Features

The various weather departments that predict daily climatic conditions in Jordan are having a bit of a row. I got to know of this even before I boarded my flight back to Amman, from my home country India. If AccuWeather said one thing, ArabiaWeather stated quite another. And to make matters more confusing, the Jordan Meteorological Department came up with its own findings.

Extreme weather conditions were forecast for a particular day last week, where a very cold polar front was supposed to bring heavy rain, strong winds, sub zero temperatures and snowfall with a possibility of flood formation. But the very next day, it was announced that the magnitude of the cold polar front would be weaker than what was announced earlier.

“The changing weather charts indicated that the impact of the combined weather conditions was less because the strength, timing and the expected accumulation of snow had changed,” explained a prominent meteorologist. “On the other hand, a new weather system could prevail that might bring more rain and snow to the country,” he concluded. 

Right! With each of these yo-yo conjectures, my stress levels shot up and hovered on a constant panic mode. It’s a good thing that my blood pressure stays on the lower side; otherwise I would be popping some very strong pills, I tell you. The reason why I had the weather-in-Amman window constantly open on my iPhone was because I had closed my house up for nearly four weeks while I visited India this winter. But as the time approached for me to get back to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, I went on Google to check if everything was peaceful in my neighbourhood. It was then that I encountered all the contradictory versions of the weather predictions that appeared on the websites regularly.

I began to follow the trail of snow very closely. The last time it snowed in Amman, it had accumulated in large heaps on my doorstep and I could not get in or out of my house at all. But I loved being snowed-in. Staring mesmerised at the snow, as it fell in soft cotton-like tufts, was a full-time activity for me. But this instance was different. I had to reopen my locked-up home and I was not looking forward to being snowed-out. 

The contents of my cabin baggage also changed daily, according to what the weather forecaster said. So, one day I packed my earmuffs, woolen gloves and thick muffler, not knowing how long I would be stranded, shovelling the snow outside my front gate. The next day I removed all of them, hoping my entry into the house would be a smooth one, with no unexpected obstructions in my path. 

Upon my landing at the Queen Alia International Airport, dark skies greeted me on arrival. The heavy rain soaked through the luggage and I had to put dripping suitcases into the boot of the car. As I drove into the city, the raindrops became bigger but there was no hint of the expected storm, dubbed Nimeh (meaning blessing in Arabic) as yet. 

My husband pulled a long face at the exaggerated forecasts that had got his hopes up for a day off from work. 

“What is wrong with Nimeh?” he asked. 

“AccuWeather hired him,” I joked. 

“Not funny,” he grumbled fastening his tie. 

“Are you going to office?” I questioned. 

“First stop, ArabiaWeather,” he said. 

“Why?” I probed. 

“This weather rivalry needs fixing,” he declared.

LOS ANGELES — Andy Puddicombe, a trained Buddhist monk, wants to spread health and happiness by teaching our technology-addled minds to slow down and live in the moment.

Naturally, he’s doing it through an app.

In just a few short minutes a day, users can listen to meditation guides for topics as varied as anxiety and relationships narrated by Puddicombe in his soothing British voice.

“This exercise isn’t about getting rid of thoughts, it’s more about learning how to be at ease with them,” he says reassuringly in one of the ten-minute recordings.

Animations, videos and articles round out the experience — all in the pursuit of mindfulness, an increasingly fashionable discipline buoyed by technology that’s weaved its way through corporate America, Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

Headspace is now one of the most buzzed-about start-ups in where else but Los Angeles’ Venice, a neighbourhood that evokes equal parts New Age hippie and Tesla-driving techie.

The company with the bite-sized path to enlightenment raised $30 million in September through the Chernin Group, a Los Angeles entertainment and media-focused investment firm.

Headspace also counts celebrities Jessica Alba, Jared Leto and Ryan Seacrest among its investors, not to mention Gwyneth Paltrow, Emma Watson and Zach Braff among its fans.

Part of the appeal is Headspace’s everyman accessibility. Puddicombe takes the chanting, incense and robes out of meditation. He and his business partner — fellow Brit and fellow surfer Rich Pierson — like to stress they’re just regular “blokes”.

Meditation is for anyone, they say, and subscribing to Headspace should be no different than buying a gym membership for the mind.

“We go to the gym to be more active in life in just the same way we meditate; so we can be more mindful and more present and enjoy our life a little bit more,” said Puddicombe, 43, who is bald, athletically built and wouldn’t look out of place clad in a tracksuit coaching a pro football club.

Downloads of the app have quadrupled in the last 12 months to 5 million, though the company declined to say how many of those include paying subscribers with full access to the programme.

Puddicombe has made the TED Talks circuit and appeared on CBS’ “This Morning” with Charlie Rose. His company was the subject of a 5,000-word profile in the New Yorker.

Virgin Atlantic offers Headspace in its in-flight entertainment. And employees at Google and LinkedIn have access to a company-wide subscription.

“They’ve said it’s pop meditation,” Pierson said. “But if people actually use the product and they get into the content, they really understand how authentic it is.”

Headspace has resonated at a time when technology has leaped onto the mind health bandwagon — bolstered by the growing, but still small, body of science showing the benefits of meditation.

In addition to Headspace, there are meditation apps such as Buddhify, Omvana, Smiling Mind and Dharma Seed.

One app, Insight Timer, offers guided meditations and recorded bell chimes.

“It goes off every 25 minutes to remind us to change our chant,” said Guru Jagat, who heads the Ra Ma Institute for Applied Yogic Science and Technology in Venice.

The closely followed yoga teacher with celebrity students posts some of her sessions on YouTube and is developing a meditation app of her own.

“This is the future, of course,” said Jagat, 36, who has led meditations on cellphone addiction. “With these apps, you can lead a modern lifestyle and have fun and also be deeply spiritual, compassionate and calm. You don’t need to be in a cave in the Himalayas.”

Mindfulness apps like Headspace give people an edge, Jagat said, not only in their personal lives, but in hypercompetitive workplaces too.

“I definitely have Silicon Valley types around and everyone is using Headspace to meditate,” she said. “‘Mindful meditation’ is the buzzword and rage now that everyone is getting that Adderall can only get you so far. We all need more energy. We all need more focus.”

Melissa Sherman has used Headspace since August precisely to help her on the job. All it takes is listening to a few minutes with the earbuds on her train commute.

“In some ways, it’s helped me become more aware in a stressful situation,” said Sherman, 43, a user experience architect at Pebble Tech. “It allows me to hunker down and focus through it.”

Cynthia MacKay, executive director of the Shambhala Meditation Centre of Los Angeles, has been meditating for 26 years and has never seen the practice more trendy than it is today.

“Now everyone fancies his/herself a ‘meditator’ after listening to a four-minute guided meditation app where someone talks in your ears the whole time,” she said in an e-mail. “It seems the lineage has gone missing, the same way it did when yoga went for-profit. Is it still good? I think so.”

MacKay reasons it’s good because nothing is more effective reaching a wider audience than an app. She noticed it while teaching classes at Cliffside Malibu, the drug rehabilitation centre for the well-to-do. Meditation apps were ensconced in many young people’s devices.

“The more ways there are to positively affect the mind, the better,” said MacKay, 49.

The longtime practitioner has even done her part for the digital meditation age. MacKay recently recorded guided meditations for “Your Daily Zen”, a show aimed at millennial women and moms on the digital network Awestruck.

Attitudes towards meditation weren’t nearly as welcoming when Puddicombe and Pierson launched Headspace in London in 2010.

“People thought we were completely bonkers when we first started doing this,” said Pierson, 35, who quit a career in advertising selling products like Axe deodorant and turned to meditation to address his severe anxiety.

“Back then we were like pariahs at parties,” he continued. “People would just back away. I still think there’s a bit of that weirdness going on.”

Puddicombe had come to meditation by way of early trauma in his life. At university, he witnessed friends die after being run over by a car. His stepsister died shortly afterward in a separate bicycle accident.

Deeply troubled, he decided to give up everything and train to become a monk. He spent 10 years studying Buddhism and meditation, partly in monasteries in India, Burma and Nepal.

When he returned to England, he found work at a clinic teaching meditation to ordinary professionals, many of whom had never considered the practice before.

He started prescribing hour-long meditations but found it was too much of a commitment. He reduced it to 30 minutes, but still patients found it too long.

“Eventually we tried 10 minutes and it made a difference,” Puddicombe said. “People’s lives are so frenetic, even just taking a short period of time out seems to have a really significant impact.”

After Pierson and Puddicombe were introduced by a mutual friend, the pair began hosting meditation events for hundreds in central London. Though well attended, the work was exhausting and difficult to scale up.

After some resistance, Puddicombe agreed to Pierson’s idea of starting an app, which he envisioned as like a Nike+ fitness tracker for meditation.

After a big marketing push in a British newspaper, Headspace earned a word-of-mouth following that was helped exponentially with each celebrity adherent. The company later shifted its headquarters to Venice.

Headspace is entering its next big phase, which coincides with its move 15 minutes away into a refurbished 1,860sq.m. warehouse this year.

On a recent weekday, Pierson was working in a Headspace office surrounded by whiteboard walls marked at the top with the heading “The Most Comprehensive Guide to Health and Happiness.”

Underneath was a roadmap for expansion to help more than double the company’s user base to 12 million in the next year. Headspace will offer dozens more meditations and expert talks on things like overeating, break-ups and fear of death. They’re also developing a category for kids. Children as young as four are using Headspace.

The company is also expanding its offerings of animations, videos and shorter recordings lasting no more than a couple minutes. Ten minutes, it turns out, was still too long for many subscribers.

Until they developed the app, Puddicombe said he could never fathom reaching 5 million people.

“Not a chance,” he said, “never mind tens of millions we hope to reach. Without this, we simply wouldn’t be able to do what we do.

“I hope that over time that we will, as a society, move away from the idea that you have to do this thing for a long period of time, or wear certain clothes or talk in a certain way to benefit from this,” Puddicombe continued. “You don’t. You just have to sit down and close your eyes.”

Elegant and indulgent but practical and efficient, the Mercedes-Benz E250 Cabriolet is as much at home on the school run as on the open road or five-star hotel forecourt. A grand touring large four-seat soft-top convertible with glamorous design, the E250 Cabriolet is, however, shares most structural underpinnings, mechanicals and other components with Mercedes’ popular E- and C-Class saloons.

First launched in 2009, the E250 Cabriolet was face-lifted in 2013, when it gained more flowing single unit headlights in line with Mercedes contemporary corporate face, and in place of its previous quad lamp arrangement. Along with a more assertive updated bumpers treatment, the E250 also gained a slightly larger, more powerful but more efficient engine.

Refined soft top

Swept back and elegant with a defined presence, the E250 Cabriolet’s sculpted body surfacing, however, retains the pre-facelift bulge around the rear wheel arches and haunches, rather than the revised E-Class Saloon’s sharp, rising flank ridge. Emphasising its more aggressive side, the Cabriolet was driven in dark — almost black — grey with contrasting red soft top, 19-inch alloy wheels and optional AMG Plus sport package.

Built with rigid passenger cell and extensive additional bracing and strengthening to compensate for the absence of a fixed-head roof, the Cabriolet gains 150kg over its Coupe sister, despite lightweight aluminium bonnet, doors and bootlid. With a clean flush waistline with its roof down, the cabriolet features automatic pop-up rollover bars housed behind the rear head rests.

Much lighter and less bulky and complicated than a folding metal roof for such a large convertible, the E250 Cabriolet’s quick folding soft top is well insulated for acoustic refinement and is robust enough for automatic car washes. Electric powered and with remote activation, the E250’s soft top can conveniently be operated at up to 40km/h.

Flexible and frugal

Powered by a larger more efficient direct injection 2-litre four-cylinder turbocharged engine — in place of 1.8 litres — the E250 develops an additional 4BHP and 29lb/ft torque, for a total of 208BHP at an unchanged 5500rpm and 258lb/ft at a lower and broader 1200-4000rpm range rather than 2000-4000rpm. Combined fuel consumption is also significantly reduced from 7.9l/100km to 6.2l/100km.

With sophisticated third generation direct injection engine with advanced lean burn properties and thermal management, the E250 Cabriolet benefits from quick-spooling turbocharging. Responsive off-the-line with little turbo lag, the E250 provides a wide and rich mid-range sweet spot, for effortless on-the move versatility and muscular overtaking and incline performance for a 2-litre car weighing a hefty 1,765kg.

Sprinting through the 0-100km/h benchmark in 7.5 seconds — a 0.3-second improvement — and onto a 245km/h top speed, the E250 Cabriolet rides flexible mid-range wave of torque, also serving to underwrite its smooth and swift power accumulation. Driving its rear wheels through a smooth 7-speed automatic, the E250’s gearbox eco, sport and manual paddle-shift modes, in addition to an intuitive manual override function.

Glamorous grand tourer

Refined, smooth and comfortable if, the E250 Cabriolet is an accomplished grand touring convertible with expectedly planted high-speed directional stability. Fitted with 235/35R19 front and 255/30R19 rear tyres, as tested, and with sporty suspension rates to effectively rein in body roll through corners, the E250 rides slightly on the firm side at lower speeds over the bumps and potholes.

Agile through winding roads, the E250’s lighter four-cylinder engine, grippy front tyres and direct steering allow for tidy and eager turn-in, while rear-drive weighting and driving characteristics lend it a balanced predictability. Reassuringly plentiful when leaned hard on through corners, the E250’s grip is more reliant on subtle but vigilant stability control interventions if one suddenly boots the throttle at lower speed corners.

A refined and keen drive at its best on the motorway or through sweeping corners, the E250 Cabriolet is well-braced, settled on rebound and copes well with most road imperfections. However, being a long and large convertible, it is ultimately not as rigid as its Coupe or Saloon sister models over rougher and sharper lumps, bumps and cracks, but is nevertheless a thoroughly enjoyable drive.

Practical and plush

A practical daily drive full four-seat convertible, rather than 2+2, the E250 Cabriolet easily accommodates larger drivers in its well-adjustable and supportive sports seats, and comfortably seats medium-sized adults in the rear bucket seats. With roof railed it usefully features 390-ltre boot volume, but with the roof stowed, boot access and space are reduced to 300 litres. 

Streamlined and aerodynamically rated at CD0.29, the E250 Cabriolet suffers little wind buffeting and is refined even with the top down. With the heater on high and toasty heated leather seats, it is also a very useable convertible even during cold winter months, and even features seat back Airscarf hot air ventilation expressly for such purposes.

Classy and comfortable inside with deep red leather upholstery, quality materials and soft textures, the e250 Cabriolet provides good visibility and driving position adjustability and ergonomics. Controls and instrumentation are user-friendly while standard and optional infotainment, convenience and safety features and equipment are extensive and include reversing camera, numerous airbags and collision prevention, active parking and blind spot assists.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 2-litre, turbocharged in-line 4 cylinders

Bore x stroke: 83 x 92mm

Compression ratio: 9.8:1

Valve-train: 16-valve, DOHC, variable timing, direct injection

Gearbox: 7-speed automatic, rear-wheel drive

Gear ratios: 1st 4.38:1; 2nd 2.86:1; 3rd 1.92:1; 4th 1.37:1; 5th 1:1; 6th 0.82:1; 7th 0.73:1

Final drive: 3.07:1

0-100 km/h: 7.5 seconds

Maximum speed: 245km/h

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 208 (211) [155] @ 5500rpm

Specific power: 104.4BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 117.8BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 258 (350) @ 1200-4000rpm

Specific torque: 175.8Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 198.3Nm/tonne

Combined fuel urban/extra-urban/consumption: 7.9/5.2/6.2l/100km

CO₂ emissions, combined: 144g/km

Fuel capacity: 66 litres

Length: 4703mm

Width: 1786mm

Height: 1398mm

Wheelbase: 2760mm

Tread width, F/R: 1538/1541mm

Overhang, F/R: 862/1081mm

Aerodynamic drag co-efficient: 0.29

Headroom, F/R: 1019/919mm

Shoulder room, F/R: 1374/1214mm

Boot capacity, min/max: 300-/390 litres

Kerb weight: 1,765kg

Steering: Power assisted, rack and pinion

Turning circle: 11.15 metres

Suspension: Multi-link, coil springs, gas-charged dampers

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs/discs

Tyres, F/R: 235/35R19/255/30R19 (as tested)

DETROIT — Hyundai is reaching for the top in launching a new luxury brand, Genesis, which aims to replicate the success of Japanese rivals while redefining the customer experience.

The Korean automaker unveiled its flagship sedan, the G90, at the Detroit Auto Show Monday that was designed to compete with the top offerings of storied brands like Mercedes and BMW by offering best-in-class performance and features.

“We are applying ourselves to entirely new objectives to set the benchmark for luxury,” Hyundai Vice Chairman Eui Sun Chung said at the brand’s US launch.

“With Genesis we will strive to meet the desire of a new generation of luxury customer... [who] value unique experiences over mere status.”

The bold move comes after years of studious planning and work to improve Hyundai’s reputation following a disastrous initial entry into the US market in 1986 with the poorly built Excel.

Hyundai addressed its reputation for poor quality by vigorously improving its production standards and introducing a 10-year warranty programme in 1999.

It launched its first luxury sedan — the Genesis — shortly before US car sales collapsed to the lows not seen in decades in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

Hyundai managed to expand market share during the downturn through clever marketing that included a promise to buy back a customer’s car if they lost their job within the first year of purchase.

It also won accolades for the Genesis, including the much-coveted car of the year award at the 2009 Detroit Auto Show.

But despite all that hard work, Hyundai has still not shed its reputation as a cheaper alternative, said Jack Nerad, an analyst at Kelley Blue Book.

“What they’re limited by is ‘that’s just a Hyundai’ — the perception of that’s what the brand is,” he said in a telephone interview.

“The current Genesis sedan... it’s a very good value, but has not resonated well sales-wise because people buying luxury want to have the prestige of the brand.”

Separating its premium offerings into a separate brand could help boost their prestige.

It worked when Honda, Nissan and Toyota introduced their Lexus, Acura and Infiniti brands in the late 1980s.

“Figuring out if this is successful isn’t going to be determined by the first two cars they bring over,” said Stephanie Brinley, an analyst with IHS Automotive.

“It’s a long-term play, it’s having to do it over and over again and how they build that up.”

Hyundai announced the Genesis brand in November and plans to introduce it initially in the United States, Asia and the Middle East. It will eventually expand into Europe as the brand expands to six offerings by 2020.

“Our ability to start fresh in this new era instead of having the legacy or burden of what was in the past means we can start with something new and invest more appropriately,” said Mike O’Brien, vice president of corporate and product planning for Hyundai Motor America.

DETROIT  — Automakers are imagining a world where nobody dies in car accidents and they say it is closer than most people think.

While they maintain that the real solution to a crash-free world lies in self-driving cars, a host of high-tech safety features are making drivers safer — and better — in the meantime.

“The long-term vision is that cars shouldn’t crash,” Volvo spokesman Jim Trainor said Tuesday on the sidelines on the Detroit Auto Show.

Volvo — which has built its reputation on safety leadership — has set a goal that by 2020 nobody will be killed or seriously injured in its new cars.

The past decade has seen dramatic development by various automakers in the field of collision-avoidance technology.

Blind-spot detectors now watch for oncoming vehicles, adaptive cruise controls reduce speed based on cars ahead, and camera systems warn drivers when they drift out of their lanes.

Detectors can even pick up on a drowsy driver’s subtle changes in behaviour to indicate it’s time for a break.

Frustration-free is ‘key’

The key to making new safety features desirable to drivers is ensuring that they assist rather than irritate, Trainor said.

“If it false brakes too often, people get frustrated and they turn the system off,” he told AFP. “We need to calibrate the system so it gives the driver every last possible moment to take action.”

In addition to accident avoidance, Volvo is developing systems that reduce injuries when crashes are inescapable. 

Among these is a rear impact mitigation system which senses if a car is approaching too quickly and preconditions the interior for impact by tightening seatbelts and engaging brakes.

Safety for the masses

Initially reserved for high-end luxury vehicles, the cost of safety technology is falling and finding its way into lower-priced automobiles.

The new Ford Fusion, which the automaker introduced at the Detroit Auto Show Monday, contains 20 driver-assistance technologies, including a pedestrian-detection system and a steering wheel, that vibrates if a driver begins drifting from the lane.

“As we release more vehicles I think you’ll anticipate a lot of migration across the line-up,” Ford spokesman John Cangany told AFP.

GM unveiled a new rear-door monitor in its GMC Acadia crossover Tuesday that reminds drivers to check the back seat for children before leaving the car.

The safety feature will eventually be included in all of its models.

“Too many children are accidentally left behind in vehicles,” Mark Reuss, head of product development at GM, said while introducing the feature.

GM is the first automaker to use the alert system and is working on technology that can detect if a child is left behind.

About 30 to 40 children die every year in the United States from heatstroke after being left in a hot vehicle, most because their distracted parents simply forgot they were still in their car seats.

“Obviously we want to protect our customers,” Rich Latek, who heads marketing for GMC, told AFP.

“We’re really looking at a goal to end up with zero collisions and zero fatalities. It’s a lofty goal but it’s something that’s possible with the technology that’s out there.”

Meanwhile, Toyota recently introduced a new suite of features called Safety Sense which will be offered on nearly all models by 2017.

When first introduced on Lexus vehicles it cost an additional $6,000. Toyota has now managed to bring the price down to $300 to $630, spokesman Mike Kroll said.

Scandals hit confidence 

Despite the science fiction-like advancements in safety technology, a slew of scandals has undermined trust in the reliability of vehicles.

Monday saw the first civil trial over a deadly ignition switch defect which General Motors hid from safety regulators for more than a decade and is linked to at least 124 deaths.

Automakers are still working to replace potentially explosive airbags by Japanese supplier Takata in 19 million vehicles in the United States.

And Fiat Chrysler and Toyota have each become embroiled in scandal — and handed millions upon millions of dollars in fines — over improperly handling or even covering up defects in millions of vehicles.

Fortress Europe: Inside the War against Immigration
Matthew Carr
London: Hurst & Company, 2015
Pp. 313

This book could not be timelier. First published in 2012, the new edition of “Fortress Europe” has a 2015 update. More importantly, journalist Matthew Carr’s astute observations provide a background for understanding the current, ongoing refugee crisis. While the author is clearly sympathetic to refugees, his arguments are totally rational and he garnered information from all sides — migrants, police, politicians, NGOs, etc.

Carr structures his narrative around a set of contradictions inherent in EU policy, which too often have devastating consequences for migrants. First is the Schengen system that opened the borders within the EU to citizens and visa holders alike, but at the same time, tightened and militarised its outer borders, which extend into Morocco at Ceuta and Melilla, two Spanish enclaves enclosed by two-tiered wire fences. “Until 2005 not many Europeans were aware that Europe begins in Africa.” (p. 1)

But that year hundreds of African refugees, fleeing war and poverty, tried to scale the fences and enter European territory. In recent years, many thousands of migrants have died, mainly at sea, or due to perilous weather conditions and police violence at Europe’s other outer borders, such as Poland’s eastern frontier, the Greek-Turkish border, and Calais at the English Channel.

The second contradiction is the discrepancy between stated ideals and real practice. While the EU was founded on respect for human dignity and rights, freedom, democracy and the rule of law, these “principles are often glaringly at odds with a repressive and punitive response to irregular migration whose consequences are invisible to the general public or obfuscated by official denials…” (pp. 6-7) 

Carr travelled to Europe’s reinforced outer borders, and he documents many abuses, whether rooted in policy or the arbitrary practices of border guards who may snatch migrants’ blankets, shoes and food before throwing them back across the frontier, “in the most sustained and extensive border enforcement programme in history”. (p. 3)

“As in the United States, these technophiliac demonstrations of national sovereignty at the border have provided a lucrative industry for the private sector.” (p. 118) 

Carr’s first-hand observations also reveal deplorable and often dangerous conditions at immigrant detention centres in a number of countries, where people wait for asylum or deportation, sometimes for years, via procedures that often seem random and arbitrary.

The third contradiction is global inequality, reinforced by renewed emphasis on borders due to security concerns or to block migrants, in effect creating “gated” countries. Carr contrasts Europeans’ freedom of movement and travel, considered normal in an age of European integration and globalisation, with restrictions for citizens of poor and war-torn countries. The double standard is obvious. For example, “the same governments who were bombing Libya, supposedly in order to protect its population, were refusing to do anything to protect the migrants displaced by the war.” (p. 86)

Carr interviewed many refugees from Africa, Afghanistan, Somalia and Palestine, to name just a few. Their stories reveal the human face of the suffering reflected in the comprehensive statistics he cites. They also reveal the refugees’ amazing persistence and the logic that drives them, as when a young Afghan asked “with more bewilderment than anger”, why “governments who were fighting a war in his country were so unwilling to let him go to theirs”. (p. 102)

Carr questions the arbitrary distinctions made between legal and illegal immigrants, between asylum seekers and economic refugees. He challenges the validity of the fear of migrants that is being whipped up by sensationalist media and right-wing parties, and used as an excuse by governments to instate restrictive measures, whereas in reality Europe needs new input in its ageing labour force. 

In Carr’s view, the current system is inhumane and unworkable — “a political and moral failure… the media and the public has stigmatised immigration in general and legitimised the most xenophobic and racist anti-immigration policies of the ultra-nationalist and extreme right in ways that threaten to derail the entire European project”. (p. 262-3)

“Fortress Europe” is much more than a journalistic account. It is apparent that Carr is challenging an unjust system, but he doesn’t expect the solution to come from above, instead finding hope in the actions of popular movements in solidarity with refugees. 

Despite the heaviness of the topic, Carr makes his narrative engaging as well as informative by tracing the history of many of the places he visits, and even more by his poignant descriptions of the people he encounters. Reading this book makes one cringe at the extravagant funds spent on high-tech surveillance and policing, which could be better spent on creating better opportunities for migrants, either in their home country or where they seek a new life.

2015 was Earth’s hottest year on record, and it appears the planet is still getting hotter.

Barely three weeks into the new year, climate researchers from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are already predicting that the average surface temperature around the planet is likely to be higher in 2016 than it was in 2015. That would mark the first time the average global temperature reached record-breaking heights for three consecutive years.

“It’s not unprecedented to have two years in a row of record-breaking temperatures, but in our records, we’ve never had three years in a row,” climatologist Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, said Wednesday. “If 2016 turns out to be as warm as we anticipate, that would be unprecedented in our record book.”

One reason scientists expect 2016 to be even warmer than 2015 is that the lingering effects of El Nino weather pattern should push temperatures skyward through the first half of the year.

“El Nino takes heat out of the oceans and puts it in our atmosphere, and we’ve just had the biggest El Nino in a generation,” said Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.

El Nino is partially responsible for the extremely high temperatures recorded around the globe in October, November and December 2015, the NASA and NOAA researchers said. Still, even before the effects of El Nino were felt, the planet was experiencing considerable temperature anomalies.

Data show that 10 out of 12 months in 2015 broke previous temperature records. The only two that didn’t were January and April.

“Even without El Nino this would have been the warmest year on record,” Schmidt said. “We are looking at a long-term trend, and the factors that cause this long-term trend are continuing to accelerate, namely the increased burning of carbon dioxide fuels and other emissions.”

Unusually warm temperatures were seen almost uniformly around the planet in 2015. Temperatures were well above the 20th century average on all six populated continents and in most of the oceans, the government scientists said.

The one exception was a curious region of unusually cool water in the Northern Atlantic, off the western coast of Greenland. Researchers are still trying to understand what’s responsible for this cold spot, although the melting of the Greenland ice sheet might have something to do with it.

“It’s something to look at going forward,” Schmidt said.

On land, Asia and South America saw their warmest years since official record keeping began there in 1910, while Africa and Europe reported their second warmest years on record. North America had its fifth warmest year, and Australia and the rest of Oceania reported its sixth warmest year.

Two weeks ago, NOAA announced that the average temperature for the contiguous United States last year was 12.4^oC, 2.4 degrees above the 20th century average. That made 2015 the second-warmest year in 121 years of record keeping.

The global temperature data are collected by 6,300 land-based weather stations, as well as research stations in Antarctica and a network of ships and satellite communicating buoys in oceans around the world.

NASA and NOAA have slightly different ways of interpreting surface temperature data, but they found comparable increases in average global temperature between 2014 and 2015. Specifically, NASA recorded an increase of 0.13 of a degree Celsius, while NOAA measured a rise of 0.16 of a degree.

Although these changes may seem small, experts said they are significant and unprecedented.

“For every 1-degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature, the atmosphere can hold about 4 per cent more moisture,” said Kevin Trenberth, a climate researcher at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Co. “With a quarter-degree increase, that means the atmosphere can hold 1 per cent more moisture in 2015 than in 2014.”

One of the consequences of that is increased flooding. Devastating floods in Missouri, central South America and Chennai in southeast India in 2015 could have been the result of the higher global temperatures, Trenberth said.

“A quarter of a degree increase is actually huge,” he said. “It’s bigger than we’ve ever seen before.”

The first detailed global temperature measurements were recorded in 1880. Since then, nine of the ten warmest years on record have occurred since 2002, according to NOAA. The one exception is 1998, which ranks as the fifth warmest year in part because of a particularly strong El Nino phase.

The British national weather service, the Met Office, released similar findings about global temperatures on Wednesday, saying 2015 broke records going back to 1850. The Japan Meteorological Agency has also published preliminary findings that show 2015 was on track to be the warmest year since 1891.

Tom Karl, director of NOAA’s National Centres for Environmental Information in Asheville, North Carolina, said the streak was likely to continue this year.

“The odds favour 2016 being warmer than 2015,” he said.

Schmidt said he wouldn’t bet against that prediction.

“I’d give you better than evens that will be the case,” he said.

While most climatologists agree that more record-breaking years are sure to come, not all of them expect 2016 to be warmer than 2015.

Tim Barnett, a marine physicist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, said his models predict “a whopping cold event in the second half of 2016 that would temper or cancel out some of the effects of El Nino in the first months of the year”.

Regardless of what happens in 2016, scientists who follow the global climate said the announcement that 2015 was the warmest on record did not come as a surprise to them.

“We have this monster El Nino superimposed on a long-term warming trend due to human emissions of carbon dioxide,” Hayhoe said. “We saw this coming months ago.”

“What did surprise people was how it surpassed the record — it didn’t just break it, it smashed it,” she added. “That’s what we’re going to see going forward. Global warming doesn’t mean every year will be successively warmer than the previous one, but we will be breaking the record more and more frequently.”

It may take more than a tub of yogurt to reverse the effects that a high-fat, low-fibre diet have wrought in the bellies of men and women in the industrialised world, says new research.

Indeed, the depletion of gut microbes that comes with diets deficient in fibre extends well beyond the lives of those whose dietary choices made it happen, a new study finds. Over generations of exposure to diets low in fibre, the research shows that a microbiotic population die-off threatens to drive some of the trillions of species that live in healthy human guts to the brink of extinction.

And just as in the world of larger plants and animals, when the population of a given gut bacterium falls below a certain level, it’s as good as gone, the new research suggests. The reintroduction of more dietary fibre, and the frantic hawking of probiotic powders, may not be enough to bring all the endangered microbiotic taxa back and restore gut health to successive generations.

The new research, published in the journal Nature, was conducted on laboratory mice whose guts were deliberately colonised with a wide array of microbes from humans. Researchers from Stanford, Harvard and Princeton universities fed a generation of lab mice a diet very low in microbiota-accessible carbohydrates — nutrients that are plentiful in the diets of agrarian hunter-gatherers but not in diets that are common in industrialised societies.

The results were stark enough in the mice, whose guts, collectively, were colonised by an increasingly impoverished population of bacteria, viruses and protozoa. They then fed four successive generations of mice a diet that was low in microbiota-accessible carbohydrates. Even when they put parent generations back on a high-fibre diet, the dearth of microbial diversity in the guts of younger generations became ever starker.

Even when the researchers switched subsequent generations back to a high-fibre diet, the shift failed to restore the microbiotic diversity that had originally flourished in the guts of their ancestor generations.

The findings suggest that, when diseases arise from a depleted gut microbiome, it may take more than a course of probiotics or a daily tub of yogurt to manage those diseases.

The findings demonstrate “a diet-induced ratcheting effect” in which species of microbiota “are not effectively transferred to the next generation”, the researchers wrote. Bacteria belonging to the Bacteroidales family were particularly prone to intergenerational die-offs that couldn’t be reversed with intentional reintroduction of a diet high in fibre.

There are no “charismatic megafauna” — the equivalent of tigers and elephants — among the trillions of microbes that colonise the gut. (Suffice it to say, there won’t likely soon be campaigns to “save the Bacteroidales”.) Indeed, the microscopic population of the human gut is so large and diverse, scientists are far from fully characterising what role individual taxa play in health. But there’s clear and growing evidence that species diversity in there is a key factor in digestive, metabolic and even immune health, and when that diversity takes a hit, some aspect of health is sure to suffer.

The authors of the latest study warn that their data hint that “further deterioration of the Western microbiota is possible”, as generational changes drive some taxa closer to the brink. The results of doubling down on diets that pose a threat to the gut’s microbiotic diversity could be downright apocalyptic, they suggest.

“Microbiota can change on a timescale that is much faster than the host,” wrote the team, led by Erica D. Sonnenburg and Justin L. Sonnenburg of the Stanford University School of Medicine. That fact makes it possible that if dramatic forces — including perhaps a wholesale abandonment of diets rich in fibre — wreak abrupt changes in populations of gut microbiota, the resulting changes “cannot be accommodated by our human biology”.

The result might be diseases that defy easy treatment.

I had forgotten how intrusive the folks of my homeland India can be. Incidentally, if one were to mark the levels of inquisitiveness amongst my country’s people, the ones living in Delhi would top the list. Here, there is no concept of personal space or individual privacy. Such an idea simply does not exist because everyone is busy minding everyone’s business. 

Following the instructions on a map or a GPS is wasted in this place because the best guides in town are the ordinary people themselves. One can also drive up to a traffic cop, take the car dangerously close to the little triangle on which he stands, hang your head out of the window, and ask him for directions. The row of vehicles that are stuck in a disorderly queue because of your idiotic action, blow their horns incessantly, but generally, that does not bother anybody. 

On my recent visit to the city, I landed towards the tail end of the odd-even formula that had been introduced in Delhi. To combat the rising levels of pollution in this over-crowded metropolis, the local government had formulated an innovative scheme. Private vehicles were allowed to run on the streets on alternate days depending on whether their licence plates ended in an even or odd number. 

This method, more commonly known as road-space rationing, was followed in various forms across the world. But some experts lamented that its implementation proved to be a major challenge because roughly two million vehicles had to be kept off the roads every day. The model was already in force in Beijing, which Delhi surpassed last year to be ranked as the world’s most polluted city, according to a WHO report.

“An absolutely foolish plan, this one. Trying to enforce it in a city where no one is ready to follow basic traffic rules is bound to fail,” predicted a septuagenarian with a shrug. We were standing on the porch of a hotel, waiting for our respective rental cars to arrive. I did not know the grey haired gentleman from Adam, but that did not stop him from giving me a piece of his mind. I nodded distractedly and stepped aside in a move that I had perfected in my youth, to escape unwarranted lectures from unknown people. I was not as nimble on my feet as I once was and therefore managed to catch another bit of vituperative jargon that he hurled in my direction.  

For the next two days I heard all kinds of strangers give me their points of view on the traffic snarl or the lack of it. On January 15, the trial run concluded and Delhi, which is a city that hates following any rules, heaved a collective sigh of relief. 

Personally I saw fewer cars on the road and the driving distance from one place to another was reduced to a remarkable extent. The traffic marshals fined the lawbreakers left, right and centre, which made a whole lot of people explode with extreme road rage. 

“Why are you driving an odd-numbered car on the even day?” I asked my friend. 

“I’m a woman,” she told me. 

“So what?” I queried. 

“We are exempted from the rule,” she enlightened. 

“In this age of gender equality, that’s pretty odd,” I remarked. 

“I’m not complaining,” she smirked. 

“But you are a fierce feminist,” I said.

“Even so,” she replied. 

“Oddly even?” I teased. 

“Evenly odd,” she grinned. 

SYDNEY/AMSTERDAM – After decades checking their rearview mirrors for the threat from rail and air transport, truckers around the world are facing their latest rival head-on: driverless trucks.

As companies from Toyota Motor Corp. to Google parent Alphabet Inc. race to develop driverless technology, trucking companies are seeing the potential to cut costs by nearly half and improve safety.

Already in Australia, the world’s most truck-dependent nation, mining giants such as Rio Tinto are using remote-controlled lorries to shift iron ore around massive mining pits.

Now the country’s road transport companies are modernising fleets to ensure that when their industry goes autonomous, as early as the end of the decade, they are ready.

“I don’t see this as disruptive necessarily, as much as a natural evolution,” said Sarah Jones, head of road transport compliance at Toll Holdings, Australia’s biggest trucking company.

Toll, owned by Japan Post Holdings Co. Ltd., has already kitted out many of its 3,000 vehicles with semi-autonomous gadgetry like lane-change sensors and cruise control.

It will join other firms in April to watch a driverless truck trial in the Netherlands, which wants autonomous road trains sending cargo from Rotterdam, Europe’s biggest port, throughout the continent by 2019.

New road rules

The Netherlands is not alone. Singapore plans to trial autonomous trucks while Canadian oil producer Suncor Energy Inc.  has ordered a fleet of trucks equipped to go driverless.

The US state of Nevada last year approved Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler AG to undertake trials of its self-driving trucks on public roads, following tests in Germany.

Much early work is focused on “platooning”, where trucks cut wind resistance and thus fuel costs by travelling in close procession. A manned front vehicle controls gas and brakes for the others using radio signals.

Testing of the other benefits expected from going fully driverless — savings from removing driver compartments, air conditioning and rest stops — will come later.

The cuts in wage and fuel bills could be massive. The US road freight business alone was worth $700 billion in 2014, according to the American Trucking Associations.

“It’s a huge productivity benefit, and that’s before you start looking at the impacts on road safety,” said Gerard Waldron, managing director of the Australian Road Research Board, which is conducting autonomous vehicle testing and estimates cost savings of 40 per cent.

“You would also come to a conclusion that since 90 per cent of crashes and injuries are the result of human error, you could put a fair dent in that sort of outcome as well.”

Although self-driven freight depends on making the inter-vehicle sensors and satellite positioning fail-safe, the biggest hold-up is expected to come from regulators.

Coordinating rules between different jurisdictions, whether between US or Australian states or European countries, is key.

Freight companies must also wait for resolution on long-standing legal quirks, like a law in Australia requiring at least one hand on the steering wheel, and a European law requiring trucks to travel at least 3 seconds apart — too long to make platooning effective.

Regulations on liability and road user safety will also be required to clarify where responsibility lies if things go wrong.

“It’s not the technology that will set the roadmap, it’s the legislation and the standardisation of protocols,” said Lars-Gunnar Hedstrِm, head of Systems Development at Swedish truck-maker Scania AB, which is involved in the Netherlands trial.

End of the road for truckers?

Fears that thousands of drivers will lose their jobs have been raised, but the industry has downplayed such concerns as many countries struggle to fill trucking jobs.

In Australia, freight demand is forecast to jump 80 per cent by 2031 while the number of drivers is expected to stall, according to industry estimates.

“The whole time I’ve been trucking, the railways have been going to replace me, but that hasn’t happened,” said Kelvin Baxter, a former driver who employs 50 at his grain transportation business in Australia’s east.

“At the moment, our concerns are finding enough drivers.”