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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 |
Intermediate
When 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, m... | 1 | Intermediate |
Male bosses are being paid bonuses double the size of those given to female colleagues in identical jobs – a disparity that means men enjoy salary top-ups of £141,500 more than women over the course of a working lifetime.
The figures, released by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), reveal that men in UK manageme... | 2 | Advance |
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.
When it’s 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 butte... | 2 | Advance |
Robert Mysłajek stops dead. Between two paw prints on a muddy mountain track, the scientist finds what he is looking for. “Droppings!” he enthuses. Wolf sightings are so rare that the sighting of their faeces marks a good day, even for a seasoned tracker.
But it is getting easier. There are now an estimated 1,500 wolv... | 2 | Advance |
Intermediate
JMW Turner, one of Britains greatest painters, will appear on the new 20 note, after a nationwide vote.
It will be the first time an artist has appeared on a British banknote, after the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, asked the public to choose a deceased cultural figure they felt deserved t... | 1 | Intermediate |
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. “Th... | 2 | Advance |
Intermediate
Valdevaqueros 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.
For years it has been very different ... | 1 | Intermediate |
Intermediate
The 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 fu... | 1 | Intermediate |
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... | 2 | Advance |
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.
Carle, 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 d... | 0 | Elementary |
A menu scandal at some of Japan’s top hotels and department stores is damaging the international reputation of Japanese food.
One 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.
T... | 0 | Elementary |
Intermediate
Not 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.
Some of the class of eight look as if they need to rest more than others. Allen... | 1 | Intermediate |
Opposition to Western Australia’s shark cull has intensified as thousands of people took to beaches across the continent to call on the state’s 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 thre... | 0 | Elementary |
Intermediate
I 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.
... | 1 | Intermediate |
Intermediate
They 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.
The arrival of broadband in the year 2000 has created a generation of digital natives, Ofcom (which... | 1 | Intermediate |
A big international disagreement has started over the right of Bolivia’s 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 inte... | 0 | Elementary |
The small room looks like a classroom. The posters on the walls show letters of the alphabet and a map of Bangladesh.
But, it is hard to concentrate – 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 esc... | 0 | Elementary |
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 – this is causing problems, says the chari... | 0 | Elementary |
Intermediate
The 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.
While most concerts are now aglow with phones and tablets, Bush does not want her fans watching her shows through a screen.
... | 1 | Intermediate |
On the market square in Rjukan stands a statue of the town’s founder, a noted Norwegian engineer and industrialist called Sam Eyde. The great man stares northwards across the square at an almost sheer mountainside in front of him.
Behind him, to the south, rises the equally sheer 1,800-metre peak known as Gaustatoppen... | 2 | Advance |
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’s training protocol – 20 seconds of all-out effort, 10 seconds of rest, repeat eight times – and between sounding like Darth Vader as you desperately suck in oxygen... | 2 | Advance |
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’s eye, BlackBerry’s innovations ensured its smartphone was one of Canada’s biggest exports.
Six years later, in the summer of 2011, as violence eng... | 2 | Advance |
A major international row with wide-ranging implications for global drugs policy has erupted over the right of Bolivia’s 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 gover... | 2 | Advance |
Intermediate
Police and intelligence agencies around the world have, for almost 100 years, used lie detectors to help convict criminals or find spies and traitors.
But 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 ... | 1 | Intermediate |
A few months before he died, Carl Sagan recorded a message of hope to would-be Mars explorers, telling them: “Whatever the reason you’re on Mars is, I’m glad you’re there. And I wish I was with you.”
Seventeen years after the pioneering astronomer set out his hopeful vision of the future in 1996, a company from the Ne... | 2 | Advance |
Not just the identity of the man in the car park with the twisted spine, but the appalling last moments and humiliating treatment of the naked body of Richard III in the hours after his death have been revealed at an extraordinary press conference at Leicester University.
There were cheers when Richard Buckley, Lead A... | 2 | Advance |
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 ‘remember’ events or experiences that have never happened. False memories are a major problem with witness statements in courts of law.
Defendants have often b... | 2 | Advance |
Intermediate
Hundreds 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 kno... | 1 | Intermediate |
Intermediate
Is 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 ... | 1 | Intermediate |
Intermediate
There 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, sa... | 1 | Intermediate |
Intermediate
A 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, ... | 1 | Intermediate |
Intermediate
Every 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.
It is the only healthy way to start the day. Much better than an egg or a sandwich or a... | 1 | Intermediate |
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 N... | 0 | Elementary |
Intermediate
Much 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... | 1 | Intermediate |
Music subscription services, including Spotify and Deezer, have broken through the $1bn sales barrier worldwide, as increasing numbers of fans choose to pay for music online.
Streaming and subscription revenues rose by more than 50% in 2013 to reach $1.1bn, helping overall sales of recorded music in Europe grow for th... | 2 | Advance |
Intermediate
From 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.
Here, at the central African countrys ... | 1 | Intermediate |
Intermediate
Will 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.
Amazon spokesman Paul Misener told a US congress hearing recently that his comp... | 1 | Intermediate |
A thick crust of bird droppings is piled on the gilded balustrade of one of Britain’s most expensive properties. Pigeon skeletons lie among shattered mirrors and water streams through broken cornicing. This is The Towers, a £30m palace in “Billionaires’ Row” in north London, whose spectacular ruin has been kept secret ... | 2 | Advance |
Not many exercise classes have a tea break in the middle. But Margaret Allen’s 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 ... | 0 | Elementary |
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 £4.5 million for a British cha... | 0 | Elementary |
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.
But when British designer, Patrick Hunt, tried to get money from banks or venture capitalists to help start his business, he hit a problem. “We tried to get funding, bu... | 0 | Elementary |
Intermediate
Until 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.
Throughout the 1970s, Bowie was a tr... | 1 | Intermediate |
Intermediate
According 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... | 1 | Intermediate |
Intermediate
When 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?
Its 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 ... | 1 | Intermediate |
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. “The canoe is our island, the crew members are the community and the navigator is the leader,” Pittman says. He continues, explaining that the converse is also true. “An island is ... | 2 | Advance |
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 resistan... | 2 | Advance |
Imagine that you read a headline 'Fit in four minutes' in a health magazine. Would you believe it? Well, Dr Izumi Tabata’s training programme – 20 seconds of intensive effort, ten seconds of rest, repeat eight times – promises that it is possible to be fit with just 88 minutes of training a week.
Tabata remembers the ... | 0 | Elementary |
Intermediate
Emmanuel 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... | 1 | Intermediate |
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’ education.
Nine months and many operations later, she stood up at the United Nations on her 16th birthday. “They thought that the bullet would ... | 0 | Elementary |
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 – the sweet, cold, velvety embrace of ice cream.
Here, at the central African country’s... | 2 | Advance |
Intermediate
Angry 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... | 1 | Intermediate |
Intermediate
Illegal 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 criticiz... | 1 | Intermediate |
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