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1 Flappy Bird
Be careful what you wish for, especially if you want to invent something new. Recently, Dong Nguyen, the designer of the mobile game Flappy Bird, pulled it from app stores, saying its success – it had been downloaded more than 50 million times, and was making him around £30,000 in advertising revenue eac... | 2 | Advance |
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.
These 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.
In August, before her concerts at... | 0 | Elementary |
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 ha... | 0 | Elementary |
The brand and logo of Apple have been named the most valuable in the world – worth nearly $119bn, or more than the entire gross domestic product of Morocco, Ecuador or Oman.
The Silicon Valley firm, already the world’s biggest company – with a stock market valuation of $591bn – has seen its brand value increase by 21%... | 2 | Advance |
Intermediate
Coal 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.
One of the biggest factors behind the rise in coal use has been the massive increase in the use of shale... | 1 | Intermediate |
They are the darkness seekers – and they are growing in number. On Black Fell, looking down on Northumberland’s beautiful Kielder Water reservoir, a group of people wait in a car park next to a strange wooden building with a minimalist design beamed down from the future. This is Kielder Observatory, the centre of Brita... | 2 | Advance |
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 “remember” things that never happened.
False memories are sometimes a problem with eyewitness statements in courts of law.
Eyewitnesses often give evidence that leads to guil... | 0 | Elementary |
Benjamin Carle is 96.9% made in France, right down to his underpants and socks. Unfortunately, six Ikea forks, a Chinese guitar and unsourced wall paint stopped him being declared a 100% economic patriot, but nobody is perfect.
Carle, 26, set out, in 2013, to see if it was possible to live using only French-made produ... | 2 | Advance |
The Virunga National Park, home to rare mountain gorillas but targeted for oil exploration by a British company, could earn trouble-torn DR Congo $400m a year from tourism, hydropower and carbon credits, said a WWF report.
But, if the UNESCO World Heritage Site that straddles the equator is exploited for oil, as the C... | 2 | Advance |
Two mothers in South Africa have discovered they are raising each other’s daughters after they were mistakenly switched at birth in a hospital in 2010.
But, 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 ... | 2 | Advance |
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’s innovations made its smartphone one of Canada’s biggest exports.
Six years later, in the summer of 2011, there were riots in London and oth... | 0 | Elementary |
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 ... | 2 | Advance |
Intermediate
The 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 ... | 1 | Intermediate |
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, increas... | 2 | Advance |
Intermediate
What 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.
Some found it so unbearable that they took the safe but alarming opportunity to give themselves mild electric shocks to break the tedium.
Two-... | 1 | Intermediate |
It is hard to tell exactly where the noise is coming from, but impossible to miss it from anywhere in Damascus: all day and night you can hear the dull thud and boom of artillery, rockets or planes pounding rebel positions – the sound of war getting closer to Syria’s capital. But just over two years into the Syrian cri... | 2 | Advance |
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.
But, 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 ... | 0 | Elementary |
1 Passing clouds
One of the pleasures of flying is seeing clouds close up. Even though they seem insubstantial they carry a considerable weight of water – around 500 tonnes in a small cumulus cloud. And water is denser than air. So why don’t clouds fall out of the sky like rain? They do. But the droplets take a long t... | 2 | Advance |
When the Taliban sent a gunman to shoot Malala Yousafzai in October 2012 as she rode home on a bus after school, they made clear their intention: to silence the teenager and kill off her campaign for girls’ education.
Nine months and countless surgical operations later, she stood up at the United Nations on her 16th b... | 2 | Advance |
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.
So unbearable did some find it that they took up the safe but alarming opportunity to give themselves mild electric shocks in an attempt t... | 2 | Advance |
Intermediate
The 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 suc... | 1 | Intermediate |
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.
Stratford was important to Shakespeare all his life, says Paul Edmondson, the head of learning and res... | 0 | Elementary |
Intermediate
Some 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... | 1 | Intermediate |
Glastonbury Festival wants to fight a war against plastic water bottles. They plan to become the world’s most environmentally friendly outdoor music event.
Each year, disposable bottles leave the Somerset festival site covered in plastic. About one million plastic bottles are used during the festival.
The festival or... | 0 | Elementary |
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 sa... | 2 | Advance |
A recent report says that the wealthiest people in India will become four times richer by 2018 – 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’s biggest democracy.
Economic growth has be... | 0 | Elementary |
Serial dater Emmanuel Limal was tired of meeting women who weren’t ready to start a family, or at least wouldn’t 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 di... | 2 | Advance |
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’s subway – and the... | 2 | Advance |
Intermediate
The 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.
Dancevic collapsed during the second set of his fi rst-round match against Frances Benot Paire on the uncovered court six a... | 1 | Intermediate |
Intermediate
A mirror that sends heat into cold space has been designed by scientists to replace air-conditioning units that keep buildings cool on Earth.
Researchers 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... | 1 | Intermediate |
Wales will become the first country in the UK that will assume that people agree to donate their organs, if they haven’t opted out.
The 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.
“This is a very ... | 0 | Elementary |
Nelson Mandela, the towering figure of Africa’s struggle for freedom and a hero to millions around the world, has died at the age of 95.
South Africa’s first black president died in the company of his family at home in Johannesburg after years of declining health, which had caused him to withdraw from public life.
Th... | 2 | Advance |
Intermediate
Felix 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.
Ten terrifying minutes later, the... | 1 | Intermediate |
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’s relationships, privacy, their businesses, news media, helped to end unfair governments and even changed the meaning of common words.
“A more o... | 0 | Elementary |
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.
Google has begun testing the electric car at its headquarters in Mountain Vie... | 0 | Elementary |
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.
Cockrell is a former Wall Street worker who is now a therapist. He spends large parts of his days walking in Central Park or th... | 0 | Elementary |
Intermediate
A 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 2... | 1 | Intermediate |
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.
The major demonstrations in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Brasilia, Belem, Belo Horizo... | 2 | Advance |
Intermediate
According 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 o... | 1 | Intermediate |
Intermediate
A long time ago, cinema audiences were transported to a galaxy far, far away.
That 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.
Many fans ... | 1 | Intermediate |
Amsterdam still looks liberal to tourists, who were recently assured by the Labour Mayor that the city’s 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 “scum villag... | 2 | Advance |
Intermediate
Behind 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... | 1 | Intermediate |
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.
The World Health Organization says that each year mo... | 0 | Elementary |
Intermediate
The 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.
Now the city... | 1 | Intermediate |
The direct action group UK Uncut plans to make many Starbucks cafés into crèches, refuges and homeless shelters to make people notice that Starbucks does not pay enough tax.
The House of Commons questioned Starbucks. They asked why the company paid no corporation tax in the UK during the past three years.
UK Uncut wa... | 0 | Elementary |
Water scientists have given a very strong warning about the world’s food supplies. They say that everyone may have to change to a vegetarian diet by 2050.
We 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 t... | 0 | Elementary |
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... | 0 | Elementary |
Intermediate
The 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 ... | 1 | Intermediate |
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OneStopEnglish
OneStopEnglish is a corpus of texts written at three reading levels, and demonstrates its usefulness for through two applications - automatic readability assessment and automatic text simplification.
This dataset is a version of onestop_english, which was randomly split into (64*3=) 192 train examples, and 375 test examples (stratified).
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