Right now, one of the most exciting space facilities in the world is a World War Two hangar in the

Mojave Desert in California. The wooden hangar belongs to Xcor, one of the start-up companies
building rocket planes to fly tourists into space. In the hangar next door, you can glimpse Virgin
Galactic’s spaceplane, slung beneath its carrier aircraft. Further along the runway, Microsoft
billionaire Paul Allen’s company, Stratolaunch, is developing a new space launch system. Eleven
other small space businesses are spread around the site at the Mojave Air and Space Port. Later
this year, Virgin aims to fly its first paying passengers into space. The experience will not come
cheap. Virgin Galactic is charging $250,000 for the privilege of experiencing five minutes of
weightlessness; Xcor plans to charge $95,000 for a ride in its two-seater rocket ship. The cost
alone puts this fledgling space-tourism industry beyond the means of most of us.

Every day, we are met with intuitions that appear to provide the answers to questions in our lives.
We step outside on a sunny day, and a nagging feeling in our gut urges us to go back in and fetch
our umbrella. We watch the big fight and develop a powerful hunch early in the contest that the
hometown boxer will prevail. Within 60 seconds of interviewing a candidate, we just know,
beyond a shadow of a doubt — she’s the one. While the common wisdom is that we should “trust
our gut,” smart decision makers know it can’t be that simple. Surely there are times when intuition
guides us accurately, and other times when it leads us astray. But how are we to tell the
difference? In order to answer that question, we need to, first, demystify intuition and understand
precisely how it works. We’ll learn that the process that delivers these gut feelings to us, while on
the surface appearing simple and crude, is quite complex and sophisticated.

As well as being linked to serious health issues amongst individual sports professionals, doping
negatively affects the public perception of sport and demotivates participants, seriously
undermining the principles of open and fair competition in the process. Traditionally, anti-doping
has been concerned essentially with testing and sanctions. Important though they are, there is a
growing realisation in the EU that such rules and programmes need to be backed by wider efforts
to prevent a pro-doping culture. Education and prevention need to target wider audiences and not
just top-level competitive athletes. Deterrence is not the only means by which doping can or
should be avoided in the future.

Even though they are sisters, Caroline and Maggie are like chalk and cheese. Caroline is friendly,
warm-hearted, eager to please, and well-liked; Maggie, on the other hand, is unsociable, selfish,
and lacks any sense of humour.

Men have always cried. Yet the acceptability of male crying has varied across time and
across culture. There are many references to man tears in Ancient Greek and Roman
culture. In Homer’s The Iliad, there is no conflict between Odysseus’ heroic qualities and
the inclusion of many episodes of his weeping for home, loved ones, and fallen comrades.
Yet Odysseus never breaks down out of loneliness or frustration, which the ancient Greeks
did not feel were acceptable reasons for men to cry. They also expected warriors to
understand that there were times when public displays of emotion were acceptable, and
times when it was appropriate to cry alone. Odysseus frequently tries to hide his tears from
those around him.

Medieval Japanese and European epics are chock full of male crying. The great warriors
in both Beowulf and the Tale of Heiki cry buckets over both great spiritual questions and
the death of comrades. The warriors in such stories are expected to cry about issues of
war, peace, and ideals while the women weep over romantic and platonic relationships or
out of general sadness, loneliness.
Many people struggle to determine what news and information sources they should trust
and how to discern reliable information online. They worry that fake news is sowing
confusion about current events. And many express a desire to get help.

About six-in-ten adults (61%) say they would be helped at least somewhat in making
decisions if they got training on how to find trustworthy information online, according to a
new analysis of Pew Research Center survey data, conducted in the USA in 2016. What’s
more, a majority of Americans say public libraries are helpful as people try to meet their
information needs.

About eight-in-ten adults (78%) feel that public libraries help them find information that is
trustworthy and reliable and 76% say libraries help them learn new things. Also, 56%
believe libraries help them get information that aids with decisions they have to make.

On each of these questions, Millennials (those ages 18 to 35 in 2016) stand out as the
most ardent library fans. Young adults, whose public library use is higher than that of older
Americans, are particularly likely to say the library helps them with information.
The Bayeux tapestry will be loaned to Britain after Emmanuel Macron agreed to let it leave
France for the first time in 950 years.

“This would be a major loan, probably the most significant ever from France to the UK. It is
a gesture of extraordinary generosity and proof of the deep ties that link our countries. The
Bayeux tapestry is of huge importance, as it recounts a crucial moment in British and
French history, 1066.”

If the tapestry does come to the UK, it raises the question of what reciprocal loan could be
made to France, with the Rosetta Stone, originally in French hands until Britain defeated
the French in Egypt in 1801, a likely contender. 
The tapestry is thought to have been made shortly after the Battle of Hastings in the 11th
century. Some historians argue it was made in Kent, a debate that is set to reignite
following the announcement.

The first written record of it is in 1476 when it was recorded in the Bayeux Cathedral
treasury as “a very long and narrow hanging on which are embroidered figures and
inscriptions comprising a representation of the conquest of England”.
The infrastructure built for the Games is the most expensive aspect of hosting and often
the greatest folly, but it has also become the standard rationalization for the high costs.
Historically, cities earned quite a bit of revenue from TV rights, but the International
Olympic Committee now takes at least 70% of that revenue; as recently as the 1990s it
took just 4%.

Ticket sales and the influx of tourists offer quick hits of cash, but in recent years that
revenue has never come close to half the cost of putting on the Games—certainly not for
Beijing (which spent $49.1 billion) or the Winter Games in Sochi ($51 billion). Rio, while
spending comparatively little, will be paying for its infrastructure projects for another two
decades. And from all evidence, it will see none of the revitalization of, say, Barcelona,
which hosted in 1992 and is one of just two cities in the past half-century to make back
what they had spent.

Many people are disgusted to see the fat cats in the city getting richer and richer, while the
workingman struggles to earn his daily crust. It seems as if the gap between the 'haves'
and the ‘have-nots’ is getting greater at an alarming rate. The idea of socialism is a distant
ideology and capitalism reigns supreme. In the 'land of opportunities', real opportunities
seem to be pipe dreams on the horizon as bureaucracy and taxation make the hope of
being a successful entrepreneur more and more elusive.
To say he’s ploughing his own furrow is an understatement: Baron Cohen’s raucous comic
grotesquerie has no obvious precedent in cinema. His voices owe something to Peter
Sellers, his physicality to Jacques Tati and his gonzo documentary style to the TV satirists
Chris Morris and Paul Kaye, but he goes much, much further than any of them.
"The former president, Park Guangzao Yoa, has denied corruption charges at the start of a
criminal trial that could send the country’s first female leader to prison for life.

Prosecutors accuse Yoa of abusing her power and colluding with her longtime friend, Choi
Sin-sol, to pressure major companies such as Solidsoil into paying tens of millions of
dollars in bribes in return for business favours.

Yoa’s secretive and allegedly corrupt relationship with Choi, along with wider revelations
about the cozy ties between the country’s political and economic elites, sparked mass
protests, ending in Yoa’s impeachment last December and her removal from office by a
constitutional court ruling in March.

Earlier this month, the country elected Moon Jiaomin, a left-leaning liberal, by a landslide
in an election called after Yoa’s indictment. Moon, a former human rights lawyer, has
vowed to punish leaders of the country’s conglomerates found guilty of committing crimes,
and to challenge the collusive relationship between politics and big business."
Justin McCurry Guardian, March 23rd 2017