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Most children are using too much toothpaste, do not brush often enough and do not start brushing their teeth at a young enough age, according to a US survey. 

Parents should brush infants’ teeth when the first tooth appears, which can be as early as age six months. And they should help their kids brush until the kids are independent enough to thoroughly and correctly brush do it themselves, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and paediatrician groups advise. 

“Cavities are one of the most common chronic diseases in children, and untreated cavities can cause pain, infections, and problems eating, speaking, and learning,” said the study’s lead author, Dr Gina Thornton-Evans of the CDC Division of Oral Health in Atlanta, Georgia. 

“Children with poor oral health often miss more school and receive lower grades than children with better oral health,” she said in an e-mail. 

While starting to brush as soon as teeth begin appearing is recommended, ingesting too much fluoride can harm still-forming teeth, the study team notes in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. So the CDC recommends that children do not use fluoride toothpaste until they are two years old. 

Children under age three should use a smear of toothpaste the size of a rice grain, and children ages three to six should use a pea-sized amount, they add. 

To see whether US parents follow these guidelines, Thornton-Evans and colleagues analysed responses from parents and caregivers of more than 5,100 children and teens to a nationally-representative survey. 

The research team found that about half of children between ages three and six used the recommended pea-sized amount of toothpaste when they brushed, but 38 per cent used a half- or full-load of toothpaste, which is too much. 

Nearly 80 per cent of kids ages three to 15 began brushing their teeth at a later age than recommended. About 61 per cent brushed their teeth twice a day, while 34 per cent brushed only once daily. 

Researchers also found differences in brushing habits based on race and ethnicity, as well as the education and income levels of the parents. For instance, children who lived with a parent or caregiver with less than a high school education and Mexican-American children were most likely to have started brushing and using toothpaste after age three. 

The CDC and the American Academy of Paediatrics have begun to develop messages for pregnant women and new mothers about toothbrushing practices, the study team notes. 

“There is a huge opportunity for parents and caregivers to help prevent their children from developing early childhood cavities,” Thornton-Evans said. “As children get older, parents should supervise their children brushing and spitting out toothpaste until good brushing habits are formed.” 

Education programs should also help parents use behavioural shaping strategies to reinforce toothbrushing habits, said Brent Collett of the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, who was not involved in the study. 

“With toothbrushing, the main thing that parents may find difficult is the child refusal behaviour,” Collett said in a phone interview. “It’s hard when kids are throwing a tantrum.” 

Parents can start by asking their children to wet their toothbrush at the sink, he said, and then work up to squeezing out the right amount of toothpaste and then brushing teeth thoroughly. For the first few years, parents may need to brush their kids’ teeth for them and with them to ensure it’s done adequately. 

“Sometimes parents think their kids are brushing their teeth, but they’re just chewing on the toothbrush,” Collet said. “Parents may not realise they’re the ones who need to do this to get the teeth clean.” 

Kids with obstructive sleep apnoea may be at lower risk of accidents with oncoming vehicles during the day if they use positive airway pressure, or PAP, therapy at night, a new study suggests. 

Importantly, children must consistently stick to the PAP treatment plan for it to make a difference, the study authors report in the journal Sleep Health. 

“Sleep disorders have real-world consequences, even life-and-death consequences. Someone who is tired, whether a child or an adult, simply does not function the same way they do when they are rested,” said senior study author David Schwebel of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. 

Annually, more than 6,000 pedestrians in the US are killed and 190,000 are injured. A large number of those are children. Preventing paediatric pedestrian injury should be a priority, the study authors write. 

Obstructive sleep apnoea usually occurs when an individual’s airway collapses multiple times during sleep, interrupting breathing again and again during the night. It is estimated that between 1 per cent and 5 per cent of non-obese children and 25 per cent to 40 per cent of obese children have the condition, the authors note. 

PAP therapy requires patients to wear a mask that covers the nose and mouth during sleep. The mask is connected to a machine that continually blows air to keep the airway open. 

“When someone struggles with a sleep disorder, they can be chronically tired, and that can influence all sorts of real-world outcomes, including their risk for unintentional injury, or accidents,” Schwebel told Reuters Health by e-mail. 

The researchers studied 42 kids at Children’s of Alabama Paediatric Sleep Disorders Centre between ages eight and 16 who were diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome, or OSAS, through a sleep test. 

Before receiving PAP treatment, the kids played a virtual reality programme with a simulated street crossing. As the child’s avatar crossed the street, they’d hear messages such as, “Yes! Great job!” or “Whoa! That was close!” If struck by a car in the simulation, they’d hear, “Uh oh, you should try that again.” 

During the simulation, researchers measured how many collisions occurred, how many times the kids looked left and right at the traffic before crossing, and the time it took to make contact with a car, with a shorter time indicating a risky choice to step into the road. 

The children played the simulation again after three months of PAP therapy with machines that measured the hours of use each night. Kids were considered to be adhering to therapy if they used the device for four or more hours each night. 

The research team found that about half of the children adhered to the PAP therapy during the three months, and these kids had a significant reduction in hits by a virtual vehicle. When untreated, children were 12 times more likely than adherent kids to have a simulated hit, the study authors calculated. 

“PAP therapy is sometimes difficult. It can be uncomfortable and hard to follow,” Schwebel said. “But it will help with sleepiness, and it also will help with many other aspects of life, such as school, their social life and their mood.” 

Many sleep specialists first recommend surgery to most kids who are diagnosed with sleep apnoea, so PAP is discussed less frequently. However, for older children or overweight children, surgery may not be as effective, said Dean Beebe of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in Ohio, who was not involved with the study. 

“PAP treatment is more often used for adults, where surgery is not successful at all,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s hard to get PAP accepted by families and kids, but it could be useful.” 

Future studies should look at sleep apnoea and safety among teens who drive, he added, as well as kids who ride bikes to school. PAP therapy may help them to better concentrate on the road. 

“If your kid snores loudly most nights, it’s time to bring that up with your doctor,” he said. “Snoring every so often isn’t a big deal, but if it’s most nights, that’s not healthy or cute and is our most visible marker for whether there might be breathing problems during sleep.” 

WASHINGTON — Women tend to outlive men and stay mentally sharp longer, and a new study out Monday could explain why: female brains appear on average about three years younger.

The study enrolled 121 women and 84 men, who underwent PET scans to measure brain metabolism, or the flow of oxygen and glucose in their brains.

Like other organs in the body, the brain uses sugar as fuel. But just how it metabolises glucose can reveal a lot about the brain’s metabolic age.

Subjects ranged from their 20s to 80s, and across those age spans, women’s brains appeared metabolically younger than men’s, said the findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed US journal.

A machine-learned algorithm showed that women’s brains were on average about 3.8 years younger than their chronological ages.

And when compared to men, male brains were about were 2.4 years older than their true ages.

“It’s not that men’s brains age faster,” said senior author Manu Goyal, assistant professor of radiology at Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis.

“They start adulthood about three years older than women, and that persists throughout life,” said Goyal.

But why?

One theory is that hormones might begin shaping brain metabolism at a young age, setting females on a pattern that is more youthful throughout their lives, compared to men.

Scientists hope to find out if metabolic differences in the brain may play a protective role for women, who tend to score better than men on cognitive tests of reason, memory and problem solving in old age.

It “could mean that the reason women don’t experience as much cognitive decline in later years is because their brains are effectively younger,” said Goyal.

More work is underway to confirm and better understand the implications of the research. 

Of all the communication channels available and based on the Internet, WhatsApp remains a unique case. It is not about figures; this part is clear and easy. It started in 2009 and was then sold to Facebook in 2014. Statistics dating to January 2018 put the users’ base at 1.5 billion and the average number of messages exchanged daily at 60 billion.

The mystery is not in the above numbers but in the fact that at this date nobody knows how WhatsApp makes money. Surely, there must be an explanation. After all Facebook did pay 19 billion US dollars to get it.

Of course, there were a few unfounded theories about it, and the famous application had its share of fake news and false rumours. It was said at some point that using WhatsApp would be free for the first year or so, and then users would be asked to pay one dollar of subscription fees per year.

Some also assumed that users would only believe that they were using the app free of charge, but that in fact their mobile phone service operator would be charging them a fixed fee for that, indirectly, in the monthly invoice or charge, and that the name “WhatsApp” was never to be mentioned next to that charge! The plot thickens…

Nothing of that was true or happened.

Apart from WhatsApp there is not a single application on mobile phones or on the Internet that is totally free. They all come with some kind of string attached, least of which is advertising. Even Facebook, the owner of WhatsApp relies on advertising to get money. Online newspapers (well, cross out the word “papers” in it), games, crosswords, YouTube videos, and the countless sites out there, they all make money either through advertising or by charging you directly, frankly. All, except for WhatsApp.

Those who, like myself, have installed an ad blocker on their web browser, often see this pop-up screen when they visit some web sites: “We use advertising to generate income, by blocking advertising you deprive us from this revenue. Thank you for disabling your ad blocker and unblocking advertising” (the exact wording may be slightly different from site to site).

There are a few theories behind WhatsApp makers “hidden intentions”. One of them, perhaps the main one, believes that the app owners are interested in your messages (and photos, videos, voice messages) contents and reprocess them for data mining or for intelligence of some sort. This could be done anonymously, without attaching your name and identity to the contents, or namely.

If true, this would be in blatant contradiction with WhatsApp declaration that your messages are encrypted from end to end, that they are not stored on any server as such, and that only you and your intended correspondent at the other end can actually read or see the decrypted contents. 

A recent discussion took recently place in Amman between renowned IT experts. The meeting was not about WhatsApp in particular, but the subject happened to be mentioned and discussed over that meeting. All agreed that nobody knew for sure how the owners of the application made money. Some suggested that since WhatsApp and Facebook were owned by the same company, perhaps Facebook was benefitting indirectly from information extracted anonymously from WhatsApp messages contents, leaving the application perfectly transparent, and apparently free.

Whatever the mystery, whatever the explanation, WhatsApp remains a near-perfect messaging application used by virtually all active persons on this planet. It has even stolen a significant part from the traditional email system, and has become the prime way of quickly, efficiently and pleasantly communicating over the global network.

SAN FRANCISCO — The smartphone market is down but not out, with high prices and other factors combining to chill what had previously been a red-hot sector.

Fresh surveys show global sales had their worst contraction ever in 2018, and the outlook for 2019 is not much better.

Still, analysts do not see the sun setting any time soon on the smartphone era, seen as a must-have device for many people around the world.

“They don’t have a viable replacement yet,” independent Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle said of the smartphone.

“There is always the possibility to go to wearables or head-mounted displays, but none of those have emerged as a real threat.”

Worldwide handset volumes declined 4.1 per cent in 2018 to a total of 1.4 billion units shipped for the full year, according to research firm IDC, which sees a potential for further declines this year

Another market tracker, Gartner, said its research suggested some stabilisation in the smartphone market at the end of last year, said analyst Werner Goertz.

“Mobile phones are here to stay,” Goertz said, while suggesting that consumers may be waiting for some devices with new features.

“Foldable phones would represent a really nice disruptive feature,” he said.

Analysts pointed out that other tech products such as personal computers have seen similar ebbs and flows.

“Markets will always have slow moments when companies have to spend more on marketing money to get people to go out and buy stuff,” Enderle said.

He added that some consumers are holding off on replacing their devices amid price hikes for premium devices like Apple’s iPhone.

Food or phone?

During a recent earnings call, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook agreed that people were holding onto their iPhones longer.

Cook contended that another reason for slower iPhone sales was that telecom carriers were cutting subsidies of handsets tied to service contracts, meaning customers were faced with paying full price of $1,000 or more for high-end models.

“People don’t want to spend another thousand bucks to replace something that isn’t broken,” analyst Enderle maintained.

“In emerging markets you can’t get people to pay a quarter of their monthly income for a phone; they are not giving up food for texting.”

In an unusual move, Apple lowered prices in some emerging markets to offset the effects of a strong US dollar on local pocketbooks.

Cook said that in January, in some locations and for some products, Apple “absorbed part of the foreign currency move” to “get close or perhaps right on” prices in those respective markets a year ago.

“So yes, I do think that price is a factor,” Cook said.

Market mess

Nonetheless, the latest data suggests the days of red-hot smartphone growth are over and that sluggish growth or contraction is likely in many saturated markets.

Apple recently reported a rare drop in revenue in the fourth quarter. South Korea’s Samsung, the largest smartphone maker, reported a slump in fourth-quarter net profits, blaming a drop in demand for its key products.

“Globally the smartphone market is a mess right now,” said IDC analyst Ryan Reith.

“Outside of a handful of high-growth markets like India, Indonesia, [South] Korea and Vietnam, we did not see a lot of positive activity in 2018.”

Reith noted that along with consumers waiting longer to replace their phones and frustration around the high cost of premium devices, there was political and economic uncertainty.

The Chinese market, which accounts for roughly 30 per cent of smartphone sales, was especially hard hit with a 10 per cent drop, according to IDC’s survey.

However, Chinese smartphone makers such as Huawei, Oppo and Xiaomi defied the trend and ended the year with gains, according to Counterpoint Research.

This year, smartphone makers will likely entice customers to upgrade devices with innovations such as superfast 5G network connectivity and foldable screens, according to Counterpoint associate director Tarun Pathak.

Leading smartphone maker Samsung is expected to show off a smartphone with a foldable screen at an event in February.

People who sleep less than six hours a night may be more likely to develop cardiovascular disease than those who sleep seven to eight hours, a Spanish study suggests. 

In the study, 3,974 bank workers wore activity trackers to measure sleep for one week and also had 3D heart ultrasounds and cardiac CT scans to look for heart disease. 

Researchers found that compared to people who got seven to eight hours of sleep, those who slept less than six hours a night were 27 per cent more likely to have “preclinical” atherosclerosis: structural changes and thickening in the artery walls that is not yet serious enough to cause complications. 

Previous research has linked lack of sleep to traditional risk factors for heart disease like high blood sugar, high blood pressure, inflammation and obesity. 

“Sleep, together with diet and physical activity, [is] one of the healthy habits that we need to adopt and maintain to keep our cardiovascular system healthy,” said senior study author Jose Ordovas, a researcher at the CNIC in Madrid and director of nutrition and genomics at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Centre on Aging at Tufts University, Boston. 

“Our results support the traditional belief that we should have about eight hours of good sleep per day,” Ordovas said by e-mail. “For those that for one reason or another cannot avoid poor sleep, the recommendation should be to be more proactive about controlling other lifestyle risk factors such as diet and exercise.” 

Hardening of the arteries can develop gradually over several decades before it causes problems. People can live for years with preclinical abnormalities before they develop full-blown atherosclerosis, marked by a buildup of plaque on artery walls that restricts blood flow and can lead to heart attacks and strokes. 

While very few participants — just 160 people — slept more than eight hours a night, the study also found that these long sleepers had increased heart risk. Women who slept more than eight hours were almost twice as likely to have preclinical plaque buildup in their arteries than women who got seven to eight hours of sleep a night. 

Men also had a slightly higher risk of plaque buildup with too much sleep, but the difference was too small to rule out the possibility that it was due to chance. 

“It is important to emphasise that more is not always better, as oversleeping can increase cardiovascular risk,” Ordovas said. 

Study participants were 46 years old on average and none had a history of heart disease. They tended to be slightly overweight but also to get about 45 minutes a day of moderate to vigorous physical activity. 

The people who got less sleep tended to be older, weigh more and have higher cholesterol levels and blood pressure than individuals who got more rest, researchers report in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. 

The study team assessed participants’ 10-year and 30-year risk of a serious cardiac event like a heart attack or stroke using the Framingham risk score calculator. 

Overall, participants had a 5.9 per cent risk of a heart attack or stroke in the next 10 years and a 17.7 per cent 30-year risk. 

With less than six hours of sleep, however, the 10-year risk rose to 6.9 per cent and the 30-year risk increased to 20.9 per cent. 

The study was not a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how the quality or quantity of sleep might directly influence hardening of the arteries or cause heart attacks or strokes. 

Still, the results highlight the importance of getting enough rest, said the co-author of an accompanying editorial, Dr Daniel Gottlieb, director of the sleep disorders centre at the VA Boston Healthcare System. 

“One key to getting adequate sleep is making sleep a priority — by turning off the TV, computer, tablet and phone at a reasonable hour, keeping a regular sleep schedule, making time to relax before bed, and avoiding caffeine late in the day,” Gottlieb said by e-mail. “Exercise and good diet can also help to improve sleep quality.” 

Children who are spanked, slapped, shoved or otherwise physically punished may be more prone to antisocial behaviour as adults, a US study suggests. 

Four in five children in the US have been spanked at least once by the time they reach kindergarten, researchers note in JAMA Network Open. While spanking and other forms of harsh physical punishment have long been linked to mental health problems in kids, less is known about how these childhood experiences influence adult behaviour.

For the current study, researchers examined survey data from 36,309 adults who were 47 years old, on average. Participants were asked about childhood punishments like pushing, grabbing, shoving, slapping and hitting as well as any maltreatment like sexual violence and emotional or physical abuse or neglect.

Overall, 18 per cent of participants had experienced some type of harsh physical punishment growing up and 48 per cent endured some form of maltreatment. 

Spanking on its own, and abuse on its own, were both associated with a higher risk of antisocial behaviour in adulthood, the analysis found. And kids who experienced both harsh physical punishment and some form of abuse or neglect were even more likely to develop antisocial behaviours as adults than children who only encountered only one type of mistreatment. 

Combined, these childhood experiences might explain about 46 per cent of antisocial behaviour among men and about 47 per cent of antisocial behaviour among women, the study concludes. 

“Decades of data have indicated that spanking and harsh physical punishment increases the likelihood of many poor health, developmental and social outcomes for children and, importantly, no studies have ever shown that spanking is beneficial to the child,” said study leader Tracie Afifi of the University of Manitoba in Canada. 

 “We need to stop thinking of parenting in terms of punishments and move towards positive parenting approaches to guide children,” Afifi said by e-mail. “This doesn’t mean that there are no consequences for problematic, unsafe or dangerous child behaviour, but rather that we guide and teach children in safe and nurturing environments using non-physical discipline.” 

The study focused on a broad range of antisocial behaviours including breaking the law, lying, impulsivity, aggression, recklessness, an inability to hold down a job or pay bills, and a lack of remorse for having mistreated, hurt or stolen from another person. 

While spanking may not always lead to lasting mental health problems or antisocial behaviour in adulthood, there is no compelling reason for parents to use harsh physical punishment when there are less harmful and more effective ways to discipline kids, said Andrew Riley, a psychologist at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital and Oregon Health & Science University in Portland who was not involved in the study. 

Children who experience physical punishment may have a harder time controlling violent impulses and may learn that violence is the only way to solve conflicts, Riley said by e-mail. 

“Children learn by example, and parents are their most important models,” Riley added. “Learning it’s okay to hurt the ones you love — or that they will hurt you — is not a lesson we want taught to our children.” 

Another problem is that parents do not always realise how hard they are striking children when they choose spanking or other forms of physical punishment, said Dr Frank Elgar, a psychiatry researcher at McGill University in Montreal, who was not involved in the study. 

“Parents have poor control over the amount of force used and tend to use more force than was intended,” Elgar said by email. “The slap usually comes out of frustration and anger, not the desire to teach, and because it’s ineffective in correcting a child’s behaviour, the violence tends to escalate and become used indiscriminately.” 

BEIJING — Roasted as a subversive symbol and chopped from a video streaming website in China, it seemed Peppa Pig, the loveable but imperious British cartoon character, faced a bleak future in the Communist-led country.

But her popularity has risen unabated, and now just months after state media slammed her as an emblem of the counterculture, she is playing a starring role as the country ushers in the Year of the Pig on Tuesday.

A new film titled “Peppa Pig Celebrates Chinese New Year” is being released on the first day of the holiday.

The movie shows Peppa celebrating Lunar New Year with two new friends — “Jiaozi” (dumpling) and “Tang yuan” (glutinous rice ball) — named after popular local delicacies.

The animation, which follows the daily adventures of a bright pink piglet, her brother George and her parents, is hugely popular with Chinese children.

Last year, five-year-old twins Mi Ai and Mi Ni made a video asking to meet Queen Elizabeth II after seeing their porcine heroine visit the monarch in an episode.

The clip garnered more than 9 million views and made such an impact that the pair were invited for tea by the British ambassador to Beijing, and promised a tour of Buckingham Palace.

“It is really fun and the language is easy to understand”, their mother, Bella Zhang, said of the girls’ obsession with the show.

She added that the series was popular with Chinese parents because it teaches “the importance of love and cooperation”.

The cartoon’s focus on family values has resonated with Chinese parents who strictly monitor their children’s TV time, agreed Li Xin as she bought a Peppa toy for her four-year-old at a Beijing store.

Billions of views

Peppa Pig first broadcast in China in 2015 but last May some 30,000 clips of the cartoon were removed from a popular video streaming site, following criticism from state media.

Papers affiliated to the Communist Party wrote harsh columns about Peppa Pig being hijacked by gangsters and subversives to create videos that reject mainstream values.

Memes featuring the beloved children’s character had also started to take on dark undertones at the time, occasionally veering into violent or pornographic territory.

“No matter how gangster Peppa Pig becomes, it cannot be allowed to destroy children’s youth [or] break rules,” The People’s Daily said in an editorial last April.

The shows have been watched around 60 billion times on the country’s largest video streaming sites, including Tencent Video and iQiyi, since it first launched in China, said Jamie MacEwan from British TV analysts Enders.

“This figure is up from 24.5 billion by May 2017, showing how China’s appetite for Peppa has only increased,” MacEwan told AFP.

Who is Peppa?

Now Entertainment One — the Canadian media company that currently produces the series — is banking on her popularity translating to the big screen. 

A trailer for the movie, directed by Chinese film-maker Zhang Dapeng, has gone viral with the hashtag “Who is Peppa” being viewed more than 1.6 billion times on China’s Twitter-like Weibo, a spokeswoman for Alibaba Pictures Group told AFP. 

The promotional clip shows a rural villager’s quest to find out what his city-dwelling grandson wants when he asks for “Pei Qi” — Mandarin for Peppa Pig — in a bid to create the perfect Chinese New Year gift in time for the boy’s annual visit.

The trailer struck a chord with Chinese audiences because it “showcases the same values highlighted in the movie — family, reunion, harmony and love”, Zhang wrote on Weibo.

The film has already earned 12 million yuan ($1.8 million) in presale tickets.

In a country where the pig is a symbol of wealth, Peppa merchandise is in high demand. There are even themed attractions — Peppa Pig World of Play opened in Shanghai in 2018 with another set to open in Beijing this year.

But the success of the Peppa brand has also brought headaches for the cartoon’s creators. Copycat merchandise — from cookies to pencil cases — can be easily found in corner stores in Chinese cities. 

A spokesman for Entertainment One told AFP that in the last year more than half a million fake Peppa Pig items were seized and tens of thousands of online sale posts taken down.

He added: “In China, Entertainment One has a dedicated team working on this ongoing issue and have already successfully dealt with many infringements.”

With emphasis on high-end materials, refined, comfort and new technology, the latest Lincoln Navigator is a crucial part of redoubled effort by Lincoln to recapture the luxury and glamour it enjoyed in its 1960s heyday. Launched for 2018 and sporting a new design language similar to the brand’s Continental flagship saloon and powered by Lincoln’s most powerful engine yet, the Navigator competes in the full-size premium SUV segment against its traditional Cadillac Escalade rival, and others including the Infiniti QX80, Lexus LX570 and Mercedes-Benz GLS-Class.

Imposing impression

As imposing as ever with its hulking size, height, prominent chrome detailing and big grille, the new Navigator is, however — and like its Ford Expedition sister — somewhat of a design departure from its predecessor. Ditching the previous model’s low waistline, airy big glasshouse and high roofline, the Navigator now adopts a more contemporarily hunkered down look with high waistline and slightly descending waistline for a smaller glasshouse and slightly reduced visibility. This, however, is well compensated for by parking sensors, cameras and blind spot warning system.

A new model rather than update, the Navigator now incorporates more prominently ridged side character lines and better integrated full length rear lights. In front, it features a high and long bonnet, and new fascia with wide deep-set mesh grille and LED headlights in place of the outgoing model’s split grille design. Sharing new aluminium body construction with the Expedition, the Navigator sheds 90kg over its predecessor, which yields fuel efficiency, performance and handling ability dividends. Meanwhile, steel remains in use for its rigid chassis frame.

Quick cruiser

Tuned to produce an additional 50BHP over its less luxurious Expedition sister, the Navigator’s twin turbocharged direct injection V6 engine may not carry the Ecoboost name as it does over at Ford, but nevertheless makes this the most powerful Lincoln ever. Developing 450BHP at 5,500rpm and an immensely capable well of torque peaking at 510lb/ft available at just 3,000rpm, the Navigator is undoubtedly swift, with quick-spooling turbos with short gas flow paths ensuring eager off the line responses and scant little by way of turbo lag.

Deceptively quick, the Navigator is estimated to propel its substantial 2,655kg heft through the 0-100km/h benchmark in under 6 seconds. With good low-end response, flexibly versatile mid-range and punchy top-end, the Navigator is confident at speed and when overtaking, while its seamlessly smooth 10-speed automatic gearbox offers a broad range of ratios for performance, versatility, efficiency and refinement. However, its high level of refinement and sound insulation dull the sensation of speed, and initially one can easily and unintentionally creep above a desired cruising speed.

Cocooning comfort

Riding on a body-on-chassis platform mated with all-independent front double wishbone and rear multilink suspension like its Ford cousin, the Lincoln Navigator drives with a similarly settled and reassuring confidence. However, the Navigator is noticeably more refined in how it isolates one from sound, vibration and harshness, and rides with a cosseting and cocoon-like level of luxurious serenity. Available with adaptive suspension, the Navigator seemed to well-absorb and smooth out road imperfections, despite its vast optional 22-inch alloy wheels and somewhat low profile 285/45R22 tyres.

Only 105kg heavier than the equally large Expedition, the Navigator’s extensive insulation makes it feel bigger and heavier. An excellent long distance cruiser with light steering and comfortable suspension it may not be “sporty”, but pushed hard through corners it feels balanced, even with some body roll. More powerful, it is also easier to initiate a slight rear slide if feeding in too much power through a corner, but its four-wheel-drive and stability controls are quick to redistribute power and regain traction.

Practical and premium

Stepping in through big wide-swinging doors over automatically folding side running boards, one sits high and towering above most other vehicles with a commanding driving position. Designed with driver and passenger comfort utmost in mind, the Navigator is offered with three highly adjustable seat options, including 30-way adjustable Perfect Position front seats, which includes separate upper and lower back adjustability to allow a finely-tuned driving position. Cavernous inside with between 546- to 2,925-litre cargo capacity, the Navigator can be optioned as a seven- or eight-seater.

A practical premium vehicle that is extensively well-equipped with convenience, safety, driver assistance and infotainment systems including optional rear entertainment system, six USB ports, 10-device wifi, 20-speakers and more, the Navigator is luxurious in character and features quality leathers, woods and textures. Driven with the nautically-themed Yacht Club trim level and twin mid-row captain’s seats, the Navigator features light blue leather upholstery and whitewashed teak trim for an airy ambiance and distinctly retro character, while third row seats and access are designed to accommodate adults.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 3.5-litre, all-aluminium, twin-turbocharged, in-line V6-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 92.5 x 86.7mm

Compression ratio: 10:1

Valve-train: 24-valve, DOHC, variable valve timing, direct injection

Gearbox: 10-speed automatic, four-wheel-drive

Ratios: 1st 4.696; 2nd 2.985; 3rd 2.146; 4th 1.769; 5th 1.52; 6th 1.275; 7th 1.0; 8th 0.854; 9th 0.689; 10th 0.636

Reverse/final drive: 4.87/3.73

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 450 (456) [335] @5,500rpm

Specific power: 128.7BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 169.5BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 510 (691) @3,000rpm

Specific torque: 197.6Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 260.2Nm/tonne

0-100km/h: under 6-seconds (estimate)

Length: 5,334mm

Width, including mirrors: 2,382mm

Height: 1,938mm

Wheelbase: 3,111.5mm

Track, F/R: 1,717/1,706mm 

Overhang, F/R; 970/1,252mm

Headroom, F/M/R: 1,061/1,016/947mm

Legroom, F/M/R: 1,115/1,044/1,074mm

Shoulder room, F/M/R: 1,656/1,653/1,630mm

Hip room, F/M/R: 1,572/1,564/1,305mm

Luggage volume, behind 1st/2nd/3rd row: 2,925-/
1,628-/546-litres

Seating: 7/8

Fuel capacity: 89-litres

Kerb weight: 2,655kg

Towing capacity: 3,764kg

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Turning circle: 12.43-metres

Suspension, F/R: Double wishbones/multilink, anti-roll bars, optional adaptive dampers

Brakes: 350mm ventilated discs

Tyres: 285/45R22

Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo

Seth Anziska

Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018

Pp.435

In the spring of 1979, US President Jimmy Carter was concerned “that Israel’s concept of Palestinian autonomy provided a cover for burgeoning settlement expansion in the occupied territories”. (p. 131)

If this sounds familiar, it is only one of many parallels drawn in this book between past and present “peace processes”. 

While much of what is written today about the failure to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the Palestinians’ continued statelessness traces the problem back to the Oslo accords, “Preventing Palestine” reverts to the 70s, specifically the Camp David accords. These resulted in the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty in 1979, but deferred the Palestinian issue to subsequent talks on autonomy. “These autonomy talks sidestepped the PLO and served to prevent a territorial resolution of Palestinian national aspirations, solidifying a condition of statelessness and deliberately undermining sovereignty claims.” (p. 12)

The “ingenuity [of Begin’s autonomy scheme] was to sustain the fiction of serious movement on the Palestinian front”. (p. 13)

“Though often ignored or dismissed as insignificant in accounts of this period, the autonomy discussions became the basis of limited self-rule and, eventually, the emergence of the Palestinian National Authority after the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993.” (p. 3)

Most Palestinians and their supporters, plus the man on the street in the Arab world, would probably agree with Seth Anziska’s central thesis that regardless of intentions, Carter and Egyptian President Sadat caved in to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s autonomy scheme which was intended to apply to the people but not the land, and that this has coloured all subsequent negotiations. After all, the Palestinians were not even represented in these talks. 

Yet, the trajectory described in this book may contain some uncomfortable surprises for the Western, and specifically the American, public, especially for those who still regard US foreign policy as a force for good in the world. According to the author, “the US role in the autonomy talks — and the very substance of the negotiations themselves — actively undermined the prospects of a solution to the Palestinian question…”  (p. 13)

Anziska, a lecturer at University College London, does not think it had to be that way. “At multiple junctures, horizons had opened for possible Palestinian self-determination, and may very well still exist.” (p. 15)

But as stated in the subtitle, this is a history book, and Anziska does not engage in polemics but rather gives detailed accounts of discussions and negotiations and relevant events outside the halls of power, such as the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Besides tracing the positions and inclinations of shifting Israeli governments and the administrations of five US presidents, he places these events in the context of changing international realities, from decolonisation, the Cold War and its end, to the rise of the right in Israel and the neocons in the US.

It was Anziska’s background that headed him in the direction of writing this book. As he explains in the preface, he grew up in the Modern Orthodox American Jewish community in New York, with a strong attachment to Zionism. He visited Israel numerous times, culminating in a year of study at a yeshiva in 2001, at the height of the second Palestinian Intifada. “Something did not sit right with me on those frequent journeys. The growing knowledge that my ease of access to travel around the West Bank and Israel as an American Jew came at the expense of local Palestinian inhabitants made me uncomfortable… It was strange to inhabit space so close together and yet have no real interaction with these neighbours.” (p. xiv)

The questions raised in his mind later propelled him to visit Palestinian towns in the West Bank as well as Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, and to do extensive research in Jerusalem, London and Washington. At the same time, Israel released previously classified documents considered pivotal for new, original research.

With a few notable exceptions, such as employing the term terrorism to describe Palestinian actions but not Israeli state or settler violence, Anziska maintains a historian’s objectivity. He is obviously very uncomfortable with the on going Israeli occupation, but he does not reveal whether his research has changed his attachment to Zionism. He does, however, quote a British Foreign Office official as saying that Begin “rejects the whole concept of a Palestinian people precisely because the existence of such people would, if acknowledged, call into question some of the moral ground for Zionism”. (p. 139)

What, then, about other Israeli leaders who acknowledge that the Palestinians exist but whose policies have also served to prevent Palestine.