Japanese Princess Ayako to marry shipping employee, leave royal family

Japan's Princess Ayako has become the second Japanese princess in two years to announce she's marrying a commoner, a move that will force her to renounce her royal status.

Japan's Imperial Household Agency announced Tuesday that the third, and youngest, daughter of the late Prince Takamodo, cousin of Emperor Akihito, is set to marry Kei Moriya, a 32-year-old employee of shipping firm NYK Line.

The two met less than a year ago, will officially mark their engagement on August 12, and wed at Tokyo's Meiji Jingu shrine on October 29.

Princess Ayako, who has a master's degree in social welfare, was originally introduced to Moriya by her mother, Princess Takamodo, last December, according to the Imperial Household.

Princess Takamodo knew Kei's parents from her outreach work at a local NGO, and made the introduction in the hope that her daughter would be inspired by global welfare activities. However, the pair discovered that they have a lot more in common than a passion for global welfare. They both enjoy skiing, books and travel.

Under Japanese imperial law, the princess will be required to leave the family once she exchanges vows with Moriya. However, she will receive a bonus payment expected to be around a million dollars.

Ayako is not the first princess in her generation who plans to leave the royal family. Last May, her second cousin and eldest grandchild to the Emperor, Princess Mako, announced plans to marry paralegal Kei Komoro. However, the couple postponed their marriage this February, stating that they were not yet ready for marriage.

Members of the royal family are seen fulfilling their public duties during the Autumn Garden Party at the Akasaka Imperial Garden in Tokyo, Japan.

Ayako is not a direct descendent of Emperor Akihito, who plans to abdicate in 2019, so doesn't attract the same level of attention as Princess Mako. However, her engagement will raise questions over the future of the world's oldest hereditary monarchy.

Despite debate to introduce legislation to allow women to ascend the throne, the birth of Prince Hisahito in 2006 -- the first male heir born to the Imperial family in 40 years -- put an end to that discussion.

If Princesses Mako and Ayako both marry commoners, the number of imperial family members will drop to 17, increasing the burden of royal duties on the remaining members.

A resolution added to the Emperor's abdication bill last June called for the government to begin deliberating succession issues, including the option of princesses establishing new branches of the family after they marry a commoner, allowing new members to take on the duties of the imperial family.

The princess' engagement could accelerate calls for that deliberation.

(Source: CNN)

Marree Man: The enduring mystery of a giant outback figure

This week marks 20 years since a helicopter pilot flying over central Australia spotted the outline of a giant man drawn into the earth.

The 4.2km (2.5 miles) tall figure, on a remote plateau in South Australia, is often thought to depict an Aboriginal hunter.

Dubbed Marree Man after a nearby town, it is one of the world's largest designs to be etched into the ground.

Marree Man was etched into remote South Australia in 1998

But mystery surrounds who created it - and why.

Earlier this week, Australian entrepreneur Dick Smith offered a $5,000 Australian dollar (£2,800; $3,700) reward for any information about the artwork's origins.

"How has it been kept secret for 20 years?" he said on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Monday.

'Professionally done'
Marree Man has been a subject of fascination since its discovery in the desert about 700km north of Adelaide.

It has gained popularity on tourism flights because it is too large to be viewed from the ground.

With an outline measuring a total of 28km, Marree Man had an initial depth of about 35cm (14 inches), according to local media reports.

Locals believe it portrays an Aboriginal man carrying a woomera - a throwing stick - in his left hand.

Marree publican Phil Turner says he is convinced that its creator, or creators, were "professionals" who possibly used GPS technology.

"Whoever did the outline marked it out with bamboo nursery skewers at every 10m," Mr Turner told the BBC.

"If you didn't have the co-ordinates, you would have no idea if you were standing in his left toe or his elbow. Considering GPS technology was in its infancy at the time, it is an absolutely remarkable feat."

Mr Smith agrees, telling the ABC: "There were no mistakes - it was very professionally done."

Several theories about its creators have circulated over the years.

A stake that was possibly used in Marree Man's creation, locals say

Pilot Trevor Wright, the first to see Marree Man on 26 June 1998, says he spotted it by chance. But anonymous faxes were also sent to local businesses and media at the time, to inform them of Marree Man's existence.

Some suspected it was the work of American artists because the faxes used US spelling and references. A plaque showing the US flag and Olympic rings was also found at the site.

But others have theorised that those clues were deliberately misleading, with alternative suggestions including local artists and even members of the Australian Army.

'Mix of opinions'
The Arabana people are the traditional owners of the land on which Marree Man was created.

Arabana Aboriginal Corporation manager Lorraine Merrick said its appearance in 1998 had initially upset some Aboriginal people who viewed it as a desecration of their land.

She said there was "a mix of opinions now".

However, Ms Merrick said the corporation - which administers the land - recognised that Marree Man had become an icon.

"It's there now and you can't turn back the clock," she told the BBC. "So for us it's about working out a clear strategy for its future."

Marree Man has faded over the years, but locals, with the approval of the Arabana people, used machinery to help to restore it in 2016.

"Maybe the mystery is part of its attraction, but honestly I don't have people coming up to me asking who did it or anything like that," Ms Merrick said.

(Source: BBC)

Palm oil: Are your beauty products killing orangutans?

Does your lipstick threaten the future of one of our closest living relatives, the orangutan?

Is that slobbering slice of pizza you're having in front of the World Cup on TV worth the life of a tiger?

Pizza, biscuits, and beauty treatments are some of the thousands of products that contain palm oil, which threaten iconic species through deforestation.

But this new study says that planting alternative oils could pose an even bigger danger to living things.

Why is this story important?
Palm oil has often been held up as a truly terrible blight on the environment, responsible for the clearing of tropical forests and posing huge threats to iconic species.

But this report says the reality is very complex.

While palm oil is only responsible for 0.4% of global deforestation it is having dramatic impacts in some locations in Indonesia and Malaysia, causing 50% in some locations.

Simply banning palm wouldn't work say the authors because the world will still need vegetable oils.

What's also worrying say the authors is that efforts to boost demand for responsibly sourced palm oil haven't worked so far.

How does lipstick threaten species?
Palm oil is the most widely used vegetable oil on the planet and is believed to be in around 50% of all the products founds in supermarkets and shops.

It comes from the reddish pulp of the fruit found on oil palms, particularly the African oil palm - known as Elaeis guineensis. The top two producers of palm oil are Indonesia and Malaysia, generating tens of millions of tonnes annually in an industry worth upwards of $40bn.

The oil is important for lipstick for example because it holds colour well, has no taste and doesn't melt at high temperatures.

It's found in shampoos, soaps, ice cream and instant noodles amongst thousands of others.

Over the past 20 years, growing demand has seen thousands of hectares of old, tropical forests chopped down to make way for the oily palm tree plantations.

But these forests are home to some of the most threatened species in the world, including the orangutan.

"Orangutans are a lowland species on Bornean Sumatra and that's where palm oil is grown," the report's lead author Erik Meijaard, from the IUCN, told BBC News.

"The two often clash, palm oil displaces orangutans, they are pushed into gardens where they generate conflicts with locals and that's where you get these killings."

"Orangutans are incredibly versatile, but what an orangutan can't deal with is killing. Because they are such slow breeding species, the killing has a really big impact."

The report says that the expansion of palm oil is not all bad news for species, with some pigs and snakes benefiting from the presence of the fronds. However I'm not sure a few more slithery wrigglers would make up for the loss of one of humanity's closest living relatives.

So surely cutting back on planting palm oil is the obvious solution?
Well, the IUCN experts say that's not the case.

They say that the planting of palm trees with their spiky red fruits and kernels has boomed because they are so darn efficient at making oil.

Palm makes up 35% of the world's vegetable oil supply but only takes up 10% of the world's land allocated to producing the greasy stuff.

To replace it with rapeseed, soy or sunflower seed oil would take far larger amounts of land, in fact up to nine times the amount needed for palm. It's likely that such a move would see a displacement of diversity loss, with many more species in different places under threat.

"If palm oil didn't exist you would still have the same global demand for vegetable oil," said Erik Meijaard.

"If you stop producing palm, it will have to be produced somewhere else. So instead of harming orang-utans you'll be harming bears or jaguars, it just pushes the problem somewhere else because the demand for those oils will still be there."

Can consumers make a difference by choosing different oils?
Maybe not say the report authors.

"I'm always a bit confused by the focus on palm oil," said Erik Meijaard.

"People love coconuts, they love the taste, it's a beautiful palm in the tropics, but there's not much difference with palm. They both require deforestation prior to plantation development, so why do people love one and hate the other, there doesn't seem to be much logic to that."

Aren't governments in Indonesia and Malaysia trying to stop palm oil production from killing wildlife?
Yes, there have been lots of initiatives to try and identify areas of forest in Malaysia and Indonesia that are more important for biodiversity and to protect them from those that crave the kernels. However, these initiatives, according to the report, have had few benefits compared to business as usual.

Newly planted palm oil trees within a plantation

"We have looked at the difference in deforestation rates between plantations that have been certified and those that are not, in the Indonesian part of Borneo and we don't find a major difference," said Erik Meijaard.

"I didn't expect to see a major difference it as its relatively new, it needs time to start improving its practices, it also needs a demand form the consumer who want sustainable palm oil."

What about sustainable palm oil?
There have been efforts to do this, led by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). But this new study says that these efforts have been limited by low demand, difficulties in tracing sustainable products and poor monitoring, reporting and verification.

The RSPO says it is constantly trying to strengthen its standards but this is difficult if "broader societal support is absent".

Campaigners are scathing about these efforts.

"The RSPO has a responsibility to ensure its members protect rainforests and produce palm oil responsibly, but it's failing," said Richard George, from Greenpeace UK.

"If the RSPO wants to have a future, it must adopt 'no deforestation, no peat, no exploitation' standards and ensure they are rigorously enforced."

(Source: BBC)

Victoria Pendleton reveals depression battle since pulling out of Everest climb

The former Olympic gold medal-winner has told of the health issues she has faced over the past two months.

Former Olympian Victoria Pendleton has said she feels “psychologically and physiologically damaged” since having to pull out of a Mount Everest climb attempt earlier this year.

In May, the gold medal-winning cyclist was on course to reach the summit of the world’s highest mountain with TV presenter and adventurer Ben Fogle, but was advised by doctors to cut the trip short due to health issues.

She has now said she has been coping with depression since then, and that she is still very unwell.

Pendleton, 37, told Radio Times magazine: “I’ve been suffering with depression since I got back from Everest.

“I feel psychologically and physiologically damaged.

“It’s really put me through the wringer, and that has been harder than any disappointment about not making it up to the summit.

“It’s like I’ve taken a real battering. I’ve never felt so overwhelmed with illness.”

Pendleton was forced to pull out of the trip due to struggling with oxygen deficiency at 21,000ft, which she said gave her symptoms of “a horrific headache, like knitting needles sticking in the back of my skull”.

“You act like you’re very marginally drunk, it’s not unpleasant, you’re not totally suffering, but signs of the onset of a cerebral edema are very subtle,” she said.

“You have to rely on others recognising it.”

She said that, upon returning home to the UK, doctors told her that oxygen depravation can trigger depression.

“But I felt even further away from myself then,” Pendleton added.

“They’ve assured me that it’s quite a normal thing and in time it will pass. I’ve been having good days and bad days. You just have to grin and bear it.”

She also said that she was blighted with chest and ear infections that took “three weeks of antibiotics to get over”, and that it sent her into “despair”.

Pendleton trained for 18 months for the Everest expedition, which she undertook with Fogle and mountaineer Kenton Cool, for the British Red Cross in a bid to highlight the environmental challenges mountains face.

Their efforts will be shown in a three-part series called The Challenge: Everest, which starts on CNN later this month.

Since retiring from cycling, Pendleton has become a professional jockey, and finished fifth in the 2016 Foxhunter Chase at the Cheltenham Festival.

She was also a contestant in the 10th series of Strictly Come Dancing, where she was partnered with professional dancer Brendan Cole.

(Source: The Independent)

What kids learn from hearing family stories

Reading to children has education benefits, of course—but so does sharing tales from the past, writes 
Elaine Reese, Professor of Psychology at the University of Otago in New Zealand, and the author of Tell Me A Story: Sharing Stories to Enrich Your Child's World, in The Atlantic. Read on: 

“Dad, tell me a story from when you were little. Tell me the story about the time you met your best friend Chris at school.” Six-year-old Alex, who has just started school himself, snuggles into his pillow and catches his dad’s hand in the dark. They have finished the nightly reading of Tin Tin and now it’s time for “just one more story” before Alex goes to sleep.

Most parents know about the benefits of reading stories from books with their young children. Parents are blasted with this message in pediatricians’ offices, at preschool, on TV, even with billboards on the city bus. Reading books with children on a daily basis advances their language skills, extends their learning about the world, and helps their own reading later in school. Reading with your child from a young age can instill a lifelong love of books. A new study published in Science even shows that reading literary fiction improves adults’ ability to understand other people’s emotions.

Reading books with your children is clearly a good idea.

The cozy image of cuddling up with your young child while poring over a book, however, doesn’t fit with reality for some parents and children. Parents from some cultures are not as comfortable reading with their children because books were not part of their everyday lives growing up. For other parents, reading with children is a fraught activity because of their own negative experiences learning to read. And for some highly active children, sitting down with a book is a punishment, not a reward. Fortunately, parents can learn new ways of reading books with their children to engage even the most irascible customer–and to engage themselves.

Yet what most parents don’t know is that everyday family stories, like the one that Alex’s dad spun out that night, confer many of the same benefits of reading–and even some new ones.

Over the last 25 years, a small canon of research on family storytelling shows that when parents share more family stories with their children—especially when they tell those stories in a detailed and responsive way—their children benefit in a host of ways. For instance, experimental studies show that when parents learn to reminisce about everyday events with their preschool children in more detailed ways, their children tell richer, more complete narratives to other adults one to two years later compared to children whose parents didn’t learn the new reminiscing techniques. Children of the parents who learned new ways to reminisce also demonstrate better understanding of other people’s thoughts and emotions. These advanced narrative and emotional skills serve children well in the school years when reading complex material and learning to get along with others. In the preteen years, children whose families collaboratively discuss everyday events and family history more often have higher self-esteem and stronger self-concepts. And adolescents with a stronger knowledge of family history have more robust identities, better coping skills, and lower rates of depression and anxiety. Family storytelling can help a child grow into a teen who feels connected to the important people in her life.

Best of all, unlike stories from books, family stories are always free and completely portable. You don’t even need to have the lights on to share with your child a story about your day, about their day, about your childhood or their grandma’s. In the research on family storytelling, all of these kinds of stories are linked to benefits for your child. Family stories can continue to be part of a parent’s daily interactions with their children into adolescence, long past the age of the bedtime story.

All families have stories to tell, regardless of their culture or their circumstances. Of course, not all of these stories are idyllic ones. Research shows that children and adolescents can learn a great deal from stories of life’s more difficult moments–as long as those stories are told in a way that is sensitive to the child’s level of understanding, and as long as something good is gleaned from the experience.

Telling the story about the time the Christmas tree ignited because of faulty wiring and burned up the presents is fine, as long as you can find a tinsel lining. For example: Luckily you were able to save some favorite ornaments from the blaze, and your family ended up at a soup kitchen for Christmas dinner where you met Marion, who would become a treasured family friend.

Books contain narratives, but only family stories contain your family’s personal narratives. Fortunate children get both. They hear and read stories from books to become part of other people’s worlds, and they hear and tell stories of their family to understand who they are and from whence they came.

As Ursula LeGuin said, “There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.” Oral storytelling has been part of human existence for millennia. Toddlers start telling primitive stories from nearly as soon as they can speak, beginning with simple sentences about past experiences such as “Cookie allgone.” Adults quickly build on these baby stories, “What happened to your cookie? You ate it!” so that by age three or four, most children can tell a relatively sensible story of a past experience that a naïve listener will (mostly) understand. By the time they are in school, children will regale a sympathetic adult with highly detailed stories about events of great importance to them, such as scoring a goal at a soccer game, but they may fail to mention the bigger picture that their team still lost. In the preteen and early adolescent years, children tell highly proficient stories about events in their lives, but they still need help understanding difficult events, such as the time their best friend dumped them for someone else. It is not until mid-adolescence that teens can understand the impact of events on their lives and on who they are becoming. Even older adolescents still benefit from their parents’ help in understanding life’s curveballs.

The holidays are prime time for family storytelling. When you’re putting up the tree or having your holiday meal, share a story with your children about past holidays. Leave in the funny bits, the sad bits, the gory and smelly bits–kids can tell when a story has been sanitized for their protection. Then invite everyone else to tell a story too. Don’t forget the youngest and the oldest storytellers in the group. Their stories may not be as coherent, but they can be the truest, and the most revealing.

Family stories can be told nearly anywhere. They cost us only our time, our memories, our creativity. They can inspire us, protect us, and bind us to others. So be generous with your stories, and be generous in your stories. Remember that your children may have them for a lifetime.