yarrell, who has not launched a search for Inky. \u201cThe staff and I have been pretty sad. But then, this is Inky and he\u2019s always been a bit of a surprise octopus.\u201d \nReiss Jenkinson, exhibits keeper at the National Aquarium, said he was absolutely certain Inky had not been taken. \u201cI understand the nature of octopus behaviour very well,\u201d he said. \u201cI have seen octopuses on boats slip through bilge pumps. And, the security here is too tight for anyone to take Inky and why would they?\u201d \nBecause octopuses have no bones, they are able to fit into extremely small spaces and have been filmed squeezing through gaps the size of coins. They are also understood to be extremely intelligent and capable of using tools. At the Island Bay Marine Education Centre in Wellington, an octopus was found to be in the habit of visiting another tank overnight to steal crabs, then returning to its own. Another at the centre, Ozymandias, was thought to have broken a world record for opening a jar before it was released into the ocean. \nInky was brought to the National Aquarium a number of years ago by a local fisherman who found him caught in a crayfish pot. He was scarred and \u201crough looking\u201d, with shortened limbs, said Yarrell. \u201cHe had been living on the reef and fighting with fish so he wasn\u2019t in the best shape.\u201d According to Yarrell, Inky \u2013 who is about the size of a rugby ball \u2013 was an \u201cunusually intelligent\u201d octopus. \u201cHe was very friendly, very inquisitive and a popular attraction here. We have another octopus, Blotchy, but he is smaller than Inky and Inky had the personality.\u201d \nThe aquarium has no plans to step up security as a result of the escape as Inky was a \u201cone- off\u201d but the staff are \u201cincreasingly aware of what octopuses can actually do\u201d. Although the aquarium is not actively searching for a replacement for Inky, if a fisherman brought in another octopus, it might be willing to take it on. \u201cYou never know,\u201d said Yarrell. \u201cThere\u2019s always a chance Inky could come home to us.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"There are bird droppings in one of Britain\u2019s most expensive houses. Pigeon skeletons lie among broken mirrors and water is coming through the walls. This is The Tower, a \u00a330m palace in \u201cBillionaires\u2019 Row\u201d in north London. \nIt is one of ten mansions in the middle of The Bishops Avenue that have been empty for many years. The Saudi Arabian royal family bought it. Their Grecian columns are cracking into pieces and mosaic-tiled swimming pools are filled with broken stones. Nature has taken control and owls have moved in. \nYou see the same thing again and again on the avenue. Lloyds Bank says The Bishops Avenue is the second most expensive street in Britain. House prices in London are rising at 11.2% a year. More and more people find it difficult to buy a house, but 16 mansions on the most expensive part of The Bishops Avenue are empty. Their gates are locked and there are guard dogs in their overgrown gardens. \nAcross the street stands another empty mansion worth \u00a318m. It has broken windows and its walls are painted with anti-climb paint. Metal bars block the windows of another mansion, which has sold for \u00a320m. \nFor people who find it very difficult to keep a roof above their heads in one of the world\u2019s most expensive cities, seeing the empty houses can be painful. One security guard who works on the avenue said it was annoying to see so many mansions \u2013 enough for many people to live in \u2013 falling apart. \nRich royals from Nigeria and Saudi Arabia came to this road near Hampstead Heath first. Iranians came here after the fall of the shah. Now, Chinese house hunters are following Russians and Kazakhs who have spent millions to get an address that estate agents tell them is as world famous as the Champs Elys\u00e9es and Rodeo Drive. Recently, two mansions have been on sale for \u00a365m and \u00a338m. \nBut in the grounds of the empty mansions, stone fountains crumble. Inside one mansion, the ceiling has collapsed and water drips through a huge crystal chandelier onto a thick carpet, which is rotting. Moss grows through bricks and mirrored tiles are lying on a bathroom floor. The swimming pool is filled with dirty water and has flowers growing through its tiles. The wood in the sauna is coming off the walls. \nBut it is the ruin of The Towers, a grand mansion, that is most dramatic. There are pigeons in its huge, high-ceiling halls and its walls are bright green with algae. \nToday, very few people live on The Bishops Avenue all the time. A security guard outside one mansion said that the owners were not there. Another guard outside Royal Mansion would not say if anyone was home and a member of staff at another mansion warned the Guardian about the guard dogs. \nMagdy Adib Ishak-Hannah, who has \u00a345m, said he is one of the few residents who lives there all the time. \n\u201cI have never seen what my neighbours look like. Next door, a Saudi princess spent \u00a335m on a new house and I\u2019ve never seen her. There are about three houses that are lived in 24\/7 and half of the houses are lived in three to six months a year. The other half, who knows if they come or not?\u201d he said. \nThe reason for the multimillion-pound ruins is that some of the world\u2019s richest people see British houses as an investment. \nAnil Varma, who develops homes and then sells them, wants to build \u00a35m apartments, instead of \u00a350m mansions, to try to bring people back. \nHe has decided to rebuild one of the most expensive sites on the avenue as a collection of 20 apartments with a concierge, maid service, 25-metre pool, spa and cinema.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Why do it? Talking to the men earmarked to be the elite referees of the future, the question elicits a knowing smile. This season, criticism of referees has increased to the point where some former referees have felt compelled to complain about standards. That is quite striking because, the more you talk to referees, the more obvious it is that supporting each other through thick and thin is fundamental. \nSo why do it? Why spend countless hours driving up and down the country to dole out rules, some of which are inevitably going to upset people, trying to climb the ladder until you get the chance to make decisions on television in front of millions who scrutinize you and your ability with the aid of umpteen different angles and slow-motion replays? \nA glimpse of an answer appears on the face of Lee Swabey moments after he blows the final whistle of a 2 \u20131 win for Grimsby over Woking, a match at level 5 of the English league system. He gets what all referees hope for every time they referee a match. \u201cTwenty-two handshakes,\u201d he explains afterwards, proudly. Symbolically, a full set of handshakes, plus a \u201cwell done\u201d from both managers, represents maximum satisfaction. \u201cThe buzz,\u201d as he calls it, of a game that passes smoothly, is something he loves. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t spend so much time away from my family if this didn\u2019t mean the world to me.\u201d \nAs one of the group that is highly regarded by the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) for his potential, Swabey knew he was being watched at that match. PGMOL\u2019s chief, Mike Riley, was in attendance, along with Steve Dunn, who is the coach for this level, armed with notes and stopwatch to catalogue every significant move the officials make. \nA few weeks earlier, Riley, Dunn and another former referee, Peter Jones, made their way to another level-5 match to monitor another referee tipped to progress \u2013 John Brooks. \u201cI hope to have the opportunity to get promoted to the Premier League and officiate some of the top games in this country,\u201d Brooks says. \nThe most the PGMOL delegation got to observe, however, was the way Brooks handled the somewhat tricky situation of calling off the match because of a frozen pitch. It is all part of the experience Brooks needs to acquire before he is trusted with more high-profile games, the different problems that need dealing with \u2013 often, clubs are very reluctant to have a late postponement, particularly when they have to pay all the staff who have turned up but will not receive any gate money. \nBrooks phoned his coach for advice and made the difficult but correct decision. A little later, the football club secretary arrived with envelopes to pay the officials for their time \u2013 the match fee at level 5 is \u00a395 so it is safe to assume these men do not do it for the cash. \nBrooks, like Swabey, has clear ambitions to progress. He is under no illusions that developing a thick skin and perfecting strategies to deal with disappointments is a big part of that. How does he feel watching football on TV when a referee gets vilified? \u201cErm \u2026 not great,\u201d he admits. \u201cI\u2019ve been in that situation once where I have made an incorrect decision and it was a deciding goal that was just offside. Your heart sinks. You can\u2019t stop thinking about it. \n\u201cI do sometimes wish people understood the time and effort we put in. It is very easy to criticize a decision but we do everything to try to get these decisions right. In certain situations, you are going to be unpopular but, if you are uncomfortable with that, you are probably in the wrong job.\u201d \nThe former referees agree that the backup, education and tools that today\u2019s referees have is a world away from what they experienced in their own days. Riley, as a young referee, went out and bought himself books on psychology and nutrition as there was no information on offer to him at all. \nContrast this with Brooks, who has a coach at the end of the phone. They consult weekly, discuss how his games have gone, study footage of key decisions and work out how to improve. He also has the support of a sports psychologist, Liam Slack, for regular guidance and an exercise regime to help him handle the 11km he runs during a game. \nBrooks says psychology is vital in his development. \u201cOne of the things we have talked about is forgetting decisions and moving on,\u201d he explains. \u201cThere may be a big decision to make in the first 30 seconds of the game. Once you have made that, you need to stay focused for the next 89 minutes and not be wondering whether that was correct or worrying about that decision. Liam has taught us some techniques for releasing that decision. Working with the sports psychologist is really important for mental toughness.\u201d \nJones believes the whole approach can only help. \u201cI refereed in professional football but, looking back, I was an amateur,\u201d he says. \u201cI was going to work \u2013 I worked for British Telecom \u2013 and I might referee at Newcastle on a Wednesday evening and, 9am the next morning, I was in Leicester trying to speak to customers. I perhaps hadn\u2019t slept. Training was ad hoc. We were amateurs in a professional environment compared to now.\u201d \nWhen the subject of technology comes up, the three former refs are unanimous in their support of it. \u201cWe are all in favour of anything that makes the referee\u2019s job better and makes them more effective on the field of play,\u201d says Riley. Minimizing mistakes is the aim. After all, a bad decision can stick with you for a while. \u201cThe rest of your life,\u201d notes Jones with a chuckle.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nUnless we win, it doesnt mean a damn thing, said billionaire Donald Trump, the man who wants to be the Republican presidential nominee, at a campaign rally in South Carolina. He said this despite  nishing his fourth month in a row at the top of the opinion polls. I want to pick my date for the election. I want it next Tuesday, he con ded to the crowd of 11,000 people. He has a lot of grassroots support, which he needs to continue until March 2016 for him to win the nomination to be the presidential candidate in Novembers general election.\nTrump is not the only one beginning to think it possible that his surprising campaign can go the distance, particularly because recent controversy only seems to have con rmed his lead over his rivals. Usually, any one of these outbursts would have destroyed a politician by now.\nFirst, he outraged prisoners of war by doubting the heroism of Vietnam veteran John McCain because he allowed himself to be captured. Then, there was the  rst television debate, where he insulted Fox News moderator, Megyn Kelly, because she asked him dif cult questions.\nIt seems that making prisoners of war, Fox News and women angry was not enough. Trump has also insulted Mexican immigrants to the US, claimed that a Black Lives Matter protester who was violently thrown out of a rally deserved to be roughed up, appeared to laugh at a New York Times journalist for his disability and falsely accused Muslim Americans of supporting the 9\/11 attackers.\nTrump has complained that many of these incidents were exaggerated by the political media, 70% of whom, he says, are scum. But, he has refused to retract any of the comments.\nSome rivals still hope that, eventually, even Trumps supporters will get tired of his attacks on minorities. One poll shows his support among Republicans has reduced by 12 points  although, at 31%, he is still in the lead.\nHe is an egomaniac; hes a narcissist. Hes not a conservative, hes not a liberal  he believes in himself, former presidential rival, Bobby Jindal, told the Guardian, before he left the race.\nBut, there is more to Trump than attention- grabbing outrage. As he is happy to tell supporters, the three things that he is most against  immigration reform, free-trade deals and Barack Obamas national security policy  have become perhaps the most important issues of the election.\nHis policies for deporting every undocumented immigrant in the US and demanding that Mexico pays for a border wall  A real wall. A very tall wall, taller than that ceiling.  might sound unrealistic but they have destroyed the campaign hopes of Jeb Bush, who favours immigration reform.\nSo what can stop Trump? One reason for hope among opponents is the strong evidence that polls this far away from election day can be incorrect, simply because most people have not made up their minds how to vote yet. Among Americans who say they are Republicans, current polls suggest he has 25-30% of the vote.\nIn the political battle for hearts and minds, converting Trumps passionate supporters will be hard. It is hard to imagine anyone being a better Trump than Trump.\nThis scenario can be best understood by looking at responses to the question: Which candidates would you de nitely not support for the Republican nomination for president? While 20-30% of voters say they would support Trump, another 20-30% say they de nitely would not.\nSteve Deace, an Iowa conservative, said that Trumps behaviour is both a good and a bad thing. On the one hand, it produces loyal fans that are attracted to his personality. On the other hand, it limits his ability to grow beyond that.\nTop Republican pollster, Frank Luntz, believes Trump speaks for voters who, for the  rst time, feel as if they have a mouthpiece and like the fact that they feel like they are heard. He says, Trump says what theyre thinking and, the more outrageous he is, the more they agree with him. Hes saying what no politician would say and thats another reason they like him.\nThat is certainly the feeling among ordinary supporters who have attended his increasingly packed campaign events recently.\n I like the way he speaks, says Sandra Murray of Dubuque, Iowa. This country is a big mess and, honestly, he could be the man to help us.\n Other supporters offer a simpler explanation. Hes not afraid of anybody or anything. Thats pretty cool.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"There are eyes on you, behind the bright lights and mirrored panels. Pick up a boot and a camera will make sure you don\u2019t slip it into your bag. Enter a department store and you will be watched. But new technology is leading retailers to grow a different set of eyes \u2013 less focused on shoplifting and more interested in your age, sex, size, head, shoulders, knees and toes. \nA few months ago, IT firm Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) produced a report that claimed around 30% of retailers use facial recognition technology to track customers in-store. Facial recognition is a technology that can identify people by analysing and comparing facial features from a database, using devices such as Intel RealSense cameras, which are able to analyse everything from particular expressions to the clothing brands someone is wearing. \nJoe Jensen, of Intel\u2019s Retail Solutions Division, says that the aim of bringing RealSense technology into shops is not to create databases of specific people\u2019s lives but rather to build generalized models of people\u2019s lifestyles and shopping habits. \u201cIt\u2019s not so much that you need to know a particular customer. It\u2019s that you need to know that this shopper has these characteristics and, in the past, that when those characteristics are present, this is what a person tends to do.\u201d \nIf you combine recognition technology with databases of previous customer patterns, you can start to predict a lot about what a person may or may not do in a shop. If, say, there\u2019s a size-10 woman wearing a gold necklace walking quickly towards the sock aisle, you can use that data to predict she wants to, well, buy socks. That could allow a retailer to automatically put targeted ads on screens aimed specifically at that person. If she looks like the type of person who wants to buy socks, they will show her adverts for socks. \nIf it sounds familiar, it\u2019s because the online world has been using techniques like these for years. \nIf you search for something on Amazon, you\u2019ll be hounded by targeted banners for similar products on other sites. Express a vague interest in canoeing and you\u2019ll get ads for canoes wherever you go. Yet bringing these systems into the physical world isn\u2019t a simple case of copy and paste. It turns out that people do not react to cameras in the same way as they do to browser cookies. \nHoxton Analytics, a London-based team of data scientists, has developed a technology that makes use of machine learning and artificial intelligence to categorize people based on the shoes they are wearing. By analysing the style and size of people\u2019s footwear as they walk past the sensor, the system can identify a customer\u2019s gender with between 75 and 80% accuracy. \nOwen McCormack, Hoxton Analytics CEO, says that the focus of the system came about in part as a reaction to facial recognition. \u201cMy idea was, why don\u2019t we simply consider the clothes someone\u2019s wearing to understand demographics?\u201d he said. \u201cIf I just showed you a shot of someone\u2019s body you could probably tell me what gender they are. However, it turns out pointing a camera at someone\u2019s chest or hips feels just as creepy as facial recognition. The idea was \u2013 what about people\u2019s shoes?\u201d \nThe word \u201ccreepy\u201d comes up a lot during discussions of in-store tracking. For retailers and data scientists, the aim is to find a way of obtaining information without coming across as intrusive. \nFor Hoxton Analytics and the retailers using the technology, the answer is to look downwards. This tactic of avoiding the face and staring at shoes says a lot about how we, as physical beings, react to being watched. It suggests there are boundaries that do not exist on the internet. Set sights on our torsos and we feel invaded. But is making calculated judgments about a person based on their footwear actually any less invasive? \nFor McCormack, the argument hinges on the fact that personally identifiable information isn\u2019t being collected. \u201cRight now, shops are doing lots of incredibly invasive things but we just don\u2019t know about it. The angle Hoxton Analytics is taking on that whole thing is, well, if you know someone\u2019s a male or a female, then your advertising will be much more efficient. If you know that everyone in your shop right now is a male, you\u2019ll be advertising PlayStations not hairdryers.\u201d \nKeep it hidden and invisible monitoring lets shops optimize their output while keeping the customer unaware. Put adaptable monitors and targeted advertising into the mix, however, and it becomes harder to hide the fact that a machine is watching you. The argument from the retailers is that they do this to provide a personal shopping experience but it remains a grey area. It still feels creepy. \nFrom the perspective of retailers, it\u2019s understandable that physical shops want some of the information online outlets collect. We allow this to happen online so why not offline? The thresholds of a shopping centre are different from those between websites and, when you can wander freely from one place to another without a pop-up asking you to accept cookies, the rules of consent change. \nThen again, for a generation growing up with online first, physical shop second, the modes of online play may not be quite so invasive. In the CSC report, a survey indicated that while 72% of respondents aged 55 and over said they were very uncomfortable with these types of technologies being used in physical shops, only 51% of 16-24 year olds said the same. \nDoes this relative openness stem from a greater familiarity with digital technology or a blind belief in the goodwill of omnipresent organizations offering free services? Is the creepiness of a technology an unvarying, instinctive certainty or does it ebb and flow with degrees of social acceptance? Whatever the case, there are a growing number of eyes between the shelves and they care a lot about what you\u2019re wearing.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"I got a degree in Spanish and this helped me get my \ufb01rst job as a journalist, with an international press agency in Mexico City. But, the degree didn\u2019t stop me from making mistakes. \nI arrived in the Mexican capital after a bus journey all the way from New York. In my new job, I spent my days on the streets in political rallies and my nights alone in the of\ufb01ce, where I coordinated the news from areas of \ufb01ghting in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and the rest of Central America. But, I also had to report on disasters: \ufb01res, \ufb02oods and explosions at \ufb01 rework factories. \nWhile I was working as a reporter, I found out that I was bad at understanding numbers in Spanish. Once, when I wanted to phone the police, I got a Mexican grandmother out of bed at 2am because I had misunderstood a phone number. Even worse, there were too many victims in my stories \u2013 83 dead in a \ufb01 re at 6pm become 38 dead 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 of\ufb01ce in Washington. \u201cI don\u2019t know what training you have had,\u201d an editor shouted, \u201cbut has no one ever told you a death toll can\u2019t go down?!\u201d \nWhy are numbers in another language such a problem? Perhaps it is because of different numbering systems. In German, for example, 2.30pm is halb drei (half of three) and 21 is einundzwanzig (one and twenty). Different number systems can clearly cause confusion. \nSome experts believe there is a link between dyscalculia \u2013 the dif\ufb01culty in understanding arithmetic \u2013 and problems learning foreign languages, particularly if you learn languages by rote. But, some students who \ufb01nd it hard to learn languages with a grammar textbook may learn more easily in a foreign country, where learning is more natural. In my case, I have always found languages quite easy, apart from the numbers. \nBut, perhaps it\u2019s also because we often hear numbers in a non-native language out of context. You may stop listening to the foreign language and suddenly be unable to understand. I talked to multilingual friends and they said that they are fluent in French or Italian when ordering from a restaurant menu, for example, but freeze if they have to say numbers, especially over the phone. Numbers seem to be dif\ufb01cult, but no one could say why. \nIn 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 \ufb01rst journalism job, getting the numbers wrong didn\u2019t always mean failure. \nOne night, a Mexican colleague told me that a gunman was holding the American consul hostage in his of\ufb01ce in the port city of Veracruz. There was no senior English-speaking reporter in the of\ufb01ce, so they asked me to try to call the consulate. I got the phone number wrong and I was put through to another phone somewhere else in the building. I knew straight away who the person was: I talked for 15 minutes to the gunman. He didn\u2019t put away his gun as a result of his conversation with me \u2013 but my reputation as a reporter rose instantly.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Crunchy, full of protein and to be found under a rock near you. Insects have long been overlooked as food in all but a handful of places around the world \u2013 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. \nIn April, there will be a festival in London, Pestival 2013 \u2013 a Wellcome Trust-backed insect appreciation event where the consumption of creepy-crawlies comes high on the agenda. It will feature a two-day \u201cpop-up \u201d 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\u2019s hotel in Mayfair in 2012. \nNoma has been named the world\u2019s best restaurant by Restaurant magazine for three years running. Its chef, Ren\u00e9 Redzepi, says that ants taste like lemon, and a pur\u00e9e 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. \nIn 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. \nThe UN\u2019s 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 \u201cthis valuable food source\u201d in 2013. \nInsects are plentiful \u2013 globally, for every human there are 40 tonnes of insects \u2013 so there is not too much chance of them being endangered, and they are unlikely to have been dosed with chemicals. \u201cI know it\u2019s taboo to eat bugs in the western world, but why not?\u201d, Redzepi has said. \u201cYou 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\u2019ve 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.\u201d \nHe said that the basic premise behind Nordic Food Lab was: \u201cNothing is not edible.\u201d 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. \nOver the next 30 years, the planet\u2019s 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. \nThe 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 \u2013 35% of the planet\u2019s methane, 65% of its nitrous oxide and 9% of the carbon dioxide. \nEdible 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\u2019s 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 \u00a340,000, in his luggage.  \nA 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 \u2013 then they get a chance to nibble their own back.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate \n\n\nDo you want your child to be good at sport, play for the school team and, maybe one day, even compete in international competitions? Well, try to make sure that your future Olympian or World Cup winner is born in November or October. A study by one of the UKs leading experts on childrens physical activity has found that school pupils born in those months are  tter than everyone else in their class.\nNovember- and October-born children were  tter, stronger and more powerful than those born in the other ten months of the year, especially those whose birthdays were in April or June. Dr Gavin Sandercock of Essex University and colleagues found that autumn-born children had a clear physical advantage over their classmates.\nThe research involved 8,550 boys and girls aged between ten and 16 from 26 state schools in Essex. All were tested between 2007 and 2010 on three different measures of  tness: stamina, handgrip strength and lower-body power. The results revealed that a childs month of birth could make signi cant differences to their levels of cardiovascular  tness, muscle strength and ability to accelerate, all of which predict how good someone is at sport.\nNovember-born children were the  ttest overall as they had the most stamina and power and were the second strongest. Those born in October were almost as  t, scoring highest for strength and coming third for power, with December children close behind.\nThe gap in physical ability between children in the same class but born in different months was sometimes very wide. For example, we found that a boy born in November can run at least 10% faster, jump 12% higher and is 15% more powerful than a child of the same age born in April. This is, potentially, a huge physical advantage, said Sandercock. Such gaps could decide who became a top-level athlete because, as the paper says, selection into elite sports may often depend on very small margins or differences in an individuals physical performance.\nThe study, which has been published in the International Journal of Sports Medicine, found that, when scores for the three kinds of  tness were combined, those born in April were the least  t, then those in June. That could see those children excluded from school teams and becoming sporting underachievers, Sandercock said.\nThe  ndings seem to show that children born in the early months of the school year enjoy a double autumn advantage  they are already known to have an academic advantage and, now, they also appear to be better equipped for sport, too. The results show that something other than the relative-age effect  the greater maturity of those born early in the school year  is the cause, especially as the  ttest children were not the tallest or heaviest, he added.\nThe authors believe that autumn-born childrens greater exposure over the summer months, towards the end of pregnancy, to vitamin D is the most likely explanation. Seasonal differences in vitamin D concentrations in the womb seem most plausible, they say. John Steele, chief executive of the Youth Sport Trust, said the quality of a young persons introduction to sport at school can be a major factor in their sporting development. Children that get a high-quality  rst experience are those that will have greater agility, balance and coordination, and are more likely to develop an enjoyment of physical activity and excel in sport as they grow up, he said.\nUK Sport could not say if a disproportionate majority of the 1,300 athletes across 47 sports it funds were born in November and October. Natalie Dunman, its head of performance, said that while the differences highlighted in the new  ndings were borne out by teenagers competing in junior-level competitions, they had disappeared by the time sportspeople were taking part in adult competitions. She said: With elite, senior athletes, there are many factors that make a champion and our work hasnt uncovered anything to suggest that month of birth is one of the key ingredients.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nSome cities have pigeons. Lima has black vultures. They fly in groups overhead and sit on the citys buildings. In many ways, with their wrinkly heads and beady eyes, they remind Lima residents of the side of their city they would rather ignore: the poverty and filth.\nBut these birds taste for dead and decaying things has become a virtue. Environmental authorities are kitting the birds out with GoPro video cameras and GPS trackers  the birds have a new mission in the fight against fly-tipping and illegal dumping.\nSamuel is one of the projects ten disease-free black vultures that are looking for rubbish. Fitted with his tracker, he is set free above the city, where he identifies secret or hidden dumps and records the GPS coordinates on a live map.\nHis trainer at Limas Huachipa Zoo, Alfredo Correa, is full of admiration. They can eat dead animals because their bodies protect them from viruses and bacteria, he says. Theyve got some of the strongest gut flora in the natural world.\nUSAID and the Peruvian Environment Ministry are working together on this project to tackle Limas rubbish problem. A tongue-in-cheek video adds a melodramatic voiceover, in which the noble vultures are fighting disease, while humans ignore the danger.\nThe project makes a serious point. With just four landfills in a city of nearly ten million inhabitants, there are many illegal dumps. A fifth of the rubbish goes into these dumps, according to the Environment Ministry. The waste contaminates Limas main water source, the Rimac river, as well as the Chillon and Lurin rivers, which flow into the Bay of Lima.\nThe environmental supervision agency, OEFA, says that three poorer neighbourhoods have only 12% of Limas population but have by far the most fly-tipped rubbish: Villa Maria del Triunfo (39.4%), Villa El Salvador (25.3%) and El Agustino (18.3%).\nPart of the problem is unpaid taxes. Many residents just dont pay. That means some of the 43 district municipalities dont have enough money for basic services such as rubbish collection.\nIt also means nobody is necessarily going to clean up where the vultures identify illegal trash. We share the vultures GPS coordinates with the municipalities, says Javier Hernandez, the project director. Its their job to collect the rubbish and to try and change the habits of their residents.\nThe project aims to encourage residents to be vultures on the ground: to report fly-tipping, cut back on their own waste and recycle. Some residents are responding, posting photos of illegal dumps on the Twitter feed and Facebook page.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"The researchers were surprised by what people would do to avoid the task. What was the task? To sit in a chair and do nothing but think.\nSome people found it so unbearable that they gave themselves mild electric shocks to stop the boredom.\nTwo-thirds of men pressed a button that gave them a painful shock during a 15-minute period of solitude. A quarter of women also pressed the shock button.\nThe report from psychologists at Virginia and Harvard Universities looks at the question of why most of us find it so hard to do nothing.\nIn more than 11 separate studies, the researchers showed that all kinds of people hated being left alone to think \u2013 it doesn\u2019t matter what their age, education or income is, or how often they use smartphones or social media.\nResearcher Timothy Wilson said that the results were probably not because of the speed of modern life or because of mobile phones and social media. Instead, he said those things might be popular because we feel we need to do something and hate doing nothing.\nDuring the first experiments, students were taken into a room and told to think. They were alone, without their phones, books or anything to write with. The only rules were that they had to stay sitting and not fall asleep. They were told that they would have six to 15 minutes alone.\nThe students were questioned at the end of the experiment. Most of them did not enjoy the experience. They found it difficult to concentrate  and their minds wandered.\nThe researchers did the experiment again with people at home. They got similar results. Surprisingly, people found it even more difficult and they cheated by getting up from their chair or checking their phones. \nThe researchers did the study again with more than 100 people, aged 18 to 77, from a church and a farmers\u2019 market. They also disliked just sitting and thinking.\nBut, there was an even more surprising result. To check if people might prefer something bad to nothing at all, the students had the possibility of giving themselves a mild electric shock.\nBefore the experiment, all the students said they would pay to avoid mild electric shocks.\nBut 12 of 18 men gave themselves electric shocks and six of 24 women gave themselves electric shocks.\nThe scientists were surprised. They said that being alone with their thoughts was so hard for many participants that they gave themselves an electric shock, something the participants had said they would pay not to get.\nJessica Andrews-Hanna at the University of Colorado said many students would probably give themselves an electric shock to make a boring lecture more exciting. But, she says we need to know more about Wilson\u2019s study.\n\u201cImagine \u2013 a person is told to sit in a chair with wires attached to their skin and a button that will give them a harmless but uncomfortable shock, and they are told to just sit there with their thoughts,\u201d she said.\n\u201cAs they sit there, their mind starts to wander and naturally they think about that shock \u2013 was it really that bad?\u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Coal is likely to rival oil as the world\u2019s biggest source of energy in the next five years, with potentially disastrous consequences for the climate, according to the world\u2019s leading authority on energy economics. \nOne of the biggest factors behind the rise in coal use has been the massive increase in the use of shale gas in the US. \nNew research from the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows that coal consumption is increasing all over the world \u2013 even in countries and regions with carbon-cutting targets \u2013 except in the US, where shale gas has displaced coal. The decline of coal consumption in the US has helped to cut prices for coal globally. This has made it more attractive, even in Europe where coal use was supposed to be discouraged by the Emissions Trading Scheme. \nMaria van der Hoeven, Executive Director of the IEA, said: \u201cCoal\u2019s share of the global energy mix continues to grow each year and, if no changes are made to current policies, coal will catch oil within a decade.\u201d \nCoal is abundant and found in most regions of the world, unlike conventional oil and gas, and can be cheaply extracted. As a result, coal was used to meet nearly half of the rise in demand for energy globally in the past decade. According to the IEA, demand from China and India will drive world coal use in the coming five years, with India likely to overtake the US as the world\u2019s second biggest consumer. China is the biggest coal importer, and Indonesia the biggest exporter, having temporarily overtaken Australia. \nAccording to the IEA\u2019s Medium-Term Coal Market Report the world will burn 1.2bn more tonnes of coal per year by 2017 compared with today \u2013 the equivalent of the current coal consumption of Russia and the US combined. Global coal consumption is forecast to reach 4.3bn tonnes of oil equivalent by 2017, while oil consumption is forecast to reach 4.4bn tonnes by the same date. \nWith the highest carbon emissions of any major fossil fuel, coal is a huge contributor to climate change, particularly when burned in old-fashioned, inefficient power stations. When these are not equipped with special \u201cscrubbing\u201d equipment to remove chemicals, coal can also produce sulphur emissions \u2013 the leading cause of acid rain \u2013 and other pollutants such as mercury and soot particles. \nVan der Hoeven said that, without a high carbon price to discourage the growth in coal use and encourage cleaner technologies such as renewable power generation, only competition from lower-priced gas could realistically cut demand for coal. This has happened in the US, owing to the extraordinary increase in the production of shale gas in that market in the past five years. \nShe said: \u201cThe US experience suggests that a more efficient gas market, marked by flexible pricing and fuelled by indigenous unconventional resources that are produced sustainably, can reduce coal use, carbon dioxide emissions and consumers\u2019 electricity bills. Europe, China and other regions should take note.\u201d \nThat would mean producing much more shale gas, as conventional gas resources are running down in their easily accessible locations. \nIn Europe, the Emissions Trading Scheme was supposed to discourage high-carbon power generation by imposing a price on carbon dioxide emissions. This was done through issuing generators and energy-intensive companies with a set quota of emissions permits, requiring them to buy extra permits if they needed to emit more than their allowance. But an over-allocation, coupled with the effects of the financial crisis and recession, has led to a large surplus of permits on the market, which has in turn led to a plunge in permit prices. At current levels \u2013 a few euros per tonne of carbon \u2013 there is little incentive to seek out lower carbon fuels, and coal is enjoying a renaissance in Europe. \nThat means one of the world\u2019s only regulatory market mechanisms aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions is failing in its key goals. The world faces the likelihood of an increased risk of climate change as a result of this runaway consumption of the highest carbon fossil fuel.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Lots of us know we are sleep-deprived but imagine if we could fix it with a fairly simple solution: getting up later. In a speech at the British Science Festival, Dr Paul Kelley, clinical research associate at the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at Oxford University, called for schools to stagger their starting times to work with the natural biological rhythms of their students. It would improve cognitive performance, exam results and students\u2019 health (sleep deprivation has been linked with diabetes, depression, obesity and an impaired immune system). \nIt follows a paper, published in 2014, in which he noted that, when children are around ten, their biological wake-up time is about 6.30am; at 16, this rises to 8am; and, at 18, someone you may think of as a lazy teenager actually has a natural waking hour of 9am. The conventional school starting time works for 10-year-olds but not 16- to 18-year-olds. For the older teenagers, it might be more sensible to start the school day at 11am or even later. \u201cA 7am alarm call for older adolescents,\u201d Kelley and his colleagues pointed out in the paper, \u201cis the equivalent of a 4.30am start for a teacher in their 50s.\u201d \nHe says it\u2019s not as simple as persuading teenagers to go to bed earlier. \u201cThe body\u2019s natural rhythm is controlled by a particular kind of light,\u201d says Kelley. \u201cThe eye doesn\u2019t just contain rods and cones; it contains cells that then report to the suprachiasmatic nuclei in the hypothalamus.\u201d This part of the brain controls our circadian rhythms over a 24-hour cycle. \u201cIt\u2019s the light that controls it. It\u2019s like saying: 'Why can\u2019t you control your heartbeat?'\u201d \nBut it isn\u2019t just students who would benefit from a later start. Kelley says the working day should be more forgiving of our natural rhythms. Describing the average sleep loss per night for different age groups, he says: \u201cBetween 14 and 24, it\u2019s more than two hours. For people aged between 24 and about 30 or 35, it\u2019s about an hour and a half. That can continue up until you\u2019re about 55 when it\u2019s in balance again. The 10-year-old and 55-year-old wake and sleep naturally at the same time.\u201d \nThis might be why, he adds, the traditional nine to five is so ingrained; it is maintained by bosses, many of them in their mid-50s and upwards because \u201cit is best for them\u201d. So, should workplaces have staggered starting times, too? Should those in their 50s and above come in at 8am, while those in their 30s start at 10am and the teenage intern or apprentice be encouraged to turn up at 11am? Kelley says that synchronized hours could have \u201cmany positive consequences. The positive side of this is people\u2019s performance, mood and health will improve. It\u2019s very uplifting in a way because it\u2019s a solution that will make people less ill, and happier and better at what they do.\u201d \nThere would probably be fewer accidents as drivers would be more alert, he says. It could spell the end of rush hour as people stagger their work and school-run times. A later start to the day for many, says Kelley, \u201cis something that would benefit everyone, particularly families. Parents go and try to wake up teenagers who are waking up three hours too early. It creates tensions for everybody.\u201d \nSo, what time does Kelley start work? \u201cI am 67 so that means I\u2019m back to being ten years old and I get up just after six. I wake naturally.\u201d And, yes, he says he finds the start of his working day much easier now than he did when he was younger.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nNoise from ships may disturb animals such as killer whales and dolphins much more than people previously thought. New research shows that underwater noise could disturb the animals communication and ability to  nd prey. The low rumble of passing ships has, for a long time, been connected to the disturbance of large whales. But, US researchers have also found noise at medium and higher frequencies, including at 20,000Hz where killer whales, also known as orcas, hear best.\nThese noises could be disturbing the ability of killer whales to communicate and use echo to  nd their prey. Dolphins and porpoises, which also hear at higher frequencies, may have the same problems. The  ndings suggest that the noise could affect the endangered population of killer whales that are found near the shipping lanes up the west coast of the USA.\nThe main concern of this is that even a slight increase in sound may make echolocation more dif cult for whales, said Scott Veirs, who led the research. Echolocation is the process of using sound to bounce off objects such as prey and identify where they are. Thats worrying because their prey, chinook salmon, is already quite scarce. Hearing a salmons click is probably one of the most challenging things a killer whale does. Hearing that subtle click is harder if theres a lot of noise around you.\nThe researchers used underwater microphones to measure the noise created by about 1,600 ships as they passed through Haro Strait, in Washington State, USA. The two-year study recorded the sound made by 12 different types of vessel, including cruise ships, container ships and military vehicles, that passed through the strait about 20 times a day.\nSome ships are quieter than others but the average intensity of noise next to all the ships was 173 underwater decibels, equivalent to 111 decibels through the air  about the sound of a loud rock concert. Whales are not usually right next to ships and so would hear noise of about 60 to 90 decibels  around the level of a lawnmower or a vacuum cleaner.\nVeirs said scientists already knew about the impact of underwater noise on large whales. But, the new research shows the threat to smaller whales, dolphins and porpoises. Ships have been thought of as low-frequency sources of noise, like the rumbling of lorries or trains, he said. Most noise is at that low frequency but the background noise of the ocean is raised even in the high frequencies. This could be causing a signi cant problem that we need to look into more\nThere are several further consequences of a noisy underwater environment. Whales may have to group together more closely in order to hear each other. And, if they fail to  nd prey as effectively, they will need to use up their stores of extra blubber. This is a problem because this blubber often contains manmade pollutants that are toxic to whales if they are released fully into their systems.\nVeirs said more work needs to be done to identify how badly the noise is affecting whales and also to quieten the ships that pass near them. It should be easy to reduce noise pollution, he said. Military ships are quite a bit quieter and there could be simple ways of transferring that technology to commercial ships. Another way to reduce noise is to slow down. Decreasing speed by six knots could decrease noise by half.\nWhile some whale species, such as blue whales, the largest mammal on Earth, are safer now because whaling has declined, others are still under threat from a range of factors. The US federal government has recently protected nearly 40,000 square miles of the Atlantic to try to avoid losing a species of whale with just 500 individuals left.\nIn Europe, killer whales are carrying dangerously high levels of banned chemicals in their blubber. Scientists are still trying to  nd out whether pollutants caused the deaths of  ve whales that were found on beaches on the east coast of Britain in January 2016. Meanwhile, around the coast of Australia, whales face an increased threat from ship strikes and oil and gas drilling, as well as Japans recent decision to start whaling again in Antarctic waters.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nIn Iceland, you can be called Aagot, Arney or sfrur; Baldey, Bebba or Br. Dgg, Dimmbl, Etna and Eybjrt are fine and so are Frigg, Glds, Hrn and Ingunn. Jrlaug is OK, as are Obba, Sigurflj, rana and Vagna. But you cannot, as a girl in Iceland, be called Harriet.\nThe whole situation, said Tristan Cardew, 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 Harriets passport because it does not recognize her first name.\nSince the registry does not recognize the name of Harriets 12-year-old brother Duncan either, the two children have, until now, travelled on passports identifying them as Stlka 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.\nThe situation meant the family, from Kpavogur, 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.\nNames are important in Iceland, a country of only 320,000 people, whose phone book lists subscribers by their first name for the very sensible reason that most Icelandic surnames simply record the fact that you are your fathers (or mothers) son or daughter. Jn Einarssons children, for example, might be lafur Jnsson and Sigrur Jnsdttir.\nThe law says 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.\nFor 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 law aimed mainly at preserving the Icelandic language. 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 spelling.\nWhat this means in practice is that names containing letters that do not officially exist in Icelands 32-letter alphabet, such as c, are out. Similarly, names unable to accommodate the endings required by the different cases used in Icelandic are also routinely turned down. That was the problem with Harriet, said Cardew.\nThe countrys naming laws have been criticized in recent years: in 2013, Blr  Light Breeze  Bjarkardttir Rnarsdottir 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, Jn Gnarr, has also called Icelands naming law unfair, stupid and against creativity.\nThe Cardews could get round Harriets problem by giving her an Icelandic middle name. But its a bit late for that and way too silly, said Cardew. Are they saying they dont want us here?","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"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. \u201cOur guardian angel will take care of you,\u201d said mission control, and the man known as Fearless Felix jumped. \nTen 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\u2019s first supersonic skydiver by breaking the sound barrier at Mach 1.24. \u201cWe love you Felix,\u201d 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. \nHe 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: \u201cWhen I was standing there on top of the world, you become so humble, you don\u2019t think about breaking records.\u201d He admitted all he could think about was getting back alive, but added: \u201cSometimes you have to go up really high to see how small you are.\u201d \nAfter 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. \nAs 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. \nThere was some concern that a heater for his visor was not working, causing his visor to fog. \u201cThis is very serious, Joe,\u201d he told Kitttinger. \u201cSometimes it\u2019s getting foggy when I exhale. ... I do not feel heat.\u201d But they decided to go ahead, watched by a record 8 million people as the jump was streamed live on YouTube. \nThe 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. \nThree cameras attached to Baumgartner\u2019s suit recorded his free-fall of just over four minutes \u2013 which failed to break the existing free-fall record for duration \u2013 and then the parachute opening. \nThe 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\u2019s 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\u2019 chances of survival in a high-altitude disaster. \nBaumgartner 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 \u2013 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. \nHe 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\u2019s 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\u2019s radio earpiece guiding his ascent was that of Kittinger, now 84. \nAsked after the jump what he wanted to do next, Baumgartner said: \u201cI want to inspire a generation. I\u2019d 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.\u201d He said the most exciting moment for him had been when he was standing outside the capsule \u201con top of the world\u201d. To laughter, he added: \u201cThe 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.\u201d \nBaumgartner said that he had come to feel like Todd\u2019s son, adding: \u201cHe was so happy that I was alive.\u201d Earlier, Todd had told the press conference: \u201cThe world needs a hero right now, and they got one in Felix Baumgartner.\u201d To further laughter at the press conference, Kittinger said: \u201cI 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.\u201d \nThis 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.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nScientists have connected the brains of two animals and allowed them to share sensory information. It is a major step towards what the researchers call the worlds first organic computer.\nThe US team fitted two rats with devices called brain-to-brain interfaces that let the animals collaborate on simple tasks to earn rewards, such as a drink of water. In one important demonstration of the technology, the scientists used the internet to connect the brains of two rats separated by thousands of miles  one in North Carolina, USA, and the other in Natal, Brazil.\nThe researchers were led by Miguel Nicolelis, a pioneer of devices that allow paralyzed people to control computers and robotic arms with their thoughts. They say their latest work could make it possible for multiple brains to be connected to share information. These experiments showed that we have established a sophisticated, direct communication connection between brains, Nicolelis said. Basically, we are creating what I call an organic computer.\nThe scientists first demonstrated that rats can share, and act on, each others sensory information by electrically connecting their brains via tiny grids of electrodes that reach the part of the brain that processes movement.\nThe rats were taught to press a lever when a light went on above it. When they did the task correctly, they got a drink of water. To test the animals ability to share brain information, they put the rats in two separate compartments. Only one compartment had a light above the lever. When the rat pressed the lever, an electronic version of its brain activity was sent directly to the other rats brain. In tests, the second rat responded correctly to the imported brain signals and pressed the lever 70% of the time.\nIncredibly, the communication between the rats was two-way. If the receiving rat failed at the task, the first rat did not get the reward of a drink, and appeared to change its behaviour to make the task easier for its partner. In further experiments, the rats collaborated on a task that required them to tell the difference between narrow and wide openings using their whiskers.\nIn the final test, the scientists connected rats on different continents and used the internet to send their brain activity back and forth. Even though the animals were on different continents, they could still communicate, said Miguel Pais-Vieira, the first author of the study. This tells us that we could create a workable network of animal brains distributed in many different locations.\nNicolelis said the team is now working on ways to connect several animals brains at once to solve more complex tasks. We cannot even predict 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 achieve by themselves.\nAnders Sandberg, who studies the ethics of neurotechnologies at Oxford University, said the work was very important in helping to understand how brains encode information. But the potential future uses of the technology are much wider, said Sandberg. The main reason we are running the planet is that we are amazingly good at communicating and coordinating. Without that, although we are very smart animals, we would not dominate the planet.\nI dont think theres any risk of supersmart rats from this, he added. Theres a big difference between sharing sensory information and being able to plan. Im not worried about an invasion by smart rats.\nVery little is known about how people encode thoughts and how they might be sent to another persons brain  so that will not happen any time soon. And much of what is in our minds is a draft, as Sandberg calls it, of what we might do. Often, we dont want to reveal those drafts, because that would be embarrassing and confusing. And we change a lot of those drafts before we act. Most of the time I think wed be very thankful not to be in someone elses head.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nThe small space is set up to look like a classroom. On its corrugated iron walls are educational charts  letters of the alphabet and a map of Bangladesh.\nBut, it is hard to concentrate  there is the constant sound of hammering and chemicals in the air that stick in the back of the throat and irritate the eyes. However, the children who learn in this three-square-metre room are the lucky ones. They have escaped working in the factories opposite.\nFor 14 years, SOHAY, a grassroots nongovernmental organization (NGO) funded by the Global Fund for Children and Comic Relief, has been working in slum areas of Dhaka to get child labourers into school. It focuses on children working in hazardous conditions.\nThe classroom is one of 23 urban development centres that SOHAY has set up in the capital. The centres prepare children for primary school with classes that help them catch up on their education. Once they are in primary school, the children get help with their homework at the centres.\nAlamin, ten, who used to work in a plastic factory, attends one of the centres. His father is a street seller and his mother a part-time domestic worker. They are all happy that hes now in school and away from hazardous work. His friend Rabi says he wants to forget his past in the factory. I like school, he says.\nThe urban development centres aim to make the communities more positive about education and change their cultural mindset towards the children, says SOHAYs programme manager, Mohammed Abdullah al-Mamun. SOHAY also has sessions for parents and employers to discourage child labour and offers skills training to increase family income.\nGetting working children into formal education is really very difficult, says Mamun. They are not like other children. After they leave work, they sometimes find it difficult to make friends and adapt to school. It is also very difficult to make sure they stay in school  lots of these children dont finish school.\nSeven-year-old Zhorna Akter Sumayya has two older brothers  they are both in work (one at a restaurant, one at a local club). But, after her introduction to education at one of SOHAYs centres, she now goes to a state primary school. Her family live in the slum and her parents cant survive without the money their sons earn. Her father works in a rickshaw garage and her mother is a domestic worker, but they wanted their daughter to go to school.\nIn 2015, SOHAY helped 1,540 children to leave hazardous work and 2,125 more children  those in danger of starting work  into school. About 780 more children are preparing to enter school in 2017. The organization is also helping 635 children who are working in hazardous conditions to know their rights.\nThe Labour Law of Bangladesh 2006 does not allow children under the age of 14 to work but, according to the UN childrens agency, UNICEF, 4.7 million children under that age are employed and 1.3 million aged five to 17 work in hazardous industries.\nIt was difficult to get them into school without any compensation for their time, says Sadia Nasrin, who runs Sonjag, another Dhaka grassroots NGO. To solve this problem, Sonjag started working closely with the community in the slums where the children live.\nThe organization talked to the community about why it was important for children to go to school. They chose community volunteers who wanted to change childrens lives and formed groups with social workers, community leaders, mothers, young volunteers and the local government.\nThe groups play a very important role  they motivate employers to let children leave for two to three hours a day to attend school and to make sure the workplace is safe for the children, says Nasrin.\nWhen the children have missed starting school at five years old, it is a race against time to prevent them from growing up without an education. When they are older, it is really very difficult to get them to go to school, says Mamun. Children are just passing their time without education and waiting to do hazardous work. We are working to stop child labour.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Nelson Mandela, the most important person in Africa\u2019s fight for freedom and a hero to millions of people around the world, has died at the age of 95. \nSouth Africa\u2019s first black president died with his family with him at home in Johannesburg after years of illness. \nThe news was told to the country by the current president, Jacob Zuma, who said Mandela died around 8.50pm local time and was at peace. \n\u201cThis is the moment of our deepest sorrow,\u201d Zuma said. \u201cOur nation has lost its greatest son. \n\u201cSouth Africans, Nelson Mandela brought us together and it is together that we will say goodbye to him.\u201d \nZuma said that Mandela would receive a state funeral. \nBarack Obama called Mandela by his clan name \u2013 Madiba. The US president said: \u201cMadiba transformed South Africa \u2013 and moved all of us.\u201d \nUK prime minister David Cameron said: \u201cA great light has gone out in the world\u201d and he described Mandela as \u201ca hero of our time\u201d. \nFW de Klerk \u2013 the South African president who freed Mandela from prison and shared the Nobel Peace Prize with him in 1993 \u2013 said the news was very sad for South Africa and the world. \n\u201cHe was a great unifier,\u201d De Klerk said. \nIn Soweto, people came together to sing and dance near the house where Mandela once lived. They sang songs from the anti-apartheid struggle. Some people were wearing South African flags and the green, yellow and black colours of Mandela\u2019s party, the African National Congress (ANC). \nMandela\u2019s death sends South Africa deep into mourning nearly 20 years after he led the country from racial apartheid to democracy. \nBut his death will also be felt by people around the world who thought Mandela was one of history\u2019s last great political leaders, similar to Gandhi and Martin Luther King. After spending 27 years in prison, including 18 years on Robben Island, Mandela won the country\u2019s first multiracial election in 1994, with his party, the ANC. \nBorn with the name Rolihlahla Dalibhunga in a small village in the Eastern Cape on 18 July, 1918, a teacher at Mandela\u2019s school gave him his English name, Nelson. \nHe joined the ANC in 1943. In 1952, he started South Africa\u2019s first black law firm with his partner, Oliver Tambo. \nWhen the ANC was banned in 1960, Mandela went underground. After the Sharpeville massacre, in which 69 black protesters were shot dead by police, he took the difficult decision to begin an armed struggle. He was arrested and sent to prison for life. \nFinally, in 1990, FW de Klerk ended the ban on the ANC and Mandela was released from prison. \nArchbishop Desmond Tutu, said: \u201cHe made people believe in Africa and Africans again.\u201d Mandela\u2019s 91st birthday was celebrated by the first annual \u201cMandela Day\u201d in his honour. He was married three times and he had six children, 17 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"The senior editor of The Atlantic magazine, James Hamblin, recently did an experiment. As part of his series, \u2018If Our Bodies Could Talk\u2019, Hamblin reduced the number of showers he had and did not use shampoo and soap when he had a shower.\nHe discovered what thousands of others have also discovered: the more we try to clean ourselves with soaps and body washes, the more our skin works to get back its balance. This means we have to begin the whole process again. Showering removes oil and bacteria from the skin. Many would say \u201cThat is the reason I shower!\u201d But, it seems that this sometimes works too well, especially when you add hot water and soap products.\nOur skin has millions of good bacteria. Showering destroys these bacteria. And when the bacteria return, they produce an odour \u2013 yes, showering too often may make you smell more. But, when you stop showering and using soap, your skin goes through a (probably gross) period of change. After this, the skin normally gets its balance back, it produces less oil and healthy bacteria flourish.\nHamblin realized that the human body, working on its own, is lovely. We will smell and look better \u2013 skin experts say that using less soap can improve skin problems. But, that\u2019s not the only advantage \u2013 reducing the number of showers we have (and the number of cleansing products we use) can help the environment. The average shower lasts seven minutes and uses 65 litres of water. That\u2019s 65 litres of clean, drinkable water that we fill with soap and wash down the drain each and every day \u2013 sometimes more than once.\nThe importance of clean water is becoming harder and harder to ignore \u2013 for example, there is another summer of drought in California. It\u2019s becoming clear that clean water is one of the most valuable things in the world and we soon won\u2019t have enough. There is also the environmental effect of all those body wash bottles. So, there are many very good reasons to shower less.\nPerhaps you remember the last time you were close to people who already don\u2019t shower enough but you can relax. Many people who shower less still use deodorant and hand-washing with soap is still a vital way to reduce the spread of many diseases.\nYou don\u2019t need to give up showering completely, as James Hamblin did, but if you shower a lot, we have some simple advice: reduce. Shower less, put down the soap and let those lovely little bacteria flourish.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nInsects are not usually seen as food except in a few regions of the world  but now they are crawling closer and closer to our plates. In spring 2013 there will be an effort to show people that eating insects is not disgusting and also an attempt to put insects on supermarket shelves.\nIn April, there will be a festival in London, Pestival 2013, where the consumption of creepy-crawlies will be discussed. The festival will include a restaurant by the Nordic Food Lab, the Scandinavian team behind the Danish restaurant Noma, which brought dishes that included ants to Claridges hotel in Mayfair in 2012, an event that was mostly sold out.\nNoma has been named the worlds best restaurant by Restaurant magazine for three years. Its chef, Ren Redzepi, says that ants taste like lemon, and a pure of fermented grasshoppers and moth larvae tastes like a strong fish sauce. Bee larvae make a sweet mayonnaise used instead of eggs and scientists are constantly finding new ways to use insects.\nIn March, a BBC documentary will show food writer Stefan Gates looking for and eating deep-fried locusts and barbecued spiders. But, behind all the jokes there is a very serious message. Many experts believe there is a clear environmental benefit to humans eating insects.\nThe UNs Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has been funding projects since 2011 that aim to promote the eating and farming of insects in south-east Asia and Africa, where an estimated two billion people already eat insects and larvae as a regular part of their diet. In 2012, the FAO published a list of 1,909 edible species of insect and plans a major international conference on this valuable food source in 2013.\nthere are 40 tonnes of insects  so there is not too much chance that they will become endangered. I know its 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 insects. If you like mushrooms, youve 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 put it into your tea.\nHe said that the basic idea behind Nordic Food Lab was: Nothing is not edible.\nInsects are critical to life on Earth and, with more than a million species, are the most diverse group of creatures on the planet, but they are misunderstood, hated and often killed by humans just because they are there.\nOver the next 30 years, the planets human population will increase to nine billion. Already one billion people do not get enough food. The increase will put more pressure on agricultural land, water, forests, fisheries and resources, as well as nutrients and energy supplies.\nThe cost of meat is rising, not just in terms of money but also in terms of the amount of rainforest that is destroyed for fields or to grow food for cattle. There is also the issue of methane produced by cows. In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, the contribution by livestock farming is enormous  35% of the planets methane, 65% of its nitrous oxide and 9% of the carbon dioxide.\nEdible insects produce fewer gases, contain high-quality protein, vitamins and amino acids, and need only a quarter of the food that sheep need, and half that of pigs and chickens, to produce the same amount of protein. They produce 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 caterpillar industry and Laos was given nearly $500,000 by the FAO to develop an insect-harvesting project.\nA study by FoodServiceWarehouse.com suggested that giving up pork and beef and eating crickets and locusts instead could help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 95%. But perhaps the fairest thing about eating worms and insects comes when we are dead  then they get a chance to eat us.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nThe tranquil sounds of the natural world might be lost to todays generation as people screen out the noises that surround them, a senior US researcher warns.\nRising levels of background noise in some areas threaten to make people oblivious to the uplifting sounds of birdsong, trickling water and trees rustling in the wind. These sounds can often be heard even in urban centres, said Kurt Fristrup, a senior scientist at the US National Park Service.\nThe problem was made worse by people listening to music through their earphones instead of tuning in to the birds and other sounds of nature that can easily be drowned out by traf c, music and others noises, he said.\nThis learned deafness is a real problem, Fristrup told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Jose. We are training ourselves to ignore the information coming into our ears.\nThis gift that we are born with  to hear things hundreds of metres away, all these incredible sounds  might be lost, he said.\nThe danger is that we are exposed to noise for so long that we stop listening. We are also losing the ability to engage with the environment in the way we were built to, he added.\nFor the past ten years, the US National Park Service has recorded sound levels at more than 600 places across the US, including Yosemite in California, Yellowstone and Denali in Alaska. All the places were affected by some form of noise from human activity  aircraft, motorbikes, motorboats or tour buses.\nFristrups team combined the sound levels recorded from national parks with similar data from urban settings to create a model of noise levels across the US. They say that noise pollution more than doubles every 30 years.\nIts not surprising people are putting on earphones or even noise cancelling headphones to try and create a quieter environment, he said. \nAs you raise background sound levels, it has the same effect on your hearing as fog would have on your vision. Instead of having this expansive experience of all the sounds around you, you are aware of only a small area around you, he said. Even in our cities, there are birds and things to appreciate in the environment but the ability to hear them is being lost.\nPeople quickly become used to changes in their environments, including rising noise levels, and, over time, Fristrup fears that we will accept far worse environmental conditions than we should and forget how much quieter the world could be. If  nding peace and quiet becomes too dif cult, many, many children will grow up without the experience and I think its a very real problem, he said.\nThe warning came as other scientists reported health bene ts from listening to natural sounds. Speaking at the same meeting, Derrick Taff, a social scientist at Pennsylvania State University, described preliminary experiments which suggest that listening to recordings from national parks, of waterfalls, birdsong and wind, helped people recover from stressful events.\nIn one experiment, Taff told people who visited his lab to give an unplanned talk that would be judged by researchers standing behind a one-way mirror. Measurements of their heart rate and the stress hormone, cortisol, before and after the speech found that people calmed down faster when they listened to nature recordings than when the same soundtracks also contained noises from road traf c, aeroplanes and even normal conversation.\nWe know that natural sounds are very important to people. They are some of the main reasons people visit protected areas. They want to hear the natural quiet, the birdsong, and the wind and water, Taff said. We may be losing this as people are listening to their iPods all the time. My advice is to go to your protected areas and experience what you are missing.\nWhy natural sounds might be calming to people is unclear but Fristrup thinks that, over millions of years of evolution, we may have come to associate the more tranquil sounds of the natural world with safety. I suspect theres something about these sounds that reminds our brains of a place thats safe, he said.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"The US Senate Intelligence Committee recently agreed a bill to allow the National Security Agency (NSA) to continue to collect US phone records. But it would also make the NSA\u2019s activities more transparent. \nThe committee Chairwoman, Dianne Feinstein, introduced the bill. It allows the NSA to continue to collect the telephone metadata of millions of Americans. It also allows the government to keep the data. Eleven people voted for the bill and four people voted against it. The full Senate will now vote on the bill. \nThe bill allows analysts to search through the data if they believe that someone may be involved in international terrorism. The bill also allows the NSA to continue to watch foreigners who come to the US if they enter the country for less than 72 hours. \nSenator Patrick Leahy introduced another bill (the USA Freedom Act). This bill would stop the collection of phone records in the US. Feinstein defended the NSA phone data collection programme, but said that people didn\u2019t trust the NSA anymore. \u201cThe NSA programme is legal and I believe it makes us safer,\u201d she said. \u201cBut we can, and should, do more to increase transparency and build public support for privacy protections.\u201d \nFeinstein said the bill would also make a number of improvements to transparency and checks on the NSA \u2013 for example, if the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) gets some data and then somebody looks at that data without permission, they could spend up to ten years in prison. \nFeinstein says she strongly supports the NSA\u2019s main US programme. \u201cI think many people don\u2019t understand this NSA database programme. It is very important and helps to protect this country,\u201d she said. Independent legal experts said they were worried about the Intelligence Committee\u2019s bill. \nElizabeth Goitein of the Brennan Center for Justice said: \u201cThe Intelligence Committee bill and the USA Freedom Act are two opposing visions of the relationship between Americans who do not break the law and the national security state. The most important question is: should the government have some reason to suspect wrongdoing before collecting Americans\u2019 most personal information? Leahy says yes; Feinstein says no.\u201d \nDemocratic committee member Ron Wyden said that recent worries about NSA spying on foreign leaders took attention away from the more important problem of the NSA checking the data of people in the US. \u201cMy top priority is ending the collection of data on millions and millions of innocent Americans.\u201d \nFeinstein said that she completely disagreed with the foreign leader spying that the NSA does, for example on German Chancellor Angela Merkel. But Feinstein agrees with the NSA\u2019s collection of Americans\u2019 phone records. \n\u201cAmericans are making it clear, that they never \u2013 repeat, never \u2013 agreed to give up their freedom so that the country could appear to be safer,\u201d Wyden said. \u201cWe\u2019re just going to continue to fight this battle. It\u2019s going to be a long battle.\u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Barack Obama flew back to Washington and his desk in the Oval Office on Wednesday, hours after delivering an election victory speech in Chicago in which he called for the country to unite behind him. \n\u201cYou voted for action, not politics as usual,\u201d Obama said in his address, but there was little sign that his call would be answered, with the President facing the prospect of doing business with a hostile Republican-led House of Representatives for at least another two years and a looming showdown over spending and debt \u2013 the so-called \u201cfiscal cliff\u201d. \nUnlike after his election in 2008, the President is unlikely to be given a honeymoon period. \nBoth the Republican House Speaker, John Boehner, and the Democratic Leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, spoke about a need to work together to resolve the crisis, but it could turn into one of the biggest clashes yet between the White House and Congress under Obama\u2019s presidency. \nWhile Obama easily beat off the challenge from his Republican opponent Mitt Romney, holding swing state after swing state, the election provided yet another reminder of just how divided America remains. \nWhile the inauguration is not until January, in effect Obama embarked on his second term on Wednesday. Having disappointed many supporters in his first term, he is looking now to establish a legacy that will transform him from a middling president into a great one. \nAs well as overseeing what he hopes will be continued economic recovery, he hopes to address issues ranging from immigration reform to investment in education and climate change, and, in foreign policy, from Iran to Israel-Palestine. \nAs well as comfortably winning more than the required 270 electoral college votes, he also secured a higher share of the popular vote. \nBoehner, in a statement, sounded conciliatory. He cited \u201cthe need for both parties to find common ground and take steps together to help our economy grow and create jobs, which is critical to solving our debt\u201d. Obama is reported to have phoned Boehner to begin negotiation. \nReid, so often at odds with Boehner, also sounded conciliatory, saying: \u201cI look at the challenges that we have ahead of us and I reach out to my Republican colleagues in the Senate and the House. Let\u2019s come together. We know what the issues are; let\u2019s solve them.\u201d \nObama, in an initially off-the-record interview during the campaign, expressed optimism of a \u201cgrand bargain\u201d with the Republicans, one that eluded him in 2011. The trouble will come when talks move to detail, with the Republicans wanting to protect military spending while the Democrats seek cuts. Obama has called for tax increases on households earning more than $250,000; Boehner has rejected any tax increases. \nShares dropped on the Dow in anticipation of continued gridlock. By lunchtime, all the major US markets were down over 300 points. \nThe new House, which will be formed in January, will look much like the existing one, which has a huge Republican majority. The Senate too remained little changed, with the Democrats retaining their slim majority, gaining three and losing one. \nIn the presidential race, Romney won only one of the swing states, North Carolina, while Obama held New Hampshire, Virginia, Ohio, Wisconsin, Nevada, Iowa and Colorado. \nIn his victory speech in Chicago, Obama referred to the long queues to vote and said there was a need for electoral reform. \nHe returned to the soaring rhetoric that was his trademark during the 2008 election but which he dispensed with in 2012. Amid the disillusionment with his presidency and the tough economic conditions, his campaign team decided it was inappropriate. \nBut having won, he returned to famous lines from earlier speeches, reprising once again his 2008 slogan about \u201chope\u201d. \nStepping up to the lectern to the upbeat sounds of Stevie Wonder\u2019s \u201cSigned, Sealed, Delivered, I\u2019m Yours,\u201d Obama told the ecstatic crowd of supporters: \u201cTonight in this election, you, the American people, reminded us that while our road has been hard, while our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back. And we know in our hearts that for the United States of America the best is yet to come.\u201d In a speech that lasted more than 25 minutes, after paying emotional tribute to his wife, Michelle, and his daughters, Malia and Sasha \u2013 as well as to his Vice-President, Joe Biden \u2013 Obama returned to the message that first brought him to national attention. \n\u201cWe are not as divided as our politics suggests,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are, and forever will be, the United States of America.\u201d \nObama made clear he had an agenda in mind for his second term, citing changes in the tax code, immigration reform and, as he put it, an America \u201cthat isn\u2019t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet\u201d. \nShortly beforehand, Romney had phoned the President to concede. In a gracious concession speech in Boston, Romney told his supporters: \u201cThe nation, as you know, is at a critical point. At a time like this, we can\u2019t risk partisan bickering and political posturing. Our leaders have to reach across the aisle to do the people\u2019s work.\u201d \nHe continued: \u201cThis is a time for great challenges for America and I pray the President will be successful in guiding our nation.\u201d \nThe campaign almost throughout has been a referendum on Obama. Although there was widespread disillusionment with the slow pace of economy recovery and a high unemployment level, Americans decided to stick with him. \nHistorically, it would have been a disappointment for African Americans and many white liberals if the first black presidency had ended in failure, halted prematurely.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nPope Benedict XVI arrived in 2005 as a simple, humble worker in Gods vineyard. And on a grey, cold, windy Monday in February, he resigned in the same way: like an elderly labourer who can no longer ignore the pains in his back; who can no longer rely on the strength of his arms. A traditional Pope, he made his excuses in Latin. The first German Pope in modern times gave an exact departure time. From 28 February 2013, at 20.00 hours, he told a group of cardinals in the Vatican, the see of Rome, the see of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a new pope will have to be elected.\nAmong those present was a Mexican cardinal, Monsignor Oscar Sanchz Barba, from Guadalajara. He was in Rome for an official meeting. We were all in the Sala del Concistoro  of the Apostolic Palace, he said. The pope took a sheet of paper and read from it.\nWe were all left   Sanchz Barba looked around him in St Peters Square, looking for the word; he was as speechless as the princes of the church who had just heard the man they believe to be Gods representative on earth give up the job. The cardinals were just looking at one another, Sanchz Barba said.\nAngelo Sodano, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, who must have known beforehand, gave a brief speech. Before going on to assure the Pope of the cardinals loyalty and devotion, he said he and the others present had listened to you with a sense of confusion, almost completely incredulous. At the end of his speech, the Pope blessed the people present, and left. It was so simple; the simplest thing imaginable, said Sanchz Barba. Then we all left in silence. There was absolute silence  and sadness.\nJohn Thavis, who spent 30 years reporting on the Vatican and whose book, The Vatican Diaries, is soon to be published, said he had had a feeling the Pope might be about to resign and timed his return to Rome from the US accordingly. Thavis noted that in the long interview Benedict gave to a German journalist in 2010, he had made it clear he considered it would be right to go if he felt he could no longer do the job. I asked myself: if I were Pope and wanted to resign, when would I choose? He has completed his series of books and most of his projects. What is more, there were no dates in his calendar of events he personally had to attend. I thought the most likely date was 22 February but I got it wrong.\nWithin hours of the announcement, Vatican officials were saying that the Popes decision was a brave one. Thavis agreed: What I find particularly courageous is that he is prepared to say now, when he is not sick, that he is going; and that hes doing it because hes tired and not because hes particularly ill. But is that the whole story? Does he know more about his state of health than the Vatican has so far made public?\nBenedicts own reasons make it clear that he took into account not only his physical, but also his psychological condition. He said that the position of pope required both strength of mind and strength of body, and in the last few months he felt that strength was gradually decreasing. There will no doubt be other theories in the days and weeks ahead, just as there were following the death of Pope John Paul I in 1978, 33 days after his election. Already there is speculation that some information was about to come out about Benedicts past. The Vatican will no doubt dismiss any such stories. But they are understandable, for the transcendental importance of what Benedict has done cannot be overstated.\nComing out of St Peters Basilica, Julia Rochester, from London, who described herself as a lapsed Catholic, was still considering the implications of the Popes resignation. If youre Gods chosen one, how do you choose not be chosen? she asked. It is a question many Catholics will be asking their priests in the weeks ahead.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"It was a beautiful summer evening and I decided to go for a swim from Doolin Pier in County Clare, Ireland, where I moved in 2012. There was a woman in the water with Dusty, a dolphin who has a great relationship with a group of people she regularly swims with. Dusty arrived in Doolin in about 2008. Hundreds of people have swum with her, so everyone thinks that she\u2019s totally tame. \nThat evening, the woman was tickling Dusty\u2019s tummy and it looked so nice in the water. There were about 20 tourists and locals on the pier. They were looking at this lovely sight. Just after I got into the water, Dusty left the woman she was with and went crazy \u2013 I found out afterwards that she\u2019s very territorial when she is with somebody. Her tail was flapping wildly and, at first, I thought it was a display but, then, I realized she was angry. I knew I had to get out of the water so I swam towards the pier. But, within seconds, Dusty crashed into me with her nose. It was very powerful and painful, and the speed was amazing. \nAll the people on the pier were staring at me with their mouths open. Dusty was still in the water beside me, her tail flapping crazily. That was the most frightening thing: I thought, if she hits me with her tail, I could go under the water and drown. \nI was at the pier but I couldn\u2019t get out because of my injuries. I was terrified. I shouted for help and a man put his arm in and pulled me out of the water. Then, another man appeared and said he was a doctor. I was so cold and very worried \u2013 I didn\u2019t know how bad my injuries were and my biggest fear was internal bleeding. The doctor said he didn\u2019t think I had internal bleeding but he thought I probably had broken bones. I found out later that I had six spinal fractures, three broken ribs and a damaged lung. \nI was in hospital for five days and I couldn\u2019t work for five months. I couldn\u2019t move normally and I was in pain. Then, doctors told me I had post- traumatic stress. My near-death experience made me anxious about everything. I felt that people were looking at me in the wrong way, I began to have problems with loud noises and I suffered from memory loss. I could no longer work. \nIt was the hardest year ever but, now, things are better. I had therapy, osteopathy and massage. I work as an osteopath now. I understand how the patients feel because I have been a patient myself. \nI am grateful that I am healthy. I really want to prevent other people being injured. We think dolphins are lovely and we have faith in them \u2013 who would think a dolphin would ever attack a person? If you see a dangerous animal coming towards you with big teeth, it\u2019s scary, but dolphins have this lovely, wide smile. \nI don\u2019t have any anger towards Dusty. I respect her. But I was in her territory and she\u2019s a wild, unpredictable animal. People need to know that. So many people come here to swim with her and they don\u2019t understand how dangerous it can be. Several other people were injured that summer. \nAfter the man pulled me out of the water, Dusty swam away but, then, she came back and looked at me. Our eyes met and I felt she was sorry for what she did to me. She was a totally different dolphin; the anger was gone. The people on the pier were amazed. When she had that little moment with me, that was the end of the terror. I forgave her.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Sweden is the best country for older people, Afghanistan the worst \u2013 but general affluence does not necessarily mean better conditions for the over-60s, according to the first global index on ageing. While Sweden\u2019s top ranking \u2013 followed by Norway, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada \u2013 may be predictable, the Global AgeWatch index throws up some surprising results. \nThe US, the world\u2019s richest country, is down in eighth place, while the UK fails to make the top ten at number 13. Sri Lanka ranks 36, well above Pakistan at 89, despite similar levels of gross domestic product (GDP). Bolivia and Mauritius score higher than the size of their economies may suggest, while the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China are a mixed bag. Brazil and China rank relatively high on the index; India and Russia are much lower. \n\u201cThis survey shows that history counts,\u201d said Mark Gorman, director of the HelpAge International advocacy group. \u201cThe top-ranked countries are what you would expect, but Scandinavian countries were not wealthy when they introduced universal pensions. The older population in Sri Lanka today is benefiting from good basic education and health care \u2013 those countries made certain policy choices. Everybody faces scarce resources, but they should not forget that, when they make investment decisions, they should also address issues of old age.\u201d \nThe index, developed with the UN Fund for Population and Development, spans 91 countries and 89% of the world\u2019s older people. The survey comes amid a major demographic shift: by 2050, there are expected to be two billion people aged 60 and over, who will comprise more than a fifth of the world\u2019s population. \nPopulation ageing \u2013 when older people account for an increasingly large proportion of people \u2013 is happening fastest in developing countries. \nMore than two-thirds of older people live in poor countries; by 2050, this proportion is expected to be about four-fifths. While it took 115 years for the older population of France to double from 7% to 14% between 1865 and 1980, Brazil is likely to make the same shift between 2011 and 2032 \u2013 in just 21 years. \nThe index shows that the fastest ageing countries \u2013 Jordan, Laos, Mongolia, Nicaragua and Vietnam, where the number of older people is predicted to more than triple by 2050 \u2013 fall into the lower half of the ranking, suggesting that policymakers need to tackle ageing head-on if they are to adequately support their populations. \nThere are gender differences among ageing populations, with women generally outliving men. In 2012, for every 84 men aged 60 and over, there were 100 women. Lack of paid work (hence savings), less decision-making power in the family and vulnerability to violence contribute towards the disadvantage many women face in old age. \nHowever, if appropriate measures are implemented, population ageing does not inevitably lead to significantly higher health care spending, according to the report, which highlights the importance of long-term investments in education and health care for older people. Bolivia, ranked 46, despite being one of the poorest countries, has introduced progressive policies for older people, with a national plan on ageing, free health care and a non-contributory universal pension. Nepal, ranked 77, introduced a basic pension in 1995 for people over the age of 70 without other pension income. Though limited in value and eligibility and with uneven coverage, it is an example of how a poor country has chosen to make a start in addressing poverty in old age. \nGood basic health care introduced decades ago in Chile and Costa Rica has served the ageing populations of those countries. A good education system \u2013 basic literacy is crucial for older people as they deal with the pensions bureaucracy \u2013 is of great benefit later in life. In the Philippines, older people have benefited from the educational reforms introduced after independence in 1946, which made elementary and high school education compulsory. The same is true for Armenia, which, like other countries of the former Soviet Union, benefited from a robust education system. South Korea, a surprisingly low 67 on the ageing index, performed worse than similar countries on a GDP-per-head basis, partly because it introduced a pension only recently. \nThe ageing index is calculated using 13 indicators under four headings: income security, health care, employment and education, and an enabling environment. All indicators have equal weight, except for pension income coverage, life expectancy at 60, healthy life expectancy at 60 and psychological well-being. These categories were given increased weighting because of better data quality and countries were included only if there was sufficient data. \nProfessor Sir Richard Jolly, creator of the human development index, said: \u201cThis groundbreaking index broadens the way we understand the needs and opportunities of older people through its pioneering application of human development methodology. It challenges countries in every part of the world to raise their sights as to what is possible.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"All six numbers match, so now you can buy that Audi, book the holiday in the US and look for a new house. That\u2019s what most lottery millionaires do, says a study of what jackpot winners do with their money. \nSince it started in 1994, the UK national lottery has created 3,000 millionaires. The 3,000 winners have won an average of \u00a32.8 million each. That\u2019s more than \u00a38.5 billion in total. Together, they have created 3,780 more millionaires among their children, family and friends, according to the writers of the study, Oxford Economics. \nMost winners (59%) give up work straight away, but 19% carry on working and 31% do unpaid voluntary work. The good news for the British economy is that 98% of the money that the winners spent stayed in the UK. Through their spending on property, vehicles and holidays, it is estimated that each winner keeps six people in a full-time job for a year. \nWinners have contributed almost \u00a3750 million to the economy. Most of their money was spent on property, with \u00a32.72 billion spent on winners\u2019 main properties, and \u00a3170 million in paying off existing debt and mortgages. \n\u00a32.125 billion was spent on investments. \u00a31.17 billion was given to family and friends, and \u00a3680 million was spent on cars and holidays. \nIt found that in total the 3,000 winners have bought 7,958 houses or flats in the UK, or 2.7 each, spending \u00a33.3 billion. Most winners (82%) bought a new house, spending an average \u00a3900,000. \nThe new home is likely to have a hot tub, with almost a third (29%) putting that on their shopping list. 28% bought a walk-in wardrobe, almost a quarter (24%) bought a property behind electric gates, and 22% had a games room, with 7% installing a snooker table. \n30% of winners employed a cleaner and 24% a gardener for their new houses. A small proportion (5%) employed a beautician. \nAudis were the favourite cars of 16% of winners, with Range Rovers and BMWs also popular (11% each), as well as Mercedes (10%) and Land Rovers (5%). Winners spent \u00a3463 million on 17,190 cars. \nHolidays were also important. Most (68%) choose five-star hotels overseas. The US was the preferred destination for 27%, followed by the Caribbean (9%). Over the past 18 years, 10% of millionaires have bought a caravan. \nSome winners (15%) have started their own businesses, 9% have helped others to start a business, and 6% have invested in or bought other people\u2019s businesses. Businesses started or supported by lottery winners employ 3,195 people, according to the study.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"An international agreement to improve safety in Bangladesh\u2019s clothes factories could face legal action. This is because factory owners are asking for compensation for the cost of closures and repair work. Some repairs may take months and factory owners say they cannot pay workers while factories are closed. Also, they cannot pay for big works to make buildings safe. The building repairs are happening after the Rana Plaza building in the capital of Bangladesh, Dhaka, collapsed in 2013 and 1,138 people died. \nThe problems come as hundreds of Bangladeshi clothes factories are inspected every month for fire-safety and structural problems under the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. The Accord is supported by over 170 international companies, including Primark and Marks & Spencer, and international trade unions, including IndustriALL. \nThe owner of one Dhaka factory, Softex Cotton, said he will take legal action against the Accord because his factory was closed down as a result of structural problems. He wants around $100 million in compensation. \nAnother factory owner said that, when a factory closed, even for a few months, it would lose orders and close permanently: \u201cThere is no such thing as temporary closure,\u201d he said. The factory owner said it was not clear in the Accord agreement who would pay for factory closures. \nJenny Holdcroft, policy director for IndustriALL, which has been closely involved in the Accord, said that the agreement made sure that factories would not lose orders during closure because companies agreed to continue orders with suppliers for two years. \nThe Accord has found12 factories that need a lot of work, but Holdcroft said many of those only needed partial closure and production could continue on other floors. The Accord also asks companies to make sure that workers receive pay during factory closures. She said that factory owners who could afford to pay for repairs and compensation for workers should make the payments. \n\u201cCompanies don\u2019t want to pay so that rich factory owners can continue to just take the profits and not spend on their factories for years. It is not surprising that there is disruption. If there was no disruption, there would be no change,\u201d she said. A spokesman for the Accord said negotiations over payments and even legal action would not delay its work to improve safety in factories. \nBut there is now more pressure on the Accord to help pay workers when their factories close. A rival factory-safety group, supported by US retailers including Walmart and Gap, the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, has given $5 million to help pay factory workers for up to two months while buildings are improved. \n\u201cThe Alliance is sharing the workers\u2019 salary with factory owners so now there is a big confusion. We had a big meeting with the Accord to make them understand they have to help or how will we help our workers?\u201d said Shaidullah Azim, a director of the Bangladeshi Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nThe Chief Medical Officer for England has compared the problem of antibiotic resistance to the risks of international terrorism. But, in fact, each year the global number of deaths caused by bacterial resistance is far more than the number of deaths caused by terrorist attacks.\nThe World Health Organization estimates that, just for tuberculosis, multi-drug resistance kills more than 150,000 people each year. Antibiotic resistance is now a real risk: this is now a war.\nIn the past hundred years, our expectations of life and survival have changed beyond all recognition. At the beginning of the twentieth century, life expectancy in the UK was around 47 years of age for a man and 50 for a woman, a number heavily affected by the very high rate of infant mortality in those days. Around a third of all deaths were in children under the age of five, mostly because of infectious disease.\nHowever, a child born in Britain today has more than a one in four chance of reaching their 100th birthday. For this we have public health systems, vaccination and antibiotics to thank. It is thanks to this  the prevention and treatment of illnesses caused by microorganisms  that the real war against disease is mainly won.\nIt is in intensive care, my specialist area, that antibiotic resistant organisms are most common. Here, powerful antibiotics, essential in the treatment of life-threatening illness, are used routinely. These drugs kill ordinary bacteria. But they leave behind strong bacteria that have begun to learn how to survive antibiotic drugs.\nAs a newly qualified doctor in the late 1990s, I learnt about Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus  the infamous MRSA  a bacterial species resistant to methicillin and all other penicillins. In the fight against it, there were a small number of drugs, like vancomycin and teicoplanin. These were supposed to be our defence, but antibiotic resistant bacteria became more and more common; bacteria with new kinds of resistance became more common too. Drugs we had previously hardly heard of became common. We got used to this; a slow increase in the arms race between us and the bacteria.\nBut the balance has been slowly moving. In our hospitals and our GP surgeries, we have abused the drugs that gave us such a huge advantage over infectious disease  we use them too often. And some of the worst abuses have happened outside of healthcare, with antibiotics introduced into the food chain, through agriculture and by putting antibacterial drugs into food for farm animals. We thought that antibiotic therapy was an advantage we could enjoy forever. We became complacent that the pharmaceutical industry would continue to stay ahead of the game.\nBut this is no longer the case. New, more resistant species have been found. The vancomycin that we used to treat MRSA infection no longer worked. Vancomycin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (VRSA) appeared in our hospitals. And other bacteria were learning resistance. Enterobacteria also became resistant to vancomycin. Today, infections with highly resistant organisms are common and the pharmaceutical industry is not keeping up. Fewer and fewer new antimicrobial drugs are produced. It is becoming more and more difficult to develop new drugs that work against resistant bacteria. For every method of attack the pharmaceutical companies invent, bacteria quickly form a defence. We have tried all of the simple approaches to the problem. Antibiotics have become drugs that are expensive to develop, that are only used in short courses and that quickly become ineffective due to the changes in bacterial resistance. As a result, the pharmaceutical industrys incentive to create new drugs that can fight them is low.\nAntibiotics became common in the 1940s, and almost straight away we saw the first evidence of bacteria resistance. Today, this has become a normal part of medical life. Less than a century after the discovery of penicillin, we are beginning to lose the fight.\nSince the first MRSA deaths in healthy children in the US in 1998, the number of deaths from MRSA infection in the US each year has increased to tens of thousands  far more than the number of deaths caused by AIDS. Bacterial resistance in hospitals is everywhere. This is a war different from any other. There needs to be change in the way doctors prescribe antibiotics and fewer antibiotics used in farming and agriculture. And we have to find a way to convince the pharmaceutical companies to develop these less profitable drugs.\nIf we are going to avoid a return to the pre-antibiotic time with all its excess mortality, we must make some big changes. To lose the advantage we have against microorganisms in the fight for life would be unthinkable.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Why do people want to be a football referee? The top referees of the future smile when you ask them this question. This season, more people are criticizing referees. For this reason, some former referees have started to complain about standards. That is quite significant because, when you talk to referees, it is obvious that they always support each other.\nSo why do they do want to be referees? Why do referees spend hundreds of hours driving around the country? Why do they work so hard to get the chance to make decisions on television in front of millions of people who criticize them and their ability with the help of many cameras and slow-motion replays? \nYou might get an answer from Lee Swabey\u2019s face. He looks really happy after he blows the final whistle of a 2\u20131 win for Grimsby against Woking, a match at level 5 of the English league system. He gets what all referees want every time they referee a match. \u201cTwenty-two handshakes, \u201d he explains afterwards, proudly. \u201cThe buzz,\u201d as he calls it, of a game that goes well, is something he loves. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t spend so much time away from my family if this wasn\u2019t so important to me.\u201d\nSwabey is one of a group of new referees that the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) thinks is really good. So Swabey knew they were watching him at that match. PGMOL\u2019s chief, Mike Riley, was there, and also his colleague Steve Dunn, watching every move the officials made.\nA few weeks earlier, Riley, Dunn and another former referee, Peter Jones, went to another level-5 match to check another young referee \u2013 John Brooks. \u201cI hope to have the opportunity to work in the Premier League and referee at some of the top games in this country,\u201d Brooks says.\nUnfortunately, the PGMOL only saw Brooks cancelling the match because of a frozen pitch. It is all part of the experience Brooks needs to have before he can referee at more important games. Brooks phoned his coach for advice and made the difficult but correct decision. A little later, the football club secretary arrived to pay the officials for their time \u2013 the match fee at level 5 is \u00a395 so it is clear that these men do not do it for the money.\nBrooks, like Swabey, has clear ambitions to progress. He knows lots of people will criticize him. How does he feel when he watches football on TV and a referee is attacked? \u201cErm \u2026 I don\u2019t feel great,\u201d he admits. \u201cI do sometimes wish people understood the time and effort we put in. It is very easy to criticize a decision but we do everything to try to get these decisions right. In certain situations, you are going to be unpopular but, if you are uncomfortable with that, you are probably in the wrong job.\u201d\nThe former referees agree that the backup, education and tools that today\u2019s referees have is very different from what they experienced in the past. Riley, as a young referee, bought himself books on psychology and nutrition because there was no information on offer to him at all.\nThings are very different for Brooks \u2013 he has his own coach. They talk every week, discuss how his games have gone, study film of key decisions and discuss how to improve. He also has the support of a sports psychologist and an exercise regime to help him run 11km during a game.\nThe three former referees all agree that new technology in the sport is great. \u201cIt makes the referee\u2019s job better and makes them more effective on the field of play,\u201d says Riley. A bad decision can stay with you for a while. \u201cThe rest of your life,\u201d says Jones with a laugh.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Clay Cockrell is sitting in his office at Columbus Circle, across the street from 1 Central Park West, which houses Trump International Hotel and Tower. In front of the tower is Central Park, where Cockrell holds his popular walk and talk therapy sessions. \nCockrell, a former Wall Street worker turned therapist, spends large parts of his days walking through Central Park or the Battery Park in downtown Manhattan near Wall Street, as a confidant and counsellor to some of New York\u2019s wealthiest people. \n\u201cI shifted towards it naturally,\u201d he said of his becoming an expert in wealth therapy. \u201cMany of the extremely wealthy \u2013 the 1% of the 1% \u2013 feel that their problems are really not problems. But they are. A lot of therapists do not give enough weight to their issues.\u201d \nSo, what issues are America\u2019s 1% struggling with? \u201cThere is guilt over being rich in the first place,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is the feeling that they have to hide the fact that they are rich. And, then, there is the isolation \u2013 being in the 1%, it turns out, can be lonely.\u201d It seems F Scott Fitzgerald was right: the very rich \u201care different from you and me\u201d. \nCounsellors argue things have become worse since the financial crisis and the debate over income inequality that has been spurred on by movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Fight for $15 fair wage campaign. \n\u201cThe Occupy Wall Street movement was a good one and had some important things to say about income inequality but it singled out the 1% and painted them globally as something negative,\u201d said Jamie Traeger-Muney, a wealth psychologist and founder of the Wealth Legacy Group. The media, she said, is partly to blame for making the rich \u201cfeel like they need to hide or feel ashamed\u201d. \n\u201cSometimes, I am shocked by things that people say. You would never refer to another group of people in the way that it seems perfectly normal to refer to wealth holders.\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s really isolating to have a lot of money. People\u2019s reactions to you can be scary,\u201d said Barbara Nusbaum, an expert in money psychology. \u201cWe are all taught not to talk about money. It\u2019s not polite to talk about money. Ironically, it\u2019s harder to talk about having money than it is to talk about not having money. It\u2019s much more socially acceptable to say 'I am broke. Things are hard.' You can\u2019t say 'I have a ton of money.' You have to keep a lot of your life private.\u201d \nAs a result, Cockrell points out, the rich tend to hang out with other rich Americans, not out of snobbery but in order to be around those who understand them and their problems. \nThe growing gap between the rich and poor is a global phenomenon. According to Oxfam, the richest 1% have seen their share of global wealth increase from 44% in 2009 to 48% in 2014 and are on track to own more than the other 99% by 2016. \nIn the US, over the last three decades, the wealth owned by the top 0.1% households increased from 7% to 22% even as the wealth of the bottom 90% of households declined. \nThe number of extremely wealthy people has also been climbing. According to research from Spectrem Group, in 2014, the number of US households with $1m or more in assets \u2013 excluding the value of their primary home \u2013 increased by 500,000 to 10.1m. In 2007, that number was 9.2m. Households worth $5m or more reached 1.3m and 142,000 households are now worth $25m or more. \nSince the 2008 financial crisis, the income gap has expanded and the situation \u201chas gotten worse for the wealthy\u201d, Cockrell said. The main reason? Not knowing if your friends are friends with you or your money. \n\u201cSomeone else who is also a billionaire \u2013 they don\u2019t want anything from you. Never being able to trust your friendships with people of different means, I think that is difficult,\u201d said Cockrell. \u201cAs the gap has widened, the rich have become more and more isolated.\u201d \nThese are real fears faced by the richest of the rich. In 2007, the Gates Foundation teamed up with Boston College\u2019s Center on Wealth and Philanthropy to document what it felt like to be in America\u2019s 1%. For the next four years, researchers surveyed 165 of America\u2019s richest households \u2013 120 of those households have at least $25m in assets. The average net worth of those surveyed was $78m. The resulting study, The Joys and Dilemmas of Wealth, was 500 pages long and seemed to prove the old adage that money can\u2019t buy happiness. \n\u201cWealth can be a barrier to connecting with other people,\u201d confessed a spouse of a tech entrepreneur who made about $80m. Some Americans have taken to keeping their wealth secret. \u201cWe talk about it as stealth wealth. There are a lot of people that are hiding their wealth because they are concerned about negative judgment,\u201d said Traeger-Muney. If wealthy Americans talk about the unique challenges that come with their wealth, people often dismiss their experience. \n\u201cPeople say 'Oh, poor you.' There is not a lot of sympathy there,\u201d she said. \u201cWealth is still one of our last taboos.\u201d \nSpeaking in his soft, soothing voice that makes you want to spill all your worries, Cockrell said that a common mistake that many of his wealthy clients make is letting their money define them. \n\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s healthy to discount your problems. If you are part of the 1%, you still have problems and they are legitimate to you. Even when you say, 'I don\u2019t have to struggle for money', there are other parts of your life. Money is not the only thing that defines you,\u201d he said. \u201cYour problems are legitimate.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"The problem with Google Glasses, says Takahito Iguchi, is that they\u2019re not cool. He has a point. There\u2019s already a website dedicated to people wearing them looking either ridiculous or smug or, more often, both. It possibly wasn\u2019t Google\u2019s smartest move to release the first 10,000 pairs to software developers rather than, say, supermodels or Scarlett Johansson. Search Google Images and one of the first hits is a picture of a large, naked man wearing them in the shower. And it\u2019s this that Iguchi, a Japanese entrepreneur, hopes may be Google\u2019s Achilles\u2019 heel. He is launching a competitor that is a bit more stylized. A bit more Blade Runner. A bit more Japanese. \nIguchi\u2019s augmented reality glasses, which aren\u2019t really glasses so much as a single piece of metal with a camera and a micro-projector, are called Telepathy One, and, after unveiling them at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, they have attracted $5m of venture capital. Like Glass, Telepathy One is due to launch in 2014. \nIt\u2019s a stripped-down, simplified version of Google Glass. Whereas Glass is, he says, \u201can egotistical device\u201d with a range of uses \u2013 you can surf the net, read emails, take photographs, do unspecified things with as yet unspecified apps \u2013 Telepathy will be \u201cmore of a communication device\u201d. Connected via Bluetooth to your phone, it will focus on real- time visual and audio sharing. You\u2019ll be able to post photos and videos from your line of vision on Facebook or send them as an email. Or see and speak to a floating video image of a friend. \n\u201cIt will help bring you close to your friends and family. We are very focused on the communication and sharing possibilities,\u201d says Iguchi, who has worked in the Japanese tech industry for 20 years, most recently developing a location-based phone app called Sekai Camera. \nOf course, not everyone wants to get closer to the man in the futuristic headset, I point out. Iguchi shakes his head. \u201cI\u2019m a visionary. I have a dream that people will understand other people. When I go to London, I am a stranger. Sometimes I feel fear. But I believe that everyone wants to be understood and to understand each other. And, with this device, you can know more information about people before you even speak to them.\u201d \nCompared to the likes of Google, of course, Telepathy is a minnow. Not that this seems to daunt Takahito Iguchi. In his shared office space in San Francisco \u2013 a cool, converted warehouse in the heart of startup land, filled with twentysomethings \u2013 he quotes Sun Tzu\u2019s The Art of War and points out that even tiny armies can sometimes beat mighty forces. When he was growing up, Japanese technology ruled the world: the Sony Walkman was the iPhone of its day. Now, to compete, he\u2019s had to quit Tokyo for Silicon Valley. \n\u201cTokyo is very rich in fashion and culture but it\u2019s still an island. It\u2019s isolated. There is not any way to expand. Whereas, in Silicon Valley, everyone is from everywhere. It\u2019s where you come to connect globally.\u201d The hardware will be made in Japan, while he is putting together a team of software engineers in the US to develop its applications. On the day I meet him, he\u2019s being shadowed by a news crew from Japan who are interested in the new wave of Japanese entrepreneurs being forced to leave their homeland. \n\u201cWe are losing our confidence,\u201d the correspondent, Takashi Yanagisawa, tells me. \u201cAnd we need to find a way to regain our power. Iguchi is kind of like the new frontier. We hope he might be a new solution.\u201d Building the prototype of Telepathy One was easy, Iguchi says. \u201cWe have every sort of technology in Tokyo. It is presenting it to the world that is the challenge.\u201d The leading manufacturers are lining up to work with him, he says, because they have the technology, they just struggle to sell it. \u201cThere needs to be a story to the product. Like Apple did with the iPod \u2013 1,000 songs in your pocket. And the way they positioned themselves against Microsoft and IBM, it was like the story of David and Goliath. And Steve Jobs was inspired by Akio Morita, the co-founder of Sony, and he inspired me, so maybe it will come in a circle.\u201d \nMaybe. He certainly has the confidence of Jobs, although, with a thick Japanese accent, he sometimes struggles to make himself understood, a fact that may have contributed to Telepathy One\u2019s conception. When he went to London to present the headset at the prestigious Founders Forum, he stayed in an Airbnb. \u201cThe house owner was not my friend but I talked with him for three hours, and now he is my friend. That is how long it takes to understand each other, to share our feelings, and background, and career. Maybe Telepathy makes that shorter. If you are getting info from the cloud and social networks, that will happen more easily. And this man is involved in getting investment from UK to Africa, and he was very excited about Telepathy, that it would be a way of educating people about Africa, of showing them other people\u2019s point of view.\u201d \nThis is Iguchi\u2019s fondest hope \u2013 that seeing somebody else\u2019s literal point of view will help you to see their metaphorical point of view. As a student, he explains, he studied philosophy by day and taught himself how to code by night. \u201cAnd, one day, I opened the door of my apartment and I suddenly realized that everything is code. That was my enlightenment. Everything is coded and is shareable between humans. And everything can be encoded and decoded. And, if code is exchangeable between humans, that will end all war against each other.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"SeaWorld\u2019s profits fell by 84% and customers are staying away from the water theme park company because a film claimed that it mistreated orca whales.\nThe company teaches dolphins and killer whales to do tricks in front of large crowds of people.\nIt says fewer people are going to its parks and profits have reduced.\nSeaWorld has been in the news since the 2013 documentary film Blackfish, which said that SeaWorld mistreated orca whales \u2013 this made the whales act violently and caused the deaths of three people.\nAnimal rights organizations say that orcas kept in tanks die at a younger age than wild whales. SeaWorld started a national marketing campaign to show this isn\u2019t true.\nSeaWorld has reduced ticket prices and spent $10m on a marketing campaign. But SeaWorld CEO Joel Manby said that the company still finds it difficult to convince people that it treats its whales well.\n\u201cWe realize we have much work to do,\u201d Manby said. Talking about the company\u2019s reputation, he said, \u201cEarly feedback on our marketing campaign has been positive.\u201d\n\u201cWe will continue to fight with the facts because the facts are on our side,\u201d he said.\nManby joined the company as CEO in 2015 to help the company recover. He will give a presentation about his ideas for the future of the company on 6 November.\nThere are already plans for a new shark exhibition in Orlando and an attraction in San Antonio that will allow customers to swim with dolphins.\nThe company\u2019s financial report from 6 August showed that their profit in the second quarter dropped from $37.4 million in 2014 to $5.8 million in 2015. This is an 84% decrease. At the same time, the number of visitors dropped by more than 100,000 from 6.58 million to 6.48 million.\nPeople for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is an organization that is against SeaWorld. Jared Goodman from PETA said: \u201cSeaWorld has lots of problems. Animals are dying in its tanks and tens of thousands of people do not want it to build a new orca prison. Families don\u2019t want to buy tickets to see orcas going insane inside tiny tanks and SeaWorld\u2019s profits won\u2019t increase until it closes its parks and builds sanctuaries by the coast.\u201d\nSeaWorld\u2019s shares, which were worth $39 in 2013, fell to just under $18 in August 2015.\u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Piles of digitized material \u2013 from blogs, tweets, pictures and videos to official documents such as court rulings and emails \u2013 may be lost forever because the programs needed to view them will become defunct, Google\u2019s vice-president has warned. Humanity\u2019s first steps into the digital world could be lost to future historians, Vint Cerf told the American Association for the Advancement of Science\u2019s annual meeting in San Jose, California, warning that we faced a \u201cforgotten generation or even a forgotten century\u201d through what he called \u201cbit rot\u201d, where old computer files become useless junk. \nCerf called for the development of \u201cdigital vellum\u201d to preserve old software and hardware so that out-of-date files could be recovered no matter how old they are. \u201cWhen you think about the quantity of documentation from our daily lives that is captured in digital form, like our interactions by email, people\u2019s tweets and all of the world wide web, it\u2019s clear that we stand to lose an awful lot of our history,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want our digital lives to fade away. If we want to preserve them, we need to make sure that the digital objects we create today can still be rendered far into the future,\u201d he added. \nWhat is 'bit rot' and is Vint Cerf right to be worried? Being able to access digital content in the coming decades could be less of an issue than one of the 'fathers of the internet' has implied. The warning highlights an irony at the heart of modern technology, where music, photos, letters and other documents are digitized in the hope of ensuring their long-term survival. But, while researchers are making progress in storing digital files for centuries, the programs and hardware needed to make sense of the files are continually falling out of use. \n\u201cWe are nonchalantly throwing all of our data into what could become an information black hole without realizing it. We digitize things because we think we will preserve them but what we don\u2019t understand is that, unless we take other steps, those digital versions may not be any better, and may even be worse, than the artefacts that we digitized,\u201d Cerf says. \u201cIf there are photos you really care about, print them out.\u201d \nAncient civilizations suffered no such problems because histories written in cuneiform on baked clay tablets or rolled papyrus scrolls needed only eyes to read them. To study today\u2019s culture, future scholars would be faced with PDFs, Word documents and hundreds of other file types that can only be interpreted with dedicated software and sometimes hardware, too. \nThe problem is already here. In the 1980s, it was routine to save documents on floppy disks, upload Jet Set Willy from cassette to the ZX spectrum, slaughter aliens with a Quickfire II joystick and have Atari games cartridges in the attic. Even if the disks and cassettes are in good condition, the equipment needed to run them is now mostly found only in museums. \nThe rise of gaming has its own place in the story of digital culture but Cerf warns that important political and historical documents will also be lost to bit rot. In 2005, American historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote Team of Rivals: the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, describing how Lincoln hired those who ran against him for presidency. She went to libraries around the US, found the physical letters of the people involved and reconstructed their conversations. \u201cIn today\u2019s world, those letters would be emails and the chances of finding them will be vanishingly small one hundred years from now,\u201d said Cerf. \nHe concedes that historians will take steps to preserve material considered important by today\u2019s standards but argues that the significance of documents and correspondence is often not fully appreciated until hundreds of years later. Historians have learned how the greatest mathematician of antiquity considered the concept of infinity and anticipated calculus in 3BC after the Archimedes palimpsest was found hidden under the words of a Byzantine prayer book from the thirteenth century. \u201cWe\u2019ve been surprised by what we\u2019ve learned from objects that have been preserved purely by chance that give us insights into an earlier civilization,\u201d he said. \nResearchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh have made headway towards a solution to bit rot, or at least a partial one. There, Mahadev Satyanarayanan takes digital snapshots of computer hard drives while they run different software programs. These can then be uploaded to a computer that mimics the one the software ran on. The result is a computer that can read otherwise defunct files. Under a project called Olive, the researchers have archived Mystery House, the original 1982 graphic adventure game for the Apple II, an early version of WordPerfect, and Doom, the original 1993 first person shooter game. \nInventing new technology is only half the battle, though. More difficult still could be navigating the legal permissions to copy and store software before it dies. When IT companies go out of business, or stop supporting their products, they may sell the rights on, making it a nightmarish task to get approval. \u201cTo do this properly, the rights of preservation might need to be incorporated into our thinking about things like copyright and patents and licensing. We\u2019re talking about preserving them for hundreds to thousands of years,\u201d said Cerf.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Scientists have taken DNA from the tooth of a European hunter-gatherer and have found out what modern humans looked like before they started farming. The Mesolithic man, who lived in Spain about 7,000 years ago, had an unusual mix of blue eyes, black or brown hair and dark skin.\nHe was probably lactose intolerant and could not digest starchy foods easily.\nThe invention of farming brought humans and animals much closer and humans probably developed stronger immune systems to \ufb01ght infections from the animals. But the change to humans\u2019 immue systems may not be as big as scientists thought \u2013 tests on the hunter-gatherer \u2019s DNA found that he already had genes that made his immune system strong. Some of these genes still exist in modern Europeans today. \u201cBefore we started this work, I had some ideas of what we were going to \ufb01nd,\u201d said Carles Lalueza-Fox, who led the study at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona. \u201cMost of those ideas turned out to be completely wrong.\u201d\nThe Spanish team started their work after a group of cave explorers found two skeletons in a deep cave high up in the Cantabrian Mountains of northwest Spain in 2006. The skeletons, which belonged to two men in their early 30s, had been very well preserved in the cool cave.\nCarbon dating showed the skeletons are around 7,000 years old, from the time before farming arrived in Europe from the Middle East. Other things were found in the cave, including reindeer teeth that were hung from the people\u2019s clothing.\nThe DNA brought some surprises. When Lalueza-Fox looked at it, he found that the man had genes for dark skin. \u201cThis guy was darker than any modern European, but we don\u2019t know how dark,\u201d the scientist said. Another surprise was that the man had blue eyes. The results suggest that blue eyes came \ufb01rst in Europe and that the change to lighter skin happened later in Mesolithic times.\nThis discovery is important for science. It is also important to artists who will have to draw Mesolithic people in a new way. \u201cYou see a lot of pictures of these people hunting and gathering and they look like modern Europeans with light skin. You never see a picture of a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer with dark skin and blue eyes,\u201d Lalueza-Fox said.\nThe Spanish team compared the hunter-gatherer to modern Europeans from different regions to see how they might be related. They found that the ancient DNA was most closely related to the DNA of people living in northern Europe, in particular Sweden and Finland.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"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\u2019s 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. \nThey 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. \u201cThe betrayal of trust set forth here is outrageous,\u201d the US Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, said. \u201cThe scale of corruption alleged herein is completely unacceptable.\u201d \nOn a day when FIFA\u2019s 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 \u00c1ngel 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\u2019s predecessor, the controversial Jack Warner, was also seized in May. \nThe Swiss Federal Office of Justice said of the latest arrests: \u201cThey are being held in custody pending their extradition. According to the US arrest requests, they are suspected of accepting bribes of millions of dollars\u201d. 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. \nEleven current and former members of FIFA\u2019s 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\u2019s development programmes. The last three presidents of the regional bodies CONCACAF and Conmebol have all been indicted. \n\u201cThe 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,\u201d said Lynch. Teixeira, the former son-in-law of the longstanding FIFA president Jo\u00e3o Havelange, was charged alongside Del Nero and his predecessor, Jos\u00e9 Maria Marin, who was charged in May. \nFourteen 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 \u00a31.3m \u201cdisloyal payment\u201d 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. \nAmong 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\u2019s former football federation president, Manuel Burga; and Bolivia\u2019s football president, Carlos Chaves, already jailed in his own country. \nLynch said: \u201cThe Department of Justice is committed to ending the rampant corruption we have described amidst the leadership of international football \u2013 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.\u201d \nThe 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. \n\u201cFIFA is not corrupt. We have individuals that have shown negative behaviour. Do not generalize the situation,\u201d said Hayatou, president of the Confederation of African Football for more than 25 years. \u201cThere are lots of people who have been in FIFA for more than 20 or 30 years that have not been accused of anything.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Not sleeping very much used to be a sign that you were busy and important. Sleep was for wimps. But now, Arianna Huffington\u2019s The Sleep Revolution, a book that says we need to sleep more and promises to change your life, is a New York Times best-seller. \nBusinesses have realized that they can make money from the sleep revolution. A whole range of businesses are interested in where, when and how we sleep and, also, how much we will pay for it. Luxury hotels give people \u201csleep retreats\u201d; more than $1,000 gets you dinner and a movie about sleep. And, if you\u2019re staying home, you can improve your bedroom with a mattress cover with a sensor that monitors your sleep ($249) or a sleeping mask that monitors your brainwaves and lets you sleep more efficiently ($299). \nSleep has not only become big business \u2013 it has also changed companies. Many companies already have sleeping areas and Huffington says that nap rooms in offices will become \u201cas common as conference rooms\u201d in the next two years. So, how did this happen? How did sleep suddenly become so fashionable? \nMany people these days find it normal to pay $10 for green juice and $34 for an indoor cycle class. And these people have made getting enough sleep a part of their lifestyle. Our bodies have become machines that we monitor for better efficiency and sleep is now another set of data for us to follow. \nHuffington does not say that sleep rests you; she says it restores you. Sleep is now an important status symbol for some people. But, it is not always easy to get enough sleep; you have to go to bed in the right neighbourhood and in the right body. Many studies show that you\u2019re more likely to sleep badly if you\u2019re poor. It\u2019s hard to sleep if you\u2019re worried about your safety or haven\u2019t had enough to eat. It\u2019s hard to sleep if you\u2019re one of the 15 million Americans who work irregular hours. Research has also found that there\u2019s a black\/white sleep gap. One study shows that white people sleep an average of 6.85 hours but African Americans only sleep an average of 6.05 hours. They also have a lower quality of sleep. \nDo you know who gets the most sleep and the best quality of sleep in America? Rich white women. And, they are probably the people Huffington wrote her book for. Huffington describes her ideas about sleep as a \u201crevolution\u201d but, in fact, it\u2019s a rebranding. The real problem with sleep isn\u2019t that a few rich people think it\u2019s a waste of time; the problem is that 99% can\u2019t afford to spend time sleeping. \nSleep may make you perform better but it\u2019s an inefficient way to improve your performance. The real prize is finding a way that humans can work on less sleep. It is no surprise that the US military is researching this. In 2008, the Pentagon published a report called \u201cHuman Performance\u201d which examined the possibility of a future in which soldiers could perform at their best with only a couple of hours\u2019 sleep. \u201cImagine that you could make a human who slept for the same amount of time as a giraffe (1.9 hours per night). This would reduce the number of deaths and injuries. An enemy would need 40% more soldiers to be able to fight us.\u201d \nOne day, humans will find a way to remove the need to sleep completely. Spending a third of your life asleep won\u2019t be a luxury anymore; it will be something only the poor will have to do. Then, we may need a whole new sort of sleep revolution.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Tea, baked beans on toast and fish and chips have always been popular in Britain. But, things are changing, according to data published recently in the National Food Survey. \nEveryone knows that the British love tea but they drink more than 50% less tea than in the 1970s \u2013 68g of tea per person per week compared to only 25g. Britons are now drinking on average only eight cups of tea a week \u2013 they drank 23 cups in 1974. Tea is still the most popular hot drink in the UK but people now spend more money on coffee. \nThe data comes from 150,000 families who took part in the survey between 1974 and 2000, combined with information from 2000 to 2014. It shows a move towards healthier food in recent years \u2013 people have changed to low-calorie soft drinks, from whole to skimmed milk and they eat more fresh fruit. But, the amount of chips, pizza, crisps and ready meals they eat each week has increased a lot. \nThere has also been an enormous change from white to brown bread. The survey also shows the amount of bread people eat has fallen from 25 to 15 slices a week over the past forty years. The amount of baked beans people eat has reduced by 20%. But, there has been an increase in other types of convenience food, particularly Italian dishes. Adults in the UK now eat an average of 75g of pizza every week compared with none in 1974. The amount of pasta they eat has almost tripled over the same period. \nFresh potatoes are also becoming less popular with a 67% decrease from 1974, when adults ate around 188g every day. People eat more of other vegetables such as cucumbers, courgettes, aubergines and mushrooms. The amount of takeaway food they eat has almost doubled since 1974, from 80g per person per week to 150g. Around 33g of this amount is chips and 56g is meat, with kebabs (10g), chicken (7g), burgers (5g) and \u201cmeat-based meals\u201d (32g) particularly popular. \nIt seems that British people are now more careful about what they eat \u2013 the amount of fruit has increased by 50% since 1974. In 2014, UK adults ate an average of 157g of fruit per day. Bananas have been the most popular fruit in the UK since 1996 \u2013 adults ate 221g per adult per week in 2014, much more than apples (131g) and oranges (48g). Half of all soft drinks British people drink are now low-calorie soft drinks. Britons also spend a smaller percentage of their salaries on food today \u2013 11%, compared with 24% in 1974. \nThe UK Environment Secretary, Elizabeth Truss, said: \u201cFood is the heart of our society. This data shows what we were eating 40 years ago but, also, how a change in culture has led to a food revolution. People care more about where their food comes from than before, we can order quality food on the internet, fashionable restaurants give us the latest trends and exciting global cuisines are now as common as fish and chips.\u201d \nShe added that this data can show us more than what, where or how older generations ate. It can also show us when our habits changed. The National Food Survey can tell us a lot and help us to predict new food trends. \u201cI look forward to seeing how we can use this data to learn more about our past and grow our world-leading food and farming industry in the future,\u201d she said.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"How long can you hold your breath? I\u2019m trying it right now. The first 30 seconds are easy. I\u2019m ready to give up at 45 seconds but I push on through and it seems to get easier for a while. But, as the second hand ticks past a minute, I know I\u2019m on borrowed time. My heart is pounding. I let out a tiny breath and this helps. Eventually, I give in, expelling the spent air in my lungs and taking a huge gasp. (And continue to gasp for a few more breaths, prompting my husband to ask what on earth I\u2019m doing.) I manage one minute and 12 seconds. I\u2019m quite impressed with myself. \nBreath-holding ability becomes extremely important in some sports, particularly freediving. In 2006, I was filming a programme about the anatomy and physiology of the lungs for a BBC series called, slightly oddly, Don\u2019t Die Young. I was lucky enough to meet Sam Amps, who was captain of the UK freedive team. At a pool in Bristol, she taught me some simple exercises to help me hold my breath for longer while swimming underwater. By the end of the session, I think I\u2019d managed a prodigious 90 seconds of breath-holding, enough to let me swim a width. Sam swam three widths with ease. She could hold her breath for five minutes, while swimming. Five! \nI asked how she did it: very slow breathing for several minutes prior to each dive, then a big, deep breath before diving in. She also said training helped her resist the urge to breathe for far longer than most people. \nSome have suggested that the ability to voluntarily hold your breath is evidence of a watery episode in human evolution. It\u2019s even been said that humans have an ability to lower heart rate and metabolic rate in order to breath-hold for even longer. Other anatomical and physiological bits and bobs \u2013 our hairlessness, the distribution of our subcutaneous fat and even our tendency to walk on two legs \u2013 have been linked to an aquatic phase of evolutionary development. Unfortunately, the cobbled-together \u201caquatic ape hypothesis\u201d fails to hold water. It\u2019s a romantic notion that may appeal to us but, with the cold light of day falling on the scientific evidence, it\u2019s revealed to be nothing more than a fiction. \nLooking at voluntary breath-holding, it turns out that we\u2019re certainly not unique among non-aquatic mammals in being able to hold our breath. (Having said that, it\u2019s a difficult thing to investigate in other mammals as, unlike humans, they tend not to comply when you ask them to breath-hold.) And experimental evidence shows that heart rate doesn\u2019t drop during breath-holding. At least, it doesn\u2019t if you\u2019re breath-holding on land. When you\u2019re submerged in cold water it\u2019s a different story: cooling the face does lead to a slower heart rate in most people. But, once again, this isn\u2019t evidence of an aquatic ape ancestry, as it turns out to be a very general characteristic of air-breathing vertebrates. This reduction in heart rate is just one of the physiological responses that are sometimes described together as the \u201cmammalian diving reflex\u201d. But physiological responses that could be useful in diving are also \u2013 and, perhaps, even more importantly \u2013 useful for not drowning. \nWhile our ability to breath-hold may not be all that special, when we compare ourselves with other animals, it\u2019s now proving very useful in one particular area of medicine. Radiotherapy for breast cancer involves directing radiation, very precisely, at the tumour. This may require several minutes\u2019 worth of radiation and, so, it\u2019s usually done in short bursts, between breaths. But, if the patient can keep her chest perfectly still for several minutes, it means that the entire dose can be delivered, in the right place, in one go. The problem, of course, is that most people, just like me, struggle to hold their breath for much longer than a minute. But doctors at University Hospital Birmingham have recently performed careful experiments that show that, if patients are ventilated with oxygen-rich air before attempting a breath- hold, they can manage to hold their breath for an impressive five-and-a-half minutes. \nSurprisingly, the trick seems to lie not in fooling the body\u2019s usual sensors for low oxygen or high carbon dioxide levels in the blood but in fooling the diaphragm. When you breathe in, you\u2019re contracting the muscle of your diaphragm, pulling it flat so that the volume of your chest increases \u2013 and air is drawn into your lungs. When you hold your breath, you keep your diaphragm in this contracted state. Artificially raising oxygen levels and reducing carbon dioxide levels before a breath-hold, as in the Birmingham radiotherapy experiments, may work by delaying fatigue in the diaphragm. And \u2013 not so useful if you\u2019re trying to keep your chest perfectly still \u2013 breathing out a little air lets the diaphragm relax a little, and helps you to prolong a breath-hold, exactly as I found when attempting my breath-hold. \nAnd, so, it\u2019s your diaphragm, the main muscle of breathing, that is also in charge when it comes to reaching the breakpoint of your breath-hold. Eventually, even if you\u2019ve fooled it for a while, the signals from the diaphragm are just too strong and you have to give in \u2013 and take a breath.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge won the first round in their battle for privacy on Tuesday when a French magazine was banned from selling or reusing images taken of the couple at a private chateau in Provence. \nBut the war is far from over as French prosecutors must now decide if criminal proceedings are to be brought against the magazine editor and the photographer or photographers responsible for taking pictures of the duchess sunbathing topless while on holiday in the south of France. \nThe Tribunal de Grande Instance in Nanterre, Paris granted an injunction ordering the gossip magazine Closer to hand over digital files of the pictures within 24 hours and preventing it disseminating them any further, including on its website and tablet app. \nThe four-page ruling, which only affects Mondadori Magazines France, Closer\u2019s publisher, also ordered it to pay \u20ac2,000 in legal costs. The magazine faces a \u20ac10,000 fine for every day it fails to comply with the order. No damages were sought by the couple. \n\u201cThese snapshots, which showed the intimacy of a couple, partially naked on the terrace of a private home, surrounded by a park several hundred metres from a public road, and being able to legitimately assume that they are protected from passersby, are by nature particularly intrusive,\u201d it said. \nThe magistrates ruled that every photograph published in France by Mondadori, the publishing company owned by former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, in future would carry a fine, also of \u20ac10,000 per breach. \nBut the ruling refers only to the 14 pictures that have already been published. Closer\u2019s editor has hinted she has other, more intimate pictures. \nSt James\u2019s Palace said the couple \u201cwelcome the judge\u2019s ruling\u201d. A source said: \u201cThey always believed the law was broken and that they were entitled to their privacy.\u201d Maud Sobel, a lawyer for the royal couple in Paris, described it as \u201ca wonderful decision,\u201d adding: \u201cWe\u2019ve been vindicated.\u201d \nThough pleased their civil action has succeeded, the couple have taken the rare step of seeking to have a much more public criminal prosecution for breach of privacy brought against the magazine and photographer or photographers responsible. \nThe prosecutor will have to decide the targets for any criminal proceedings and the complaint cites \u201cpersons unknown\u201d. But it is understood the couple want proceedings brought against the editor of Closer, which published the photos on Friday, and whoever took the images of the couple sunbathing at the chateau, which belongs to Lord Linley, son of the late Princess Margaret. \nA preliminary investigation was launched on Tuesday by the Paris police. Under French law breach of privacy carries a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a fine of \u20ac45,000. \nThis is the legal action that will truly lay down a marker, and by pursuing it the couple indicate a determination to convey a wider message to the world and, they hope, deter paparazzi in the future. \nTheir lawyers had not asked for copies of Closer magazine to be removed from shelves. \nOn Saturday the Irish Daily Star published the photos, leading to the editor being suspended on Monday night pending the outcome of an internal investigation. Also on Monday, the Mondadori-owned Italian celebrity magazine Chi rushed out a special edition with 26 pages devoted to the candid photos of the future queen. \nThe couple\u2019s lawyer, Aur\u00e9lien Hamelle, had told the Paris court it was necessary to block the \u201chighly intimate\u201d images of the duchess without her bikini top as she was a \u201cyoung woman, not an object\u201d. \nBut Delphine Pando, defending Closer, said the action was a \u201cdisproportionate response\u201d to publication of the photographs. She added that the magazine could not control their resale as it did not own the original images. \nCopies of Closer magazine were doing brisk business on online auction site eBay, with one selling for \u00a331.01, until the site removed all listings following \u201cstrong feedback\u201d from its community.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nAs soon as the children at one primary school in Stirling, Scotland, hear the words daily mile, they put down their pencils and leave the classroom to start running around the school  eld. For three-and-a-half years, all the pupils at St Ninians Primary School have walked or run a mile each day. They do it at different times during the day and, despite the rise in childhood obesity across the UK, none of the children at the school are overweight.\nThe daily mile has done so much to improve these childrens  tness, behaviour and concentration in lessons that many other British schools are doing the same. They are getting pupils to get up from their desks and take 15 minutes to walk or run round the school or local park.\nElaine Wyllie, headteacher of St Ninians, 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 weve done is phenomenal.\nOne in ten children are obese when they start school at the age of four or  ve, according to the Health & Social Care Information Centre, and, in the summer of 2015, a study found that schoolchildren in England are the least  t they have ever been. Primary schools therefore accept the bene ts of the daily mile. It has been introduced in schools in various parts of the UK and other schools are planning to launch the initiative during the 2015-16 academic year. In Stirling alone, 30 schools have already started or will soon start the daily mile.\nIts a common-sense approach to childrens  tness, which is free and easy. The most important thing is that the children really enjoy it; otherwise, you couldnt sustain it. They come back inside bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked, how children used to look, said Wyllie. At St Ninians, teachers take their pupils out of lessons to a specially built circuit around the schools playing  eld for their daily mile whenever it best suits that days timetable. Only ice or very heavy rain stop them.\nThe extent of the bene ts isnt known yet but researchers from Stirling University have launched a comparative study to look for evidence of the physical, cognitive and emotional bene ts of the daily mile. Dr Colin Moran, who is leading the study, said: The children dont 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. St Ninians pupils will be compared with children from another school in Stirling that hasnt yet started the scheme.\nKevin Clelland, a primary school teacher from Leeds, visited St Ninians and, then, convinced his colleagues it was a great idea. He said: Its such a simple thing to do but seems to have such an amazing impact. Were really committed to improving the  tness of our pupils. His school is now building a track.\nActive Cheshire, a sports and  tness organization in Cheshire, is taking a group of senior people 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 their region if a pilot programme is successful.\nParalympian, Tanni Grey-Thompson, chair of ukactive, a health organization 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. Its fantastic to see initiatives like the daily mile, showing real leadership from the education sector to improve childrens  tness levels and their cognitive behaviour, and make a real difference to schools, teachers, parents and young peoples lives. We know sitting still kills; not sitting still helps children build skills that will stay with them for life.\nThe Scottish government also supports the initiative. 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.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"More than one million British workers might be employed on zero-hours contracts. This number comes from a poll of more than 1,000 employers by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).\nRecently, some UK organizations \u2013 from shops to Buckingham Palace \u2013 have been criticized for employing staff without a guarantee of work and pay each week. Employees on zero-hours contracts often get no holiday or sick pay and have to ask permission before looking for extra work with another company.\nThe CIPD found that 38% of zero-hours contract workers describe themselves as employed full-time. They say they typically work 30 hours or more a week. One-third of voluntary sector employers use the contracts and one in four public sector organizations.\nThe retail company Sports Direct employs around 20,000 of its 23,000 staff on zero-hours contracts. Other companies using the contracts include cinema chain Cineworld and Buckingham Palace, which uses the contracts for its 350 summer workers. Pub group J D Wetherspoon has 24,000 of its staff \u2013 80% of its workforce \u2013 on zero-hours contracts.\nVidhya Alakeson, from the Resolution Foundation, said: \u201cIf it\u2019s true that there are around one million people on zero-hours contracts, then that would be a big part of the workforce.\u201d\nUnions say that employers put pressure on staff to sign the contracts. In this way, the employers can avoid their responsibilities to employees and reduce staff benefits.\nDave Prentis, of the trade union Unison, said: \u201cThe majority of workers are only on these contracts because they have no choice.\u201d\nWorkers on zero-hours contracts are often only told how many hours they will work when weekly or monthly rotas are created. But they have to be available for extra work at short notice. They may get holiday pay, but they do not get sick pay.\nThe charity National Trust, which employs many of its seasonal workers on zero-hours contracts, said it gives the same pay and benefits to workers on zero-hours contracts as to full-time staff.\n\u201cWe believe zero-hours contracts are essential in our organization, because we are very weather-dependent,\u201d the National Trust said. \u201cIt\u2019s important to be able to reorganize staff rotas quickly to respond to the weather and zero-hours contracts allow us to do this.\u201d\nPolitician Chuka Umunna said, \u201cWhile some employees welcome the flexibility of zero-hours contracts, for many, zero-hours contracts leave them insecure and unsure of when work will come,\u201d he said.\nThe poll shows that 17% of employers in the private sector use zero-hours contracts, lower than the 34% of organizations in the voluntary sector and 24% in the public sector.\nIndustries where employers were most likely to have at least one person on a zero-hours contract were hotels, catering and leisure (48%), education (35%) and healthcare (27%).","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Mountain climber, Kenton Cool, has just flown down from Everest base camp to Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. Cool is talking about the three amazing climbs he completed the previous weekend. Early on Saturday morning, he reached the summit of Nuptse, the first of the three main summits in the Everest \u201chorseshoe\u201d. Later that day, he climbed to the summit of Everest, and reached the top in complete darkness early on Sunday. He then continued to the summit of Lhotse, the third of the three peaks, on Monday morning. \nHe says he took advantage of a rare opportunity. \u201cFor the first time since the late 1990s, there were fixed ropes on all three mountains. What I did was still a great physical achievement. But the person who does it next will do it without ropes or bottled oxygen.\u201d \nEverest was first climbed 60 years ago. I asked Cool to look forward and imagine what top climbers might do 60 years from now. \u201cI hate to think,\u201d he says, but he mentions the Swiss climber, Ueli Steck, who fled the mountain in April after an argument with a group of Sherpas. Steck was planning to climb Everest\u2019s west ridge and then immediately climb Lhotse via a new route without fixed ropes. \u201cUeli trained like a machine,\u201d Cool says. \u201cHe\u2019s a fantastic climber. It would have been amazing.\u201d \nWhat will tourism look like in the Everest region in the future? One clue is in the amazing helicopter rescue by Simone Moro, Steck\u2019s climbing partner. Moro flew back to Everest on Tuesday in a powerful helicopter to rescue a climber at 7,800 metres. \nIt was the highest rescue ever on Everest and highlights the increase in helicopter flights in recent years. By 2073, there might be a helipad on the mountain that would bring tourists. At the moment, they use helicopters to rescue both climbers and trekkers who walk to Everest base camp. \nMountain geographer and environmentalist, Alton Byers, thinks it is not certain that Everest can take more tourists. The combination of climate change and tourism, he says, is putting new pressure on the area. Glaciers in the Everest region are getting smaller, and even disappearing, and this is having a big effect already. \u201cEverywhere you go, people are talking about how there\u2019s less water. There\u2019s less water for agriculture and less water for all the new lodges that they are building.\u201d \nIn the Sherpa town of Namche Bazaar they are building a new pipeline to bring water for the tourists. The local stream is contaminated with human waste and does not provide enough water for a place that is full of tourists. \u201cEvery village is digging a pit for garbage. Khumbu has the highest landfill sites in the world,\u201d he says. Human waste is now taken away in plastic barrels but then, according to Byers, these barrels are emptied into a huge pit down the valley \u2013 it could contaminate the region\u2019s streams and rivers. \n\u201cWe can solve these problems, but we need to be serious about it,\u201d he says. \u201cOne climber can spend $85,000 to climb Everest. And that\u2019s fine. But we\u2019re going to have to look at these other problems. For half a million dollars a year, you could solve most of them.\u201d \nClimate change is another problem. Weather patterns are changing and this is also having an effect on tourism. Cloudy weather is closing Lukla Airport, the entrance to the Everest region, more often. They are building a new road for 4x4s to Lukla, to make sure tourists and their money can reach Everest. But Byers is worried that these new roads, which they are building very quickly, could cause soil erosion and landslides. He says that Everest is the perfect place to study some of these problems, like the effects of climate change and tourism.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"The Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, will retire at the end of the season after 27 years. He will become a director of the club. He is the most successful manager in British football. He has won 13 Premier League titles, two Champions Leagues, the Cup Winners\u2019 Cup, five FA Cups and four League Cups. \n\u201cThe decision to retire is one that I have thought a lot about,\u201d Ferguson said. \u201cIt is the right time. It was important to me to leave an organization in the strongest possible condition and I believe I have done so.\u201d He said that he thinks the quality of the team will bring continued success at the highest level. They also have lots of good young players, so Ferguson thinks the club has a very good future. \n\u201cOur training facilities are some of the best in world sport,\u201d he added. \u201cOur stadium, Old Trafford, is one of the most important venues in the world. I am delighted to become both director and ambassador for the club. I am looking forward to the future.\u201d He also thanked his family for their love and support. \n\u201cI would like to thank all my players and staff, past and present, for an incredible level of professionalism and hard work that has helped to bring so many memorable triumphs. Without them, the history of this great club would not be as rich. In my early years, the support of the board of directors gave me the confidence and time to build a football club, not just a football team. \n\u201cOver the past ten years, the owners of the club have made it possible for me to manage Manchester United to the best of my ability. I have been very lucky to work with David Gill, a talented and trustworthy chief executive. I am grateful to all of them.\u201d He also thanked the fans for their support and said he had really enjoyed his time as manager of Manchester United. \nJoel Glazer, one of the owners of Manchester United, said: \u201cAlex has shown us so often what a fantastic manager he is, but he\u2019s also a wonderful person. His determination to succeed and his hard work for the club have been remarkable. I will never forget the wonderful memories he has given us, like that magical night in Moscow.\u201d \nAvie Glazer, his brother, said: \u201cI am very happy to tell you that Alex has agreed to stay with the club as a director. His contributions to Manchester United over the last 27 years have been extraordinary and, like all United fans, I want him to be a part of its future.\u201d \nDavid Gill added: \u201cI\u2019ve had the great pleasure of working very closely with Alex for 16 unforgettable years. We knew that his retirement would come one day and we both have been planning for it. Alex\u2019s vision, energy and ability have built teams that are some of the best and most loyal in world sport. The way he cares for this club, his staff and for the football family in general is something that I admire. We will never forget what he has done for this club and for the game in general. Working with Alex has been the greatest experience of my working life and it is a great honour to be able to call him a friend.\u201d \nFirst-team coach Ren\u00e9 Meulensteen told everyone how Ferguson told his staff the news. \u201cI found out this morning when I came to the club,\u201d he said. \u201cHe asked us to go into his office and told us his decision. I\u2019m sure he thought hard about it. I wish him well for the future. He\u2019s been fantastic for this club and I hope all the fans give the new manager the same support.\u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"The view from the visitors\u2019 centre in the Do\u00f1ana National Park in southern Spain is a bird- watcher \u2019s dream: 200,000 hectares of wetlands vital for the birds of western Europe. Many of Britain\u2019s most loved migratory birds rest here every year on their migrations from Africa. Do\u00f1ana is also home to some of Europe\u2019s rarest birds, including the Spanish imperial eagle.\nIt 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.\nIt was Spain\u2019s worst environmental disaster and the clean-up cost \u20ac90 million. Spain realized that Do\u00f1ana is the nation\u2019s most important natural site, so the country decided to spend an extra \u20ac360 million on restoring the landscape to its original wetland state.\nIt has been an expensive process. And Do\u00f1ana is still under threat from the pressures of modern life. There are plans to build an oil pipeline through Do\u00f1ana 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.\nBut, the biggest shock has been the recent decision of the Andaluc\u00edan government to reopen the Frailes mine that nearly destroyed Do\u00f1ana in 1998. \u201cThis is Europe\u2019s most important bird sanctuary, \u201d says Laurence Rose of the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds). \u201cDo\u00f1ana 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.\u201d\nIf you look at the state of the local economy, you quickly see why the government has made this decision. The crash of Spain\u2019s banks in 2008 had a very bad effect on the region. Unemployment in some parts of Andaluc\u00eda is now more than 30%. If they reopen the mine, it would create more than 1,000 jobs.\n\u201cThere are riches here, riches that the local inhabitants badly need,\u201d said energy spokesman Vicente Fern\u00e1ndez Guerrero. \u201cWe 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.\u201d\nFern\u00e1ndez said that the mine licence would only allow modern mining techniques, which do not create poisonous wet waste. \u201cThey will use the best technology in the world here,\u201d Fern\u00e1ndez said. \u201cThey will not use liquid. We will not allow that.\u201d\nSome people agree with the idea, but a lot of people disagree with it. Carlos D\u00e1vila, who works for the Spanish Ornithological Society in Do\u00f1ana, was also alarmed at the idea. \u201cThis is a very, very bad idea,\u201d he said. \u201cThey 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.\u201d\nAlmost every visitor at a local restaurant had a camera and telescopic lens or a pair of binoculars. Lots of tourists come to Do\u00f1ana 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.\n\u201cThe 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,\u201d said Rose. D\u00e1vila agrees. \u201cAfter the disaster, Spain realized that it had a place of real ecological importance and did a lot to clean it up and protect it,\u201d he added. \u201cNow, it seems we have forgotten that lesson. It is very depressing.\u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"From all across Rwanda, and even from Burundi, people are coming to the southern town of Butare to a little shop called Inzozi Nziza (Sweet Dreams). They come for a taste of something new, something most of them have never tasted before \u2013 sweet, cold ice cream. \nHere, at the central African country\u2019s first ice-cream shop, customers can buy ice cream in sweet cream, passion fruit, strawberry and pineapple flavours. Toppings include fresh fruit, honey, chocolate chips and granola. They can also buy black tea and coffee.\nThe shop, which has \u201cice cream, coffee, dreams\u201d written on its signs, is taking advantage of local people\u2019s curiosity about ice cream \u2013 and the shop is also \u201cchanging lives\u201d, says Inzozi Nziza\u2019s manager, Louise Ingabire.\n\u201cIce cream is important,\u201d she says between mouthfuls of honey-flavoured ice cream. \u201cSome Rwandans like ice cream, but it\u2019s a new thing. We still have some work to do, to tell others that they\u2019ll enjoy it.\u201d\nThe shop can certainly make dreams come true. \u201cI didn\u2019t have a job before: I just stayed at home. Now, I have a vision for the future. I am making money and I can give some of it to my family,\u201d says the 27-year-old.\nButare has 89,600 residents and is 135km south of the capital, Kigali. It is the home of the National University of Rwanda. Inzozi Nziza has become a meeting place for students who want to treat themselves to something cool and different.\n\u201cThe shop is uniting people here,\u201d Kalisa Migendo, a 24-year-old student, says. \u201cIf you need to go out and talk to a friend, a girl or a boy, you come to Inzozi Nziza for an ice cream.\u201d \nInzozi Nziza was opened by Odile Gakire Katese. She met Alexis Miesen and Jennie Dundas, co- founders of Blue Marble Ice Cream in Brooklyn, New York. The three women formed a partnership to open the shop in 2010.\nAt the start, Miesen and Dundas owned the shop in partnership with its employees and had shares in the business, which is a cooperative. After 18 months, they gave their shares to the women employees, who by then could control the business by themselves.\nIce cream is new to Rwanda. Selling and eating ice cream is not part of the Rwandan culture.\nThe Butare shop employs nine women. They spend their free time practising with Ingoma Nshya, Rwanda\u2019s first and only female drumming group.\nThe musicians are Hutu and Tutsi women. Some are survivors of the 1994 genocide, when almost a million Tutsis and Hutus were killed. Some members of Ingoma Nshya are widows, some orphans.\nIngabire\u2019s father, two siblings and many cousins were killed in the genocide. \u201cWhen I\u2019m drumming, it gives me power because we\u2019re still alive and survivors,\u201d she says.\nThe ice-cream shop is in a documentary by film-makers Rob and Lisa Fruchtman. Sweet Dreams, which tells the story of how the women have made a positive future after the genocide, also includes the female drummers.\nThe film has been shown in many countries, including the US, UK and several African states. \u201cWe feel the film is about hope, bravery and the ability to change your life,\u201d says Lisa Fruchtman.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nWhat 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 successfully 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 theres not much chance because Sudan is getting old at 42 and breeding efforts have so far failed. Apart from these three animals, there are only two other northern white rhinos in the world, both in zoos, both female.\nIt seems an image of human tenderness that Sudan is lovingly guarded by armed men who stand with him. But, of course, it is an image of brutality. Sudan is under threat from poachers who kill rhinos and cut off their horns to sell them for medicine in Asia. Sudan is still in danger even though he has had his horn cut off to deter the poachers.\nSudan doesnt know how precious he is. His eye is a sad black dot in his massive wrinkled face as he wanders the reserve with his guards. His head is a marvellous thing. It is a majestic rectangle of strong bone and leathery  esh, a head of pure strength. How terrible that such a powerful head can, in reality, be so vulnerable.\nSudan does not look so different from the rhinoceros that Albrecht Du\brer portrayed in 1515. Du\brer was a Renaissance artist picturing an exotic beast from exotic lands. In 1515, a live Indian rhinoceros was sent by the ruler of Gujarat in India to the king of Portugal. The king sent it to the Pope but, on the way, the ship sank and it died.\nHuman beings  we always kill the things we love. We have been doing so 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 share his power and his gentle appearance. A woolly rhino in Chauvet Cave seems agile and young, a creature full of life. But the same people who painted such sensitive portraits of Ice Age rhinos helped to kill them off.\nToday, many people really love rhinos but they are being killed in greater and greater numbers. The northern white rhino is the rarest species of African rhino. There are more southern white rhinos and black rhinos. But the demand in some countries for rhino horn as a traditional medicine is increasing the poaching. Many people believe that rhino horn can cure everything from  u to cancer. In 2007, 13 rhinos were killed by poachers in South Africa. In 2014, 1,215 rhinos were killed for their horns in South Africa.\nThe vulnerable northern white rhino has been hunted very nearly to extinction  in spite of every precaution, in spite of the guards and their guns. Other varieties of African rhino are being hunted by poachers  the situation is totally out of control. The Javan rhinoceros is also on the verge of extinction. India has successfully protected the Indian rhinoceros but here, too, poaching is a problem. What a majestic creature Sudan is. Have we learned nothing since the Ice Age?","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Galina Zaglumyonova was woken in her flat in central Chelyabinsk by an enormous explosion that blew in the balcony windows and shattered clay pots containing her few houseplants. When she jumped out of bed she could see a huge vapour trail hanging in the morning sky and hear the wail of car alarms from the street below. \u201cI didn\u2019t understand what was going on,\u201d said Zaglumyonova. \u201cThere was a big explosion and then a series of little explosions. My first thought was that it was a plane crash.\u201d \nWhat she had actually witnessed were the death throes of a ten-tonne meteorite that plunged to Earth in a series of fireballs just after sunrise. Officials put the number of people injured at almost 1,200, with more than 40 taken to hospital \u2013 most as a result of flying glass shattered by the sonic boom created by the meteorite\u2019s descent. There were no reported deaths. \nThe meteorite entered the atmosphere travelling at a speed of at least 33,000mph and broke up into chunks between 18 and 32 miles above the ground, according to a statement from the Russian Academy of Sciences. \nThe event caused panic in Chelyabinsk, a city of more than one million people to the south of Russia\u2019s Ural mountains, as mobile phone networks swiftly became jammed by the volume of calls. Amateur video footage from the area, often peppered with the obscene language of frightened observers, showed the chunks of meteorite glowing more brightly as they approached the moment of impact. \nThe vapour trail was visible for hundreds of miles around, including in neighbouring Kazakhstan. Tatyana Bets was at work in the reception area of a hospital clinic in the centre of the city when the meteorite struck. \u201cFirst we noticed the wind, and then the room was filled with a very bright light and we could see a cloud of some unspecified smoke in the sky,\u201d she said. Then, after a few minutes, came the explosions. At least three craters were subsequently discovered, according to the Ministry of the Interior, and were being monitored by the military. One crater was more than six metres wide, while another lump of meteorite was reported to have slammed through the thick ice of a nearby lake. Radiation levels at the impact sites were normal, according to local military officials. \nIn Chelyabinsk itself, schools and universities were closed and many other staff told to go home early. About 200 children were among the injured. \nA steady stream of lightly injured people, most suffering cuts from flying glass, came into the clinic where Bets works. She said a nearby dormitory building for college students was particularly badly affected and many of the students were brought in suffering from fright. \u201cThere were a lot of girls in shock. Some were very pale and many of them fainted,\u201d she said. \nEarly estimates suggested more than 100,000 square metres of glass had been broken and 3,000 buildings hit. The total cost of the damage in the city was being valued at in excess of one billion roubles (\u00a320m). \nThe meteorite over Chelyabinsk arrived less than a day before asteroid 2012 DA14 was expected to make the closest pass to Earth (about 17,510 miles) of any recorded cosmic body. But experts said the two events were linked by nothing more than coincidence. \nRumours and conspiracy theories, however, swirled in the first few hours after the incident. Reports on Russian state television and in local media suggested that the meteorite was engaged by local air defence units and blown apart at an altitude of more than 15 miles. \nThe ultranationalist leader of Russia\u2019s Liberal Democrat party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, said it was not a meteorite but military action by the United States, echoing much of the speculation voiced on amateur film footage. \u201cIt\u2019s not a meteorite falling \u2013 it\u2019s a test of new American weapons,\u201d Zhirinovsky said. \nSome were quick to take advantage of the confusion. Enterprising people were offering lumps of meteorite for sale through internet sites within a few hours of the impact. \nPresident Vladimir Putin and the Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, were informed about the incident, and Putin convened a meeting with the head of the Emergency Situations Ministry. \u201cIt\u2019s proof that not only are economies vulnerable but the whole planet,\u201d Medvedev said at an economic forum in Siberia. \nDmitry Rogozin, Russia\u2019s Deputy Prime Minister and former Ambassador to NATO, took to Twitter to call for an international push to create a warning system for all \u201cobjects of an alien origin\u201d. Neither the US nor Russia had the capability to bring down such objects, he added.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nKenton Cool can hardly speak. All the physical effort at high altitude has affected his voice. He is now in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal  he flew down from Everest base camp that morning. Cool is talking about a startling sequence of climbs completed the previous weekend. Early on Saturday morning, he reached the summit of Nuptse, the first and lowest of the three main summits in the Everest horseshoe that surrounds the glaciated valley called the Western Cwm.\nThat same day, he climbed up to the summit of Everest itself, reaching the top in complete darkness early on Sunday. He and his climbing partner then continued on to the summit of Lhotse, the third of this spectacular three-peaks challenge, on Monday morning.\nHe says he took advantage of a rare opportunity. For the first time since the late 1990s, there were fixed ropes on all three mountains, he says. That doesnt take away the physical achievement of what I did. Ive set the bar at a certain level. But whoever comes along next will move the bar further and do it without ropes or bottled oxygen.\nSixty years after Everest was first climbed, many of the media reports are looking back to Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay and their age of innocence from the modern era of commercialism and environmental damage. Ive asked Cool to look forward and imagine what top climbers might be doing 60 years from now.\nI hate to think, he says, but mentions the Swiss climber, Ueli Steck, who fled the mountain in April after an argument with a crowd of Sherpas at Camp 2. Steck, he says, was planning to climb Everests west ridge, first done in 1963, descend to the South Col and then immediately climb Lhotse via a new route, all without fixed ropes. Ueli had been training like a machine, Cool says. Hes a fantastic climber. Hes technically brilliant but he had also taken his physical condition to the highest possible level. It would have been amazing to see what he could have done.\nWhat will tourism look like in the Everest region in the future? One clue is in the stunning helicopter rescue by Simone Moro, Stecks climbing partner, whose rude language caused the argument at Camp 2. Moro flew back to Everest on Tuesday at the controls of a high-powered helicopter to rescue a climber at an altitude of 7,800 metres.\nIt was the highest rescue ever performed on Everest and highlights the huge rise in helicopter flights in recent years. By 2073, the infrastructure on the mountain might include a helipad on the South Col that would bring tourists. In the meantime, helicopters are making it easier to rescue both climbers and the far more numerous trekkers who go as far as base camp.\nIt is not certain that the Everest region can continue to cope with a booming tourism sector, according to mountain geographer and environmentalist, Alton Byers. The combination of climate change and tourism, he says, is creating new stresses on the Sherpa homeland. The retreat, and in some cases disappearance, of glaciers in the Everest region is having a major impact already. Everywhere you go, people are talking about how theres less water. Theres less water for agriculture and less water for all the new lodges that are getting built.\nIn the Sherpa town of Namche Bazaar, he says, a new five-mile pipeline is being laid to bring water to service the growing tourist demand for showers and flush toilets. The local stream has become contaminated with human waste and does not provide enough water for a place that, in high season, is bursting at the seams. Every village is digging a pit just beyond the houses for garbage. Khumbu has the highest landfill sites in the world, he says. Human waste at base camp is now managed well and removed in plastic barrels. But, according to Byers, these barrels are emptied into a huge pit a few hours down the valley that could leak into the regions watercourses.\nThese problems can be solved, but we need to get serious about it, he says. One climber can spend $85,000 climbing Everest. And thats fine. But at some point were going to have to look at these other priorities. For half a million dollars a year, you could solve most of them.\nClimate change is another issue. Byers works with local conservation committees to identify and plan for the impacts of climate change, most usually finding new water sources or introducing rainwater harvesting. The rapid build-up of glacial lakes is a constant threat  they threaten to burst and flood the Sherpa homeland. At some point in the future, people are going to have to get out of their way.\nChanging weather patterns are also having an impact on tourism. Increased cloud cover in periods of normally clear weather is closing Lukla Airport, the gateway to the Everest region, more often. A new road for 4x4s is being built to Lukla to guarantee the flow of tourists and their money, but Byers is worried that the rapid spread of the road network in Nepal is being done too cheaply, with disastrous consequences in terms of soil erosion and landslides.\nEverest is the icon everyone knows, he says. Its the perfect laboratory for figuring out how to solve some of these problems, like the impacts of climate change and tourism.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nSeaWorld has suffered an 84% collapse in pro ts  customers have deserted the controversial aquatic theme park company because of claims that it mistreated orca whales.\nThe company trains dolphins and killer whales to perform tricks in front of stadiums full of people. They have suffered declines in attendance, sales and pro ts because people think they dont treat their animals well.\nSeaWorld has been in the news since the 2013 documentary Black sh 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.\nAnimal 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 isnt true.\nIt 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.\nWe realize we have much work ahead of us, Manby said. Talking about the companys reputation, he said, Early feedback on our campaign has been positive. However, we recognize that solving our image problems in California will be challenging.\nWe will continue to  ght with the facts because the facts are on our side, he said.\nManby, 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.\nThere 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.\nThe companys  nancial report, released on 6 August, showed pro ts 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.\nAnalysts will now be closely watching SeaWorlds sales and attendance numbers in the third quarter, which is traditionally the companys most pro table and covers the summer holiday season. Attendance may suffer from a fresh scandal in July 2015  it was alleged that a SeaWorld employee had in ltrated animal rights protest groups against the company.\nJared 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 dont want to buy tickets to see orcas going insane inside tiny tanks. SeaWorlds orcas wont recover and SeaWorlds pro ts wont recover either until it empties its tanks and builds sanctuaries by the coast.\nSeaWorlds shares, which were worth $39 in 2013, fell to just under $18 in August 2015.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Glastonbury Festival is to combat the scourge of the plastic water bottle as part of a long- term strategy to become the world\u2019s most environmentally friendly outdoor music event. \nFestival organizers are targeting the disposable bottle, one of the most conspicuous symbols of the throwaway culture, that each year leaves the 900-acre Somerset site wreathed in plastic, with an estimated one million plastic bottles being used during the festival. \nStainless-steel reusable bottles will be given to 2,000 road crew and band members, with thousands more on sale to festival-goers, to stop them relying on plastic bottles. The 140,000 ticket-holders are also being urged to bring reusable bottles that they can fill at 400 drinking- water taps dotted across the site. \nLucy Smith, Glastonbury\u2019s green issues organizer, said: \u201cWe have amazing water quality in the UK but everyone is obsessed with drinking bottled water.\u201d \nShe said the initiative precedes a plan for Glastonbury 2015 to replace all plastic beer glasses and cutlery with reusable items in an attempt to eradicate the legacy of plastic waste from the huge rural site. \nEnvironmentalists estimate that 150 million tonnes of plastic waste currently litters the planet and oceans, poisoning ecosystems and killing wildlife. \nUltimately, festival organizers hope to make Glastonbury the world\u2019s greenest greenfield festival, emulating America\u2019s Burning Man festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, which is a \u201cleave-no-trace\u201d event, where people have to take away all that they bring. \nGlastonbury revellers are also being urged to travel to the site on public transport or try car-sharing with friends. \u201cWe want to be as sustainable as we can. We do everything we can, but coping with the litter of 140,000 people is a challenge. We can\u2019t put bins everywhere,\u201d added Smith. \nCampaigners say that plastic water bottles can take hundreds or even thousands of years to completely biodegrade, with their manufacture exacerbating their negative ecological impact. Millions of barrels of oil are used in the manufacture of plastic bottles and the transportation of mineral water across the planet produces even more carbon emissions. \nOverall, an estimated 13 billion plastic water bottles are sold in the UK every year, yet just one in five is said to be recycled. \nSmith said that, instead of buying bottled water, festival-goers should take advantage of the water on tap, which is being drawn from huge underground reservoirs, instead of old-fashioned water tanks that provided heavily chlorinated drinking water. The charity WaterAid will also set up water kiosks around the site, stocking reusable bottles and cups, and offering free refills. In 2015, the kiosks \u2013 modelled on those found in Africa \u2013 will double as DJ booths at night. \nOrganizers say that almost half of all the rubbish left on site was recycled in 2013 and add that there will be 15,000 bins for recycling across the festival grounds in 2014. \nDespite its growing eco-credentials, critics continue to snipe at Glastonbury, accusing it of becoming increasingly corporate in tone. The latest critic, Iron Maiden\u2019s Bruce Dickinson, has vowed never to bring his band to Glastonbury Festival after dismissing it as \u201cthe most bourgeois thing on the planet\u201d. \nThe weather forecast for Glastonbury was positive, with the festival due to be sunny and dry, experts ruling out a repeat of 1985, the festival\u2019s windiest year; 1997, its muddiest; and 2005, known as the \u201cyear of thunder\u201d.","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Nobody knows which came first: the economic crisis in Greece or shisha, the drug that is called the \u201ccocaine of the poor\u201d. But everyone agrees that shisha is a killer. And it costs only \u20ac2 or less. \n\u201cIt is the worst drug. It burns your insides, it makes you aggressive and makes you go mad,\u201d said Maria, an ex-heroin addict. \u201cBut it is cheap and it is easy to get, and everyone is taking it.\u201d \nThis drug crisis is making problems for Athens\u2019s health authorities, who already have the problem of large financial cuts. \nThousands 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. \n\u201cIt is a killer, but it also makes you want to kill,\u201d Konstantinos, a drug addict, said. \u201cYou can kill without understanding that you have done it. A lot of users have died.\u201d \nCharalampos Poulopoulos, the director of Kethea, Greece\u2019s anti-drug centre, said shisha is an \u201causterity drug\u201d \u2013 it is made by dealers who have become clever at making drugs for addicts who can no longer afford heroin and cocaine. \n\u201cThe crisis has given dealers the possibility to sell a new, cheap drug, a cocaine for the poor,\u201d said Poulopoulos. \u201cYou can sniff or inject shisha and you can make it at home \u2013 you don\u2019t need any special knowledge. It is extremely dangerous.\u201d \nIn 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 \u2013 the easiest way to pay for drugs \u2013 has also increased. \nThere 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 \u2013 this is the highest youth unemployment in the EU. \nAt 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. \nSince 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 \u20ac6 because there is less crime and fewer health problems. \u201cThe cuts are a huge mistake,\u201d said Poulopoulos. \nOn the streets of Athens, there is a fear that austerity not only doesn\u2019t work \u2013 it kills.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Moses King, 48, is HIV positive. HIV is common in Liberia. King gets medicine for the disease from the Liberian government. But King and his family of six children cannot get the right food to eat. A poor farmer, he grew vegetables and bought rice. But he could not afford meat and fish \u2013 expensive, luxury products in Liberian markets but essential sources of protein. \nPate K Chon, who works with HIV sufferers in Liberia, has found a solution. She watched a film about a fish farm in Thailand several years ago and had the idea of starting a similar project in Liberia, so that HIV sufferers could have work and also get a source of protein. \n\u201cI saw this film about fish in a cement pool and I thought it was a good idea,\u201d said Chon, who is also HIV positive. \u201cSo many of the people I work with don\u2019t have the money to have a balanced protein diet and fish is such a clean source of protein \u2013 it doesn\u2019t cause health problems like other sources and it is something we can farm.\u201d \nChon began building a pool in which to farm fish. In June 2012, she met John Sheehy. He raised money for the non-profit fish farm in the northeast of Monrovia, Liberia\u2019s capital, and started learning about fish farming, doing an online course and speaking to other fish farmers in Africa. \n\u201cI raised the money and built the farm, learned how to build the tanks and water flow system,\u201d said Sheehy. \u201cI learnt a lot on my own and now I would love to be able to write a book and share my knowledge with other people,\u201d he said. \nThe project is now a fish farm with 12 tanks, each with 5,000 fish \u2013 and will give up to 200,000 fish per year to a community of 1,200 mainly HIV-positive people, including King and his family. In addition to the fish, waste from the tanks is collected and used to water crops, also giving food and money to the community. \n\u201cMany people in the community work on the farm,\u201d said Sheehy, \u201cand what they get in return is fish. They can use those fish to feed themselves and to sell in the market so that they get money to buy other food. The fish farm gives these people with HIV a way of getting back into society \u2013 now they are buying and selling with people in the market every week.\u201d \n1.5% of Liberia\u2019s 3.5 million people are HIV positive. Good nutrition is particularly important for people with HIV. They need much more protein to stop their health getting worse and to allow healthy growth. \u201cNutrition is one of the key things if you are taking drugs to treat HIV,\u201d said Chon. \u201cThe drugs are toxic and if you don\u2019t have food to eat, they can make you very ill. But food in Liberia is very expensive. We buy expensive rice from other countries and fish is difficult for most people to afford.\u201d \n\u201cFish farming is absolutely possible in Africa,\u201d said Paul White, owner of a fish farm in Ivory Coast, which produces 3,000 tonnes of fish each year. But some people criticize farmed fish \u2013 they say the fish can be inbred and have high levels of toxins. Sheehy says they do not have those problems. \u201cA lot of farmed fish is inbred, which causes problems, but we are using a process with local fish from Liberia, not fish from another region. And we test the water and watch it all the time.\u201d \nSheehy hopes to open more fish farms throughout Liberia and the region. \u201cA rice-growing co-operative in Sierra Leone asked us if we could do this on our property so that they can feed their workers and we have had interest from Nigeria and Central America,\u201d said Sheehy.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Barack Obama has told young people to reject pessimism and meet people who have different political beliefs if they want to change the world. \nOn the last day of his last visit to Britain as US president, Obama told 500 youth leaders at a meeting in London: \u201cReject the idea that there are things we can\u2019t control. As JFK said, our problems are manmade and can be solved by man.\u201d \n\u201cYou\u2019ve never had better tools to make a difference,\u201d he told the students at the question-and-answer session. \u201cReject pessimism and know that progress is possible.\u201d \nBut Obama said he knew that young people had many challenges. He said it was a time of great change, with 9\/11, 7\/7, and with so much information and bad news, for example on Twitter. \nThe president told the audience to meet and talk with people who have different political beliefs: \u201cLook for people who don\u2019t agree with you and it will also help you to compromise.\u201d \nObama said he was proud of his healthcare reforms and talked about the 2008 financial crisis: \u201cI saved the world from depression \u2013 that was quite good.\u201d \nHe also said that his talks with Iran and the response to the Ebola crisis were some of the best things about his presidency. \nTanya Williams, a community officer, said: \u201cI like Barack Obama and it\u2019s exciting to hear someone who has changed so much.\u201d \nOliver Sidorczuk, 26, said: \u201cEveryone is extremely excited to listen to what he has to say.\u201d \nFurqan Naeem, from Manchester, said: \u201cI recently visited the United States and I saw some really important work the president did \u2013 the work brought different people together.\u201d \nLater, Obama met Labour Party Leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who said they had an \u201cexcellent\u201d 90-minute discussion. They also talked about Britain\u2019s membership of the EU. \nAfter the meeting, Obama played golf with British Prime Minister, David Cameron. Obama had dinner with Cameron and the US ambassador, Matthew Barzun, and, then, travelled to Germany.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nAt Addis Ababa airport, visitors are greeted by pictures of golden grains, tiny red seeds and a group of men around a giant pancake. The words say: Teff: the ultimate gluten-free crop!\nEthiopia is one of the worlds poorest countries, well known for its difficult food situation. But it is also the home of teff, a highly nutritious ancient grain that is now being sold in health-food shops and supermarkets in Europe and America.\nTeffs tiny seeds  the size of poppy seeds  are high in calcium, iron and protein, and also amino acids. Naturally gluten free, the grain can be used instead of wheat flour in anything from bread and pasta to waffles and pizza bases. Like quinoa, the Andean grain, teffs superb nutritional profile offers the promise of new and lucrative markets in the west.\nIn Ethiopia, teff is a national obsession. Grown by around 6.3 million farmers, fields of the crop cover more than 20% of all farmland. It is ground into flour and used to make injera, the flatbread that is basic to Ethiopian cooking. The grain is also central to many religious and cultural ceremonies. Across the country, and in neighbouring Eritrea, people gather around large pieces of injera, which is also used as cutlery, scooping up stews and feeding one another as a sign of loyalty or friendship  a tradition known as gursha.\nThe growing appetite for traditional crops and the booming health-food and gluten-free markets are breathing new life into the grain, which is increasingly being called Ethiopias second gift to the world, after coffee.\nSophie Kebede, a London-based businesswoman who owns a UK company specializing in the grain, says she was flabbergasted when she discovered its nutritional value. I didnt know it was so sought after. I am of Ethiopian origin; Ive been eating injera all my life.\nGrowing demand for so-called ancient grains has not always been a simple positive for poor communities. In Bolivia and Peru, there are reports of rising incomes from the now-global quinoa trade, but also malnutrition and conflicts over land, as farmers sell their entire crop to meet western demand.\nEthiopias growing middle class is also increasing demand for teff and rising prices have made the grain too expensive for the poorest people. Today, most small farmers sell most of what they grow to people in the city.\nThis 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. In urban areas, people eat up to 61kg of teff a year. In rural areas, the figure is 20kg. The type of teff people eat is different, too: the rich eat the more expensive magna and white teff varieties; poorer people usually eat less-valuable red and mixed teff and more than half combine it with cheaper cereals such as sorghum and maize.\nThe 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 and adolescents.\nThough Ethiopia has a fast-growing economy, it remains on the UNs list of least-developed countries. An estimated 20% of under-fives are malnourished.\nThe governments Agricultural Transformation Agency aims to boost crops by developing improved varieties of the grain and introducing new planting techniques and tools.\nThe 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.\nMama Fresh is a family company that has been selling injera to top restaurants and hotels in the Ethiopian capital for years. 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.\nRegassa 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 mean that farmers do not grow other important crops.\nWith not much 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.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"The world shares him and London claims him but Stratford-upon-Avon intends to spend 2016 celebrating William Shakespeare as their man: the bard of Avon, born in the Warwickshire market town in 1564, who died there 400 years ago. Stratford remained hugely important throughout Shakespeare\u2019s life, argues Paul Edmondson, the head of learning and research at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. \n\u201cPeople have seen Shakespeare as someone who turns his back on Stratford and his family, goes to London to earn his fortune and only comes back to die,\u201d he said. \u201cBut Stratford is where he bought land and property, where he kept his library, where he lived and read and thought. We are going to spend the year re-emphasizing the importance of Shakespeare, the man of Stratford.\u201d The seveneenth-century diarist, antiquarian and gossip John Aubrey, born 11 years after Shakespeare died, was at pains to point out there was nothing so very special about the bard. Aubrey, university educated, unlike Shakespeare, said that he acted \u201cexceedingly well\u201d and that \u201chis Playes took well \u201d. The world has not agreed with Aubrey. The anniversary of the death of the man from Stratford, the most famous and the most performed playwright in the world, will be marked across Britain and the globe. \nMacbeth will open in Singapore, Romeo and Juliet in Brussels. Shakespeare\u2019s Globe is completing the first world tour in the history of theatre, in which it has taken Hamlet to almost every country \u2013 North Korea is still holding out. In London, they are also creating a 37-screen pop-up cinema, one screen to showcase each of Shakespeare\u2019s plays, along the South Bank. \nThe National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and virtually every other theatre production company in the country will be marking the anniversary. Interpretations will range from the resolutely traditional to the Brighton-based Spymonkey\u2019s Complete Deaths, a romp through the 74 deaths \u2013 75 including a fly squashed in Titus \nAndronicus \u2013 by stabbing, poisoning, smothering and smashing across the plays. There will also be hundreds of lectures, recitals, international academic conferences, films, concerts, operas and major exhibitions. \nFor a man famous in his own lifetime, there is little documentary evidence for Shakespeare\u2019s life and times. The plays would scarcely have survived if his friends and fellow actors had not gathered together every scrap of every play they could find \u2013 drafts, prompt scripts, scribbled actors\u2019 parts and 17 plays not known in any other version \u2013 into the precious First Folio published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare\u2019s death. \nThe actor Mark Rylance has called it his favourite book in the world and most of the surviving First Folios will be on display \u2013 including those belonging to the British and Bodleian libraries, and a tattered copy recently discovered in France. Some of the most precious surviving documents will be gathered together in an exhibition at Somerset House in London, jointly organized by the National Archives and King\u2019s College London, including four of his six known signatures, which are all slightly different. \nThe exhibition, By Me, William Shakespeare, will include his will, the court papers relating to the audacious move when Shakespeare and his fellow actors dismantled a theatre on the north side of the Thames and rebuilt it as the Globe on the South Bank, and accounts showing payments from the royal treasury for Boxing Day performances for James I and Queen Anne. \nThe outgoing Globe director, Dominic Dromgoole, recently jokily claimed Shakespeare as a true Londoner \u2013 albeit conceding \u201csome spurious claim\u201d by Stratford-upon-Avon. Stratford, however, will be insisting that the town made and educated Shakespeare. His old school room is being restored with a \u00a31.4m Heritage Lottery grant and will open as a permanent visitor attraction. \nShakespeare bought the splendid New Place, the second best house in the town, where he died, according to literary legend, on St George\u2019s Day, 23 April, the same day as his birth. \u201cYou don\u2019t buy a house like New Place and not live there,\u201d Paul Edmondson said. \u201cThe general public and many academics have consistently underestimated the importance of Stratford to Shakespeare.\u201d \nEdmondson believes that, after Shakespeare bought the house in 1597, all his thinking time was spent there and that the late plays, including The Tempest, were at least planned in his library and probably written there. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust describes New Place as \u201cthe jewel in the crown of the 400th anniversary celebrations\u201d but, in truth, it is more of a gaping hole where the gem should be. \nShakespeare\u2019s house was demolished 300 years ago and the house that replaced it, probably incorporating some of the original fabric, was flattened in 1759 by an irascible clergyman, Francis Gastrell, in a row over taxes. He had already cut down Shakespeare\u2019s mulberry tree, under which the writer is said to have sat and worked, because he was irritated by all the tourists peering into his garden. \nThe gap in the Stratford streetscape has never been filled but a five-year archaeology project has peeled back the years and the news that Shakespeare\u2019s kitchen had been found in the partly surviving cellars went round the world. The whole site is being redisplayed for the anniversary, with the foundations marked and the garden restored. \u201cWithout Stratford,\u201d Edmondson said, \u201cthere would have been no Shakespeare.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Vienna is the world\u2019s best city to live in, Baghdad is the worst and London, Paris and New York are not in the top 35, says an international study on quality of life.\nGerman-speaking cities do well in the 18th Mercer Quality of Life study, with Vienna, Zurich, Munich, Dusseldorf and Frankfurt in the top seven.\nParis fell ten places to 37th. This was mostly because of the terrorist attacks on the city. Paris was just above London in 39th place.\nThe study looked at the economy, health, education, housing and the environment. Big companies use the results of the study to decide where they should open offices and factories and how much they should pay their employees.\nHelena Hartlauer, 32, is from Vienna. She said she was not surprised about her city\u2019s top position. For many years, Vienna\u2019s government has spent money on good social housing. This makes Vienna a cheap place to live compared to other big cities.\n\u201cI live in a 100 square-metre apartment in a good area about 20 minutes\u2019 walk from the city centre.\nBut my rent is just \u20ac800 (\u00a3625) a month.\u201d A similar apartment in London costs over \u00a32,000 and even more in New York, which came 44th in the study.\nUS cities do badly in the study, mostly because of worries about personal safety and crime. The US city in top position is San Francisco, in 28th position; Boston is 34th.\n\u201cYou don\u2019t realize how safe Vienna is until you go abroad,\u201d said Hartlauer. \u201cWe also have terrific public transport \u2013 the underground trains run 24 hours at weekends and it only costs \u20ac1 per trip.\u201d\n\u201cVienna\u2019s location is very special,\u201d said Martin Eichtinger, Austrian ambassador to London, who lived in Vienna for 20 years. \u201cThe fall of the Berlin Wall helped make Vienna a centre for companies who want to do business in Central Europe.\u201d\nMercer says Zurich in Switzerland has the world\u2019s second highest quality of life but the Viennese say their city is far more fun. \u201cThere are more students in Vienna than any other German-speaking city,\u201d said Hartlauer. \u201cIt\u2019s a very young and lively city,\u201d she added.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Galina Zaglumyonova was woken in her flat in central Chelyabinsk by a very big explosion that broke the balcony windows and broke pots containing her houseplants. When she jumped out of bed she could see a huge vapour trail in the morning sky and hear car alarms from the street below. \n\u201cI didn\u2019t understand what was going on,\u201d said Zaglumyonova. \u201cThere was a big explosion and then lots of little explosions. My first thought was that it was a plane crash.\u201d In fact, it was a ten-tonne meteorite that fell to Earth in lots of pieces. \nAlmost 1,200 people were injured. More than 40 people were taken to hospital \u2013 most of them were hurt by flying glass. There were no deaths. \nThe meteorite entered the atmosphere at a speed of at least 33,000 miles per hour and broke into pieces between 18 and 32 miles above the ground.\nThe event caused panic in Chelyabinsk, a city of more than one million people to the south of Russia\u2019s Ural mountains. People could see the vapour trail for hundreds of miles, even from neighbouring Kazakhstan. \nTatyana Bets was at work in the reception area of a hospital clinic in the centre of the city when the meteorite hit. \u201cFirst we noticed the wind, and then the room was filled with a very bright light and we could see smoke in the sky,\u201d she said. Then, after a few minutes, the explosions came. \nAt least three craters were found. One crater was more than six metres wide. Another piece of meteorite broke through the thick ice of a lake. \nIn Chelyabinsk, schools and universities were closed and people were told to go home early. About 200 children were injured. \nMany people, mostly with cuts from flying glass, came into the clinic where Bets works. She said many of the students at a nearby college came to the hospital. \u201cThere were a lot of girls in shock\u201d, she said. \nMore than 100,000 square metres of glass were broken and 3,000 buildings were hit. The total cost of the damage in the city is probably more than one billion roubles (\u00a320 million). \nThe meteorite arrived a day before asteroid 2012 DA14 passed Earth very closely (about 17,510 miles). But experts said the two events were not connected. \nThere were lots of rumours in the first few hours after the incident. Reports on Russian state television and in local media suggested that the Russian military blew apart the meteorite. \nThe ultra-nationalist leader of Russia\u2019s Liberal Democrat party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, said it was not a meteorite. He said it was a weapons test by the United States. \nSome people were selling pieces of meteorite through internet sites within a few hours of the impact. \nPrime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said that it shows us that the whole planet is vulnerable.","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Intermediate \nFit in four minutes sounds like a headline from a health magazine or an impossible promise on late-night satellite TV. Then you try Dr Izumi Tabatas training programme  20 seconds of allout effort, ten seconds of rest, repeat eight times  and, after collapsing on the floor, you realize you were wrong.\nTabata has seen it all before. They were dead! he laughs as he remembers the first time he tried out his system on his university students in the early 1990s. After four minutes hard exercise they were completely exhausted. But after six weeks they saw the results and were surprised. We all were.\nHe began his research after he watched Japans speed skating team in the early 1990s  he noticed that short bursts of incredibly hard exercise seemed to be at least as effective as hours of moderate training. Tabata tried to prove this with a simple experiment. One group of moderately trained students did an hour of steady cardiovascular exercise on an exercise bike five times a week. The other group did a ten-minute warm-up on the bike, followed by four minutes of Tabata training, four times a week  plus one 30-minute session of steady exercise with two minutes of Tabata.\nThe results were very surprising. After six weeks of testing, the group following Tabatas plan  exercising for just 88 minutes a week  had increased their anaerobic capacity by 28% and their VO2 max, something that shows your cardiovascular health and maximal aerobic power, by 15%. The control group, who trained for five hours every week, also improved their VO2 max, but by 10%  and their training had no effect on anaerobic capacity.We also measured increases in heart size after three weeks of doing the exercises, says Tabata\nBut you have to work very, very hard. You cant sit on a cross trainer, chewing gum and reading the latest issue of HELLO! The programme demands intensive bursts on a stationary bike or rowing machine; explosive bodyweight exercises, sprints and so on. Remember how you felt after doing a 100m sprint at school? Imagine doing eight of them with only a tensecond break to recover.\nAll-out effort at 170% of your VO2 max is the basis of the programme, says Tabata. If you feel OK afterwards, youve not done it properly. The first three repetitions will feel easy but the last two will feel impossibly hard. In the original plan the aim was to get to eight, but some only managed six or seven.\nOne person on an online forum wrote: When done correctly you should meet God. Most people are incapable of doing it correctly and shouldnt even try. Tabata doesnt completely agree. Everyone can do it but beginners should start with educated trainers so that they can work at the correct intensity for them, he explains. He adds that his programme burns an extra 150 calories in the 12 hours after exercise, even at rest. So, although it is used by most people to get fit  or by fit people to get even fitter  it also burns fat.\nIts slightly surprising, therefore, that only serious athletes follow the programme at the moment. But that may change now that Tabata has agreed a deal that will lead to a network of instructors and a DVD range released towards the end of the year. I decided to do this because I often go on YouTube and, while I am pleased that people are doing it, some are doing it wrong because they dont realize how hard they need to work, says Tabata.\nSo should we all start following this plan? Richard Scrivener, a former rugby fitness coach, says that while the benefits are clear, Tabatas are an addition, not a replacement, to a favoured sport or training method. Runners, for instance, need a high level of running economy, which comes from learning the skills and running for many miles, says Scrivener, But they could reduce the number of long runs and the overall mileage by introducing Tabata training. This will give joints the chance to rest and recover, especially if you have a history of injuries  and you would probably therefore get more benefit from the long runs when you do them.\nGym rats can benefit by doing three strength sessions and three Tabatas a week. And the rest of us can slowly increase the number of sessions, although we know that it will never get easier because every session needs maximum effort. Thats the cruel genius of the programme: it is hard  and effective.","label":1,"label_text":"Intermediate"}
{"text":"Rebecka Singerer is often told that the beer she wants is too dark and too strong for her. Men often tell her to \u201chave something sweeter\u201d.\n\u201cNo, I don\u2019t want a fruit beer. Women can drink whatever they want,\u201d she says.\nNow Singerer, a childminder, has joined FemAle, a group of female drinkers in Gothenburg, to make and sell beer. It is Sweden\u2019s first beer that is made by women.\nPeople in Sweden can now buy We Can Do It, a bottled pale ale. Its label is similar to Rosie the Riveter, created as part of a US Second World War poster. The poster became a symbol of women\u2019s power at work.\nThe person who started the group is Elin Carlsson, 25. She paints cars at the Volvo factory outside the city. \u201cWe Can Do It is not a female beer. It is a beer brewed by women that anyone can drink,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s nothing to do with feminism; it\u2019s about equality \u2013 we wanted to show we can do it.\u201d\nThere is a lot of prejudice in the beer world. Carlsberg and other big brewers have spent millions trying to sell beer to women. Carlsberg\u2019s Eve and Copenhagen beers, Foster \u2019s Radler and Coors\u2019s Anim\u00e9e are some of the beers they tried to sell to women \u2013 they were lighter, flavoured beers \u2013 but they were unsuccessful.\nFemAle\u2019s way of making beer is different. They invite women to tastings that allow women to try flavours and styles of beer that they may not normally try. These tastings are the way to \u201cget more girls into the beer world\u201d, the group says. \u201cBring your mother, sister, girlfriend, aunt and grandmother so we all can learn more about beer.\u201d\nWe Can Do It was Felicia Nordstr\u00f6m\u2019s idea. She is a bar worker who says she was fed up with male beer snobs telling her: \u201cWhat do you know about beer?\u201d\nShe talked to FemAle and they joined Ocean, a local independent micro-brewery. One weekend they created the recipe; the next weekend they brewed 1,600 litres.\nThis beer is not aimed at women,\u201d says Thomas Bingebo, the head brewer at Ocean. \u201cWhen the big breweries target women, it usually fails. This is something completely different.\u201d\nThe first bottles of We Can Do It were sold out straight away. Other breweries have already asked FemAle if they can brew new beers with them.\n\u201cWomen choose a glass of wine because they don\u2019t know about beer. They don\u2019t know what to order,\u201d says Carlsson. \u201cWe open up new worlds to them.\u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"On one day in August, one in seven people on Earth, 1 billion people, used Facebook, according to founder Mark Zuckerberg. In a decade, the social network has transformed people\u2019s relationships, privacy, their businesses, news media, helped topple regimes and even changed the meanings of everyday words. \n\u201cA more open and connected world is a better world. \nIt brings stronger relationships with those you love, a stronger economy with more opportunities and a stronger society that reflects all of our values,\u201d wrote Zuckerberg in the post announcing the numbers. These are just some of the ways his company changed everything \u2013 for better or worse. \n1 Facebook has changed the definition of \u201cfriend\u201d\n\u201cTo friend\u201d is now a verb. And, unlike in real life, when the ending of a friendship can be deeply traumatic, it is easy to \u201cunfriend\u201d, a word invented to describe ditching a casual acquaintance when they are no longer enhancing your Facebook newsfeed. Although the meanings of the words \u201cshare\u201d and \u201clike\u201d are essentially the same, Facebook has brought an entirely new weight to the terms. School and university reunions have become redundant \u2013 you already know whose career is going well, whether the perfect pair have split and you\u2019ve seen endless pictures of your schoolmates\u2019 babies. You won\u2019t be surprised by an ex in the street with a new girlfriend or boyfriend: you already know they\u2019re dating someone else from the romantic selfies. \nBut, unlike in real life, Facebook has no hierarchy of friendships. A classmate from one project at university who you haven\u2019t seen in 15 years, a friend-of-a-friend from a stag do or a colleague you\u2019ve never actually spoken to in person \u2013 they are all Facebook friends in the same way as your closest mate or your spouse or your mum. \nIt doesn\u2019t necessarily mean we see them the same way. Professor Robin Dunbar is famous for his research that suggests a person can only have roughly 150 people as a social group. Facebook hasn\u2019t changed that yet, he believes, but, in an interview with the New Yorker, Dunbar said he feared it was so easy simply to end friendships on Facebook that, eventually, there may no longer be any need to learn to get along. \n2 We care less about privacy \nThere\u2019s a wise saying: if you\u2019re not paying for it, you\u2019re the product. Facebook embodies that philosophy and created an entire industry from it. The astonishing thing is that users know that and they willingly hand over that information. \nPew Research Center found that most young people are more than willing to hand over their details. \nAn overwhelming majority of 91% post a photo of themselves, 71% post the city or town where they live, up from 61%, more than half give email addresses and a fifth give their phone number. But, as so much of a person\u2019s life is shared online, Facebook gives a platform for everyone to cultivate an image and a fanbase. In an article for the journal Frontiers in Psychology, academics described a new phenomenon, the emergence of the \u201cFacebook self \u201d. More than 80% list their interests, allowing brands to target them most effectively. But most younger users do restrict their profiles, with 60% allowing friends only. \n3 Facebook has created millions of jobs \u2013 but not in its own offices \nFacebook has essentially created an entire sector, including indirect employment for people whose job it is to make the platform work for their brand. \n\u201cIt is a tool like no other,\u201d said Michael Tinmouth, a social media strategist who has worked with brands such as Vodafone and Microsoft. \u201cMarketers have an understanding of a brand\u2019s consumers like they have never had before. The data and analytics available to you are extraordinary. You know who your customers are, who they are friends with and how they engage with your brand.\u201d \nAnd advertisers pay a lot for that. Facebook reported ad revenue was up 46%, reaching $3.32bn. Facebook is also a minefield for brands. Suddenly, rather than complaint conversations taking place over the phone with a customer service representative or on a small specialist internet forum, angry customers can post their complaints for hundreds of their friends to see or even on the page where all loyal fans of the brand have been carefully cultivated. And an injustice can go viral. \n4 Facebook has been the tool to organize revolutions \nThough the Arab Spring was dubbed the Twitter revolution, organizing demonstrations and direct action has been revolutionized by Facebook. Manchester University\u2019s Olga Onuch found Facebook had been the key medium for reaching half of all the Euromaidan protesters in Ukraine. Facebook posts signalled the start of the Maidan protests during the hours after it was announced that Ukraine would not sign a free trade and association agreement with the EU, Onuch found. The posts organized live action, not just online anger. Mustafa Nayyem, the Ukraine activist, posted: \u201cIf you really want to do something, don\u2019t just 'like' this post. Let\u2019s meet near the monument to independence in the middle of the Maidan.\u201d \nMany of those interviewed in Onuch\u2019s research said they relied on Facebook for the truth about what was happening \u2013 unable to trust traditional media. \n5 Facebook makes news, breaks news and decides what is news \nRoughly 71% of 18- to 24-year-olds say the internet is their main news source and 63% of users overall, according to the Pew Research Center. About a third of Facebook users post about politics and government. \nMost people will first encounter a piece of journalism or an item of breaking news via Facebook or other social media, and most of those encounters will be on mobiles. \nUsers might never have to leave the site to get their news: Instant Articles will see stories run within Facebook. It allows news companies to sell ads around their articles, gaining them 100% of that revenue, while Facebook can also sell ads around that article, with 70% of the revenue from the social network\u2019s advertising also going to the news companies. \nFacebook has also changed the ways journalists write stories. It is a resource many reporters cannot now live without. For better or (often) worse, it is a directory to find, contact and glean information for almost any ordinary person, who might suddenly find themselves at the centre of the day\u2019s biggest news story. Facebook has its own newswire, sharing the most useful user reaction to breaking stories, including pictures and videos. \n6 Users are changing Facebook \nIt used to be a site to get students connected, with only elite US universities allowed access. \nIn 2014, a decade after its launch, 56% of internet users aged 65 and older have a Facebook account. And 39% are connected to people they have never met in person. \nGroups have given way to pages, writing on each other\u2019s walls is pass\u00e9 and carefully curated albums have given way to instant mobile uploads. More than ever, the site is a gateway not just to your friends but to the rest of the internet. \nWe may as well get used to it, said David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect . \u201cIt might very well go away further down the road but something this big takes a long time to disappear,\u201d he told BBC Radio 4\u2019s Today programme. \u201cFacebook has proven its ability to change and it will continue to be a very, very major player.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}
{"text":"Angry waiters are asking people to support their battle to keep their tips. Protesters plan to target PizzaExpress restaurants, to try to get the restaurant chain to stop taking a percentage of tips for staff that have been paid on credit and debit cards. Protesters have also started an online petition \u2013 they hope that people who go to the restaurants will support them.\nSome employees are very angry because PizzaExpress keeps, as an admin fee, 8p out of every \u00a31 paid when tips are given by card. The chain, which has 430 restaurants in the UK, earns around \u00a31 million a year from this practice, according to the union Unite.\n\u201cWe believe this 8% fee is unfair. If the chain values its staff, it should pay them the total tips from customers,\u201d said Chantal Chegrinec of Unite. \u201cWe are starting with PizzaExpress but they are not the only company who do this. And we will target other companies after this.\u201d \nThe first protest will take place at a PizzaExpress restaurant at the British Museum in London. Unite did a survey of PizzaExpress staff after a Chinese company bought the chain in 2014. Lots of the staff complained about the 8% deduction from their tips so that\u2019s why Unite began the campaign. \nOne angry PizzaExpress employee, who does not want to give her name, said that the admin fee cost her \u00a33 a night. \u201cI have worked at PizzaExpress for 15 years,\u201d she said in a letter to Unite. \u201cAfter all this time, I\u2019m still only paid the national minimum wage of \u00a36.50 an hour. So you see my colleagues and I need customer tips to increase our low wages. I work hard and am good at my job but, when PizzaExpress thinks it can take a percentage of our tips, I get upset.\u201d\nRestaurant chains Ask and Zizzi also deduct 8% of the tips paid by card. But other chains deduct even more. Caf\u00e9 Rouge, Bella Italia and Belgo deduct 10%; Strada and Giraffe do, too.\nA spokesperson for PizzaExpress said that the money they take from tips pays for a system that they use to share the tips among staff. \u201cStaff use this system to decide how to share tips made by card,\u201d she said.\nThe chain sells 29 million pizzas a year in its UK restaurants. It says it does not make a profit from the admin fee. But other restaurant groups do not deduct an admin fee from tips. Wagamama, Pizza Hut and TGI Friday all take nothing. Frankie & Benny\u2019s, Chiquitos and Garfunkels used to take 10% but stopped years ago.\nUnite recently targeted ten PizzaExpress restaurants in south London. They distributed leaflets to customers \u2013 the customers were \u201cshocked and disgusted \u201d by the practice. PizzaExpress says they mention the admin fee at the bottom of the menus. But the employee who wrote to Unite said that customers were always surprised by the admin fee. Most customers then paid the tip in cash. Almost 6,000 people have signed Unite\u2019s online petition.\nOne waiter said that at least a third of his money is from tips. He doesn\u2019t work for PizzaExpress but has worked for 11 years for another restaurant chain. \u201cI work in a busy London restaurant and I usually serve 150 people every night. I earn \u00a340 to \u00a350 in tips,\u201d he says. \u201cThat seems like a lot but that money is very important to me because my basic pay is only \u00a36.50 an hour.\u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"A Canadian man became famous because he gave a free round-the-world trip to a woman with the same name as his ex-girlfriend. The man has now returned from the trip with the woman he chose. Unfortunately, people who followed the story were disappointed because the pair did not fall in love. Jordan Axani, a 28-year-old from Toronto who started a charity, arrived back in Canada with Elizabeth Quinn Gallagher and said the pair were like brother and sister. \nAxani became famous in 2014 when he offered an air ticket to any Canadian named Elizabeth Gallagher. He reserved a three-week holiday with his girlfriend but they split up and he was unable to change the name on the tickets. \nAxani\u2019s new travelling companion, was, of course, called Elizabeth Gallagher. She was a 23-year-old student from Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia. This Elizabeth Gallagher, who calls herself Quinn, replied to an online posting from Axani and he chose her. Before the trip, she already had a boyfriend. But people still hoped that the globetrotters might fall in love. Unfortunately, they didn\u2019t. \n\u201cI\u2019m going to be very clear,\u201d Axani said, soon after the pair returned to Toronto. \u201cThe trip was never a romantic idea. It was completely platonic. I do not think of Quinn in a romantic way at all. She is a good friend. I think of her as a little sister \u2013 that is all.\u201d \nBut it was difficult to create that brother-sister relationship. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t easy and it wasn\u2019t immediate. It took us about a week to really understand each other,\u201d Axani said. They made some mistakes as the pair got to know each other. \u201cAt the end of the trip, we\u2019d developed a really great rhythm \u2013 one second, we had really funny jokes and, the next second, we knew when the other person needed time alone.\u201d \nThe pair did not fall in love, but Axani said the trip was \u201cfantastic\u201d. They visited Milan, Venice, Vienna, Prague, Khao Lak (in Thailand) and Hong Kong. A favourite place was Prague, Axani said, where they met more people than anywhere else on the trip. \u201cDuring two and a half days, I think we met about 24 people. So that\u2019s a lot of stories, that\u2019s a lot of people and that\u2019s a lot of love for their home city of Prague.\u201d \nPeople followed the pair on Twitter and Instagram, Axani said. And they were even recognized in the street in Hong Kong. \u201cIt was an adventure. We had a great time. We learned a lot about ourselves and about each other.\u201d \nAxani arrived back in Toronto at 3am and went directly to a meeting at his charity, A Ticket Forward. Axani started the charity after his online posting went viral \u2013 he plans to offer round-the-world-trips to victims of abuse, cancer and war. \nAxani also wants to turn his story into a television show or film, he said. \u201cThere\u2019s been lots of interest from many production companies.\u201d Axani said he was not looking for his next Elizabeth Gallagher yet. \u201cI\u2019m not looking for anything. But we\u2019ll see,\u201d he said. \u201cAs always, life is a journey.\u201d","label":0,"label_text":"Elementary"}
{"text":"Low-income countries will remain on the front line of human-induced climate change over the next century, experiencing gradual sea-level rises, stronger cyclones, warmer days and nights, more unpredictable rainfall, and larger and longer heatwaves, according to the most thorough assessment of the issue yet. \nThe last major United Nations (UN) assessment, in 2007, predicted runaway temperature rises of 6\u00b0C or more by the end of the century. That is now thought unlikely by scientists, but average land and sea temperatures are expected to continue rising throughout this century, possibly reaching 4\u00b0C above present levels \u2013 enough to devastate crops and make life in many cities unbearably hot. \nAs temperatures climb and oceans warm, tropical and subtropical regions will face sharp changes in annual rainfall, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, released in Stockholm and published online in September. \nEast Africa can expect to experience increased short rains, while west Africa should expect heavier monsoons. Burma, Bangladesh and India can expect stronger cyclones; elsewhere in southern Asia, heavier summer rains are anticipated. Indonesia may receive less rainfall between July and October, but the coastal regions around the South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand can expect increased rainfall extremes when cyclones hit land. \n\u201cIt is virtually certain that, in the long term, global precipitation will change. High latitude countries, such as in Europe or North America, are expected to receive more rainfall, but many subtropical arid and semi-arid regions will likely experience less precipitation. Over wet tropical regions, extreme precipitation events will very likely be more intense and more frequent in a warmer world,\u201d said the report\u2019s authors. \nThey added: \u201cMonsoon onset dates are likely to become earlier or not to change much while monsoon withdrawal rates are very likely to delay, resulting in a lengthening of the season.\u201d \nScientists in developing countries and commentators have welcomed the report, which they said backed their own observations. \n\u201cThe IPCC makes the case 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\u2019s not news to us. Most developing countries are facing climate change now. They do not need the IPCC to tell them that the weather is changing,\u201d said Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development, based in Dhaka. \nScientists have also lowered projections of sea-level rises. Depending on future greenhouse gas emissions, sea levels will rise an average of 40 \u201362 cm by 2100. Nevertheless, there will be signi\ufb01cant geographical variations; many millions of people living in the developing world\u2019s great cities, including Lagos and Calcutta, are threatened. \nWeather disasters are also more likely in a warmer world, the report suggests. Although the global frequency of tropical cyclones is expected to decrease or remain essentially unchanged, they may become more intense, with stronger winds and heavier rainfall. \nLife in many developing-country cities could become practically unbearable, given that urban temperatures are already well above those in surrounding countryside. Much higher temperatures could reduce the length of the growing period in some parts of Africa by up to 20%, the report said. \nDr Camilla Toulmin, director of the International Institute for Environment and Development, says: \u201cClimate models are not yet robust enough to predict impacts at local and regional scales, but it is clear that everybody is vulnerable in some way.\u201d \nThe charity Oxfam predicted that world hunger would worsen as climate changes inevitably hurt crop production and disrupt incomes. They suggested the number of people at risk of hunger might climb by 10% to 20% by 2050, with daily per-capita calorie availability falling across the world. \n\u201cThe changing climate is already jeopardizing gains in the \ufb01ght against hunger, and it looks set to worsen,\u201d said Oxfam. \u201cA hot world is a hungry world. If the remainder of the 21st century unfolds like its \ufb01rst decade, we will soon experience climate extremes well outside the boundaries of human experience.\u201d","label":2,"label_text":"Advance"}