As Israel's Operation Protective Edge in Gaza reaches it third day and rockets continue to fall in Israel, we map the targets of military strikes from each side

By Thursdsay, Israel had carried out 780 air strikes on targets across the territory and Hamas, the radical Islamist movement, had fired almost 400 rockets at Israeli population centres, including Tel Aviv.

Using data from a variety of eyewitness, government and media sources the Telegraph has compiled a graphic mapping the main targets of strikes from opposing forces in both Israel and the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli section of the map also denotes the number of missile attacks recorded on Israeli towns. Data has been sourced from Red Alert - an app which delivers notifications every time a siren is sounded in Israeli cities detecting incoming missiles from Gaza.

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Cooking might not be rocket science, but it has taken a rocket scientist from Oxford University to reinvent the humble saucepan.

Dr Thomas Povey, who usually works designing cooling systems for jet engines, has come up with a new pan which heats up more quickly, cooks food faster and uses 40 per cent less energy.

Dr Povey, who is a keen mountaineer, decided to tackle the problem after struggling to heat up water at altitude.

He realised that a large amount of energy is lost simply heating the pan, rather than boiling the water.

“The original idea was for the outdoor market — we wanted to improve efficiency for cooking outside,” said Dr Povey.

"But we realised it was problem that applies to the domestic market. So we worked from there."

The cast aluminium pans channels built into the side to allow heat from the bottom to travels up the sides so that food is warmed quickly from all the way around.

An equivalent pan of conventional design was shown to need 40 per cent more energy to heat up than the new ‘ Flare Pan .’

"There's nothing wrong with (a usual saucepan), but it loses a lot of heat, which means it has less energy efficiency, which means it wastes more heat, energy, and gas,” said Dr Povey.

"For instance if you were boiling pasta you may think it takes a long while to get the water boiling, but you would see a significant time improvement with this new pan and it would cook quicker.

"We've done a number of test kitchens and the chefs seem to like it, mainly down to the even heat distribution. But that is down to the good casting of the pan, as well as the product."

The pans, which were launched yesterday, are sold through Lakeland.

Dr Povey specializes in the designing of cooling systems for parts of jet and rocket engines that reach very high temperatures.

He added: "The problem with the current shape of the pan means a lot of the heat is dissipated into the air.

"So, it is an aero-dynamic and heat transfer problem and we applied the science used in rocket and jet engines to create a shape of a pan that is more energy efficient.

"So, it is a very similar problem but it certainly is a different product than what we're used to working on."

Even before their official launch, Flare pans have already become an award winning product.

The Worshipful Company of Engineers, a Livery Company of the City of London operating under Royal Charter, has awarded Dr Povey their '2014 Hawley Award' for "the most outstanding Engineering Innovation that delivers demonstrable benefit to the environment."

Matthew Canwell, Lakeland's Buying Director added: "People are becoming more energy conscience. This pan is energy efficient, it cooks quicker, and it saves gas and energy. So it ticks all the boxes really."

“We're always looking for new innovations that will save our customers both time and money.”

SEE ALSO: This Bugatti Toaster Puts All Other Toasters To Shame

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Two armed passengers boarded separate UK bound flights from Phoenix, Arizona, it has emerged.

One passenger was carrying a loaded gun and the second managed to smuggle a flick knife onto the aircraft.

They were both missed by the same agent employed by the Transportation Security Administration, a US government agency which screens passengers at American airports on June 22.

One of the two passengers, who is understood to have a criminal record, was picked up when trying to board a connecting flight to Paris.

The second passenger, who was carrying the knife, was also intercepted while transferring to another flight.

It is understood the agent, who was held responsible for both lapses, has since been sacked.

The disclosure comes within days of Washington demanding tighter controls on flights to the USA following new intelligence reports suggesting a jihadist terrorists had developed a new device capable of downing an aircraft.

This has led to passengers leaving the UK and a number of other countries having to switch on their mobile phones and laptops to prove that they contained working batteries.

Similar restrictions have not, as yet been imposed on passengers boarding aircraft in the USA.

It is understood the items were both in the passengers’ carry on luggage which should have been spotted as the bags were screened by security staff.

It is estimated that the TSA screens 1.8 million passengers every day and all bags are x-rayed as a matter of routine.

A spokesman for the TSA said: “TSA employs multiple layers of security to protect the traveling public.

“On board aircraft, these layers include reinforced cockpit doors, Federal Air Marshals, armed pilots and a vigilant public, as well as many others, both seen and unseen.”

A man has been charged with possession of a firearm and ammunition at Heathrow Airport. He was remanded in custody by magistrates.

SEE ALSO: Here's A Look At Some Of The Weirdest Weapons The TSA Has Confiscated From Passengers

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Country star Garth Brooks claimed he would “drop on my knees and beg” the Irish prime minister to allow him to play his five sell-out gigs in Dublin after the city council refused to let him perform all the shows on consecutive nights.

The US musician has refused to take up a deal whereby he could play three night-time shows and two matinees at Croke Park stadium.

Within three hours of saying he would do whatever it takes to put on the performances, Brooks said the proposal to play to 400,000 people over three days "cannot possibly compare" to five separate night concerts.

Instead, he has said he will play all the evening shows or nothing.

The singer offered to crawl, swim or fly to Ireland to meet the prime minister Enda Kenny to argue his case.

"If the prime minister (taoiseach) himself wants to talk to me, I will crawl, swim or fly over there this weekend and sit in front of him," the star pleaded.

"I will drop to my knees and beg for those 400,000 people to just have fun."

Brooks fans have been left heartbroken after waiting 17 years for the performer to return to their country after he took a prolonged break from music in 2001 to be with his family.

His publicist Nancy Seltzer said: "To treat 160,000 people differently than all the rest who will be seeing the show the way it was meant and created is wrong.

"He does not understand why it is once again put upon him to treat people less than they deserve to be treated and he still returns to why did they allow five shows to be sold and all these people to be disappointed.

"It is not his decision; it is, with the greatest of respect, the city council's."

Following tense talks between promoters Aiken and Dublin city planners the compromise deal was put forward by council chief executive Owen Keegan.

Brooks had been due for a run of five nights from Friday, July 25, to Tuesday, July 29, after near unprecedented demand for tickets.

The plug was only pulled on the massive stadium run in the last 10 days.

How did the drama come about?

In December Brooks announced he would play two come-back concerts at Croke Park Stadium, which has a capacity of 80,000.

The shows sold out quickly and three more dates were added to the tour which was due to run from July 25 to 29. Brooks sold a total of 400,000 for the five nights.

But a number businesses and residents near the stadium complained about five-concert run so Dublin City Council said two of the shows must be scrapped under its policy which states that only three “special events” each year can be played at the stadium. One Direction have already played three concerts there this year.

In response Brooks cancelled all five gigs, claiming that being forced to choose which concerts to cancel "would be like asking to choose one child over another."

At a press conference this week he appealed to Dublin to change its mind: "It's a simple yes. Open it up for five nights. Let everybody have fun."

It has been estimated that Dublin could lose out on £40million in tourist spending due to the cancellation.

Dublin Lord Mayor Christy Burke had attempted to intervene in discussions between council leader Mr Keegan and Brooks promoters Aiken and the issue was raised in the Dail parliament in Dublin.

The Lord Mayor later suggested local residents around Croke Park who were in favour of the shows were seeking an approach to US president Barack Obama to try to break the impasse.

The White House was forced to dismiss any suggestion of such high level intervention and the US Embassy in Dublin politely batted it away.

"No residents in the Croke Park area contacted us regarding the Garth Brooks concerts. If they did, we would say that it's a matter for local authorities and the private parties involved," a spokeswoman said.

Then during the stand-off between the city council and Brooks' promoters, the Mexican ambassador to Ireland stepped forward to offer his diplomatic services.

Furious discussions between city council officials and Brooks and his promoters eventually led to the offer of the deal which would see him play two matinees.

Why has it become such a big deal?

Brooks is the third biggest-selling artist of all time in terms of albums behind only the Beatles and Elvis.

He has not released a studio album of new music since Scarecrow in 2001, when he announced he would be retiring from music to look raise his daughters at home in Oklahoma until the youngest had got to college.

His comeback was confirmed this week when he announced a new record deal with RCA and Sony, as well as a world tour, whose dates have yet to be announced.

The Irish concerts fulfill a promise he made to his Irish fans at a 1997 Croke Park concert to come back and perform again.

Is there still any hope for Brooks fans?

Brooks claimed he will do “whatever it takes” to avoid canceling the concerts, despite his continued to refusal to perform the matinee shows.

Speaking at a press conference, he said: “Matinees, I don't have a problem with matinees. I'm going to tell you though, sticking 160,000 people out in the middle of the day, I don't know if I'm worried about them or me more, to tell you the truth, because I'm getting older.”

But he added: "I personally will do whatever it takes except canceling on people."

The shipping operation to bring the stage and set equipment to Croke Park is still believed to be en route to Ireland.

The singer said he had planned to bring "Superman to the show" in Dublin.

He described the set up as a one-off and monstrous, including a video screen 255 feet wide and 20 feet tall, and needing 12 days pre-loading and five days heavy loading.

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'Three thousand people around the world have the Tough Mudder logo tattooed on them,’ Will Dean says inside the company’s unassuming London office. ‘I mean, people are not getting British Airways tattooed on them. No disrespect to BA, but we identify with something. We mean something to people.’

Of course, Dean is a touch biased. He is the co-founder and CEO of the endurance event firm. ‘People ask me if Tough Mudder is a cult,’ he continues. ‘Well, that question must mean we are a cult brand. And what is a cult brand?’ He answers his own question. ‘It has values. It has meaning. It stands for something. And if you stand for something, by definition you can’t represent everyone in society. For what we are, that is OK.’

The course

Tough Mudder — now estimated to be worth upwards of $86 million — means an awful lot to an awful lot of people. And not only to those moved to visit a tattoo parlor. By the end of 2014 two million men and women aged 18 and over will have entered a Tough Mudder event (paying $85-170 each, depending on how quickly one signs up) since its inaugural race in Pennsylvania four years ago.

About 78% of those two million will manage to haul themselves across the finish line. Which goes some way to explaining Tough Mudder’s appeal. It is hard. Really, really hard. For most of us, running 12 miles is challenge enough. A Tough Mudder course covers 12 miles of relentlessly muddy, hilly terrain. It also hurls sadistic roadblocks in your way.

Electroshock Therapy is perhaps the most infamous of the 20 or so obstacles you will face. Here, wet and muddy competitors have to plough across yet more mud to find their way through a curtain of live wires that emit 10,000 volts of electricity. There are lots of wires and lots of shocks. The Arctic Enema sees participants plunge into a dumpster filled with ice water, where they then have to dive down to pass under a plank that crosses the tank to (hopefully) emerge on the other side. At the Funky Monkey you will find a long run of butter- and mud-greased monkey bars at various inclines. Lose your grip (and you will) and you are destined for a pool of icy brown water.

The course is so difficult (‘Probably the toughest event on the planet,’ the firm’s branding shouts), you enter as part of a team. Your team’s support is vital — you won’t complete a Tough Mudder event without accepting a bunk-up here or outstretched arm there — and has helped foster a collaborative spirit that is the very opposite of the solitary nature of marathon running. Despite the strength in numbers, Tough Mudder requires entrants to sign a death waiver. More on this later.

Why people do it

Considering the dangers, it is easy to question why anyone would want to sign up for such unrelenting muddy misery. But for Dean and Tough Mudder’s co-founder Guy Livingstone, it is all reasonably simple. ‘It’s more of a mental challenge than a physical one,’ Livingstone says. ‘We live in an increasingly sanitized world where we sit behind computers, we don’t get our hands dirty, and health and safety seems to rule everything. Playing in the mud brings out the inner child in all of us.’

And it is rather different from competing in regular endurance events. ‘It is the antithesis of triathlons and shaving your legs and worrying about your split times,’ Dean says. ‘There is something counter-cultural about it. There are no winners and no losers; it is just about getting through it. An American once told me it’s like communism in that way. Only an American would say that, but I think there’s something in it. Our start line states, “We don’t care about time, we care about your best and what is better than your best.” You also get to be a bit goofy and you can’t take yourself too seriously doing a Tough Mudder event. You are going to fall over and get covered in mud.’

Dean and Livingstone make for an interesting pair. Both 33, they met at 13, boarders at Oundle School in Northamptonshire. At the age of 17, they set up their first company together, selling color-changing nail polishes to various British trade fairs. In 2007, Dean was at Harvard Business School following a five-year spell at the Home Office working in counterterrorism, while Livingstone was growing frustrated with life as a corporate lawyer in the City.

‘I was running a triathlon in the States about six years ago,’ Dean says. ‘The zip on my wetsuit jammed so I turned to the guy next to me and asked him if he could pull on it. He glared back at me, despite the fact it was a two-second ask. As I was cycling around, I thought it was interesting how everything is now so hyper-competitive and we constantly benchmark ourselves against each other. I found marathons and triathlons a bit solitary and boring, but did them at Harvard because I needed something to keep me focused. I was living with another Brit at Harvard and we’d go for runs and start taking people with us. I realized it was a lot more fun doing something with other people. Those two ideas were the genesis of it. I then started looking around in the States and there weren’t any events out there that were tough, about teamwork, and challenging enough that someone with a day job could train and get into reasonable shape to complete it, but not so hard that you have to give up drinking for nine months. I think there’s been a generational shift in terms of the value of experiences over and above any material goods. People our age don’t talk about what kind of car they drive, but I think they do talk an awful lot about what they did on holiday. I also saw us filling the gap in the market for a team-based challenge. Twenty years ago more people were joining football or rugby teams but it’s become harder to commit with work, travel and families. I combined those ideas and began getting excited. Everyone around me said, “Well, this isn’t bad, but fire, electricity, mud and ice water?” People thought I was a little eccentric.’

Meanwhile, Livingstone was cooped up in a London law firm and slowly going mad. ‘Will was looking for someone he knew well and trusted, plus would offer something different,’ Livingstone says. ‘He showed me the business plan he’d written at Harvard the summer before and asked me what I thought. I said it looked fun and exciting and I was up for it. Had I spent any longer as a corporate lawyer my appetite for risk would have been completely bashed out of me.’

The pair headed for Brooklyn, New York, where Dean had decamped after Harvard. As they huddled over laptops for 18 hours a day, sleeping on blow-up beds, momentum built quickly. Perhaps not least thanks to their nationality. ‘It’s helpful to have an English accent,’ Livingstone says. ‘Especially when you’re dealing with different venue owners and commercial partners.’

Exploiting accents may have accelerated Tough Mudder’s journey to the start line but adopting an American attitude towards entrepreneurial endeavors proved vital. Both men feel their achievements highlight the lingering snobbery Britain has towards self-made business success.

‘Entrepreneurship is celebrated in the States,’ Livingstone says. ‘People treat it as the true realization of the American dream. Business leaders in the US are celebrated in a way that they’re not so much in the UK. Richard Branson is loathed as much as he’s liked, for example. It’s interesting to me; here’s someone who’s created an incredibly powerful brand, but people just tend to think he’s a bit arriviste. Americans are often affronted when I explain that most Brits think Branson’s a bit nouveau riche and showy,’ he says, smiling. ‘They say, “This is what’s wrong with your country. The guy’s created so many jobs. He’s a badass!” And I think there’s still a mentality that business people are those who couldn’t make it within a profession. Those Arthur Daley stereotypes still exist.’

Tough Mudder has faced opposition far sterner than lazy stereotypes. Its almost instant popularity — helped significantly through aggressively harnessing the marketing powers of Facebook and Twitter — brought with it controversy. Dean faced allegations of ideas theft, with former British Army soldier Billy Wilson filing a lawsuit against him in February 2010 claiming Dean had taken proprietary information from his own Tough Guy event. Wilson asserted that in July 2008, while at Harvard, Dean had offered to write a report on how to grow Tough Guy’s business in exchange for hands-on experience with the company and access to the firm’s records and financial information. According to Wilson, Dean failed to file a satisfactory report before launching the strikingly similar Tough Mudder. The pair settled their case out of court in 2011, with Dean’s company reportedly paying Wilson $725,000 and both agreeing never to speak publicly about the case. Wilson is not the only rival to speak out against Dean’s tactics. Joe DeSena, the founder of the endurance outfit Spartan Race, spoke to Outside magazine. ‘There’s not a person on this planet I despise more than Will Dean,’ he said.

The threat of death

On April 20, 2013, Tough Mudder experienced its first fatality, at an event in Gerrardstown, West Virginia. Witnesses told police 28-year-old Avishek Sengupta died after being submerged in water for between five and 15 minutes during an incident on the Walk the Plank obstacle. A coroner ruled the death an accidental drowning and no criminal charges were pressed against Tough Mudder.

‘It is very difficult to achieve something where you are doing something that is meaningful and worthwhile without exposing yourself or others to some sort of risk,’ Dean says, speaking slowly and carefully when I ask him about Sengupta’s death.

‘If you look at a typical ski resort, skiing-related fatalities compared to that of a marathon are significantly higher. The death rate for triathlons is one in 60,000. We’ve now had 1.5 million people enter a Tough Mudder event. I think we knew very early on that if we were in business for long enough, statistically, something would happen. We live in a world where there are increasing numbers of obese people and depressed teenagers and I really believe in that sense Tough Mudder is a force for good in the world. I am very proud of our safety record. That isn’t a bland corporate line, that is from Will Dean the individual saying I am very happy with how it has worked out.’

Big business

After two years of American success, Dean and Livingstone returned home to launch a raft of British events, and further territories are ready to fall. It has contributed more than £600,000 to its official British charity partner, Help for Heroes, and more than $6 million to its US equivalent, the Wounded Warrior Project. A TV show has long been mooted. Rather like a professional football club, they have a growing list of commercial partners, including a multi-million-dollar kit deal (with the fast-rising US brand Under Armour), a mineral water supplier (Volvic), pain relief (Advil) and razor (Bic). A fresh batch of rival firms have arrived, only helping enrich the ‘mud obstacle race’ market (worth an estimated $250 million) for its undisputed leader. ‘We see them as feeder events, frankly,’ Livingstone says.

Tough Mudder employees — 150 across three offices in Brooklyn, London and Berlin — enjoy a new unlimited holiday policy (‘We’ve found high achievers take more vacation and those who aren’t performing as well take less,’ Dean says. ‘In America there was a fanfare and high fives when it was announced. In Europe it was, “What’s the catch?” It’s about getting the team to take responsibility.’) and the brand’s revenue has leapt from about £1.3 million in 2010 to nearly £70 million last year. Competitors aren’t just checking Tough Mudder off a bucket list once they have claimed the orange headband that acts as the race medal. They are entering multiple races a year.

‘I believe very strongly in what drives this repeat user base,’ Livingstone says. ‘It’s the power of human touch. On a lot of the obstacles you need to be pushed or pulled over and you definitely need to be supporting other people. People don’t finish a Tough Mudder event and say, “Oh, that was good. I got touched by lots of people,” but there is something very powerful about that tangible sense. It’s very visceral.’ Dean is bolder when discussing Tough Mudder’s influence. ‘People start using your name as a term, like Google, you know? You then realise your brand has become synonymous with the entire industry. I sometimes hear people say, “Yeah, I did a Tough Mudder, but it wasn’t one of your events.” You get mixed emotions but on balance you think it’s a good thing.’ Much like, perhaps, the feeling you would have at a Tough Mudder finish line.

Who does tough mudder appeal to?

Paul Bass

Attempting to complete all 16 Tough Mudder UK events this year with his friend Craig Soulsby to raise money for Cancer Research and the Alzheimer’s Society ( justgiving.com/teams/TMFR2014 )

‘You can’t really train for them. It’s a real psychological and physical mix of demands. I work in construction and I’m in an office most of the time and I get bored. This is something new and exciting. You’re running around like a kid doing these crazy obstacles without a care in the world. The first time I did the Arctic Enema I couldn’t breathe. You body falls into shock and you can’t breathe. You do panic when you first face the obstacles, but you soon learn what to expect. And the atmosphere is incredible. It’s the spirit that exists through the experience that carries people through. It’s team-driven. A lot of the obstacles are just impossible unless you receive assistance. And people do stop and assist. These are people you wouldn’t normally even make eye contact with on a train. It’s pretty powerful.’

Sophy Mahon

An air hostess who set up the Hosties 4 Heroes charity and is running multiple Tough Mudders with her colleagues ( hosties4heroes.co.uk )

‘You don’t even realise how far you’ve run because it’s so enjoyable. I know I couldn’t do even a half-marathon, it would bore me to tears. People want a purpose and goal to their training. When you’re stuck in the office all day, you want something to look forward to. I don’t know why people do the London Marathon. Obviously it’s something very rewarding that you can check off the bucket list, but no one I’ve ever spoken to has said that they had any fun doing it! They’re hobbling around and crying. But when you finish a Tough Mudder you’re incredibly excited and demanding your pint of cider. And it’s about conquering fears, which people really do because it’s so dangerous. When you sign that death waiver before you run, you do question what you’re doing.’

Nigel Thomas

Ex-SAS, Tough Mudder’s Head of Tough since 2011

‘I’m the chief fitness officer for Tough Mudder. I put the Tough in Tough Mudder. I get to do a lot of the fun stuff. Coming up with ideas for the obstacles themselves and dreaming up new ideas. The nervous part is trying it all out as I’m one of the first to test a new obstacle, if not the first. But it’s part of my background to always want to push boundaries. Sometimes you do think, “Wow, that might be a little bit too much, or that wall might be a little bit too high to get over,” but it is tremendous fun. It’s the teamwork and camaraderie you develop as well. You get people from all walks of life: military, police, sport clubs, individuals. When you go along and speak to the families, it’s fascinating. You speak to family members there to support relatives and they say, “Oh, I couldn’t do this,” and they’re there in 12 months’ time saying, “My husband or wife has just done that, so why can’t I?” It’s that spirit that I think is missing in the Western world these days.’

Aaron German

Also attempting to run all 16 Tough Mudder UK events in 2014 to raise money for Help for Heroes ( bmycharity.com/Aaronsmudder )

‘After serving eight years in the US Army it was something that I was always going to find fun, but I was surprised at how hard it is. It’s a mental thing. You have to know that you can do it. You have to have the confidence for it as it’s completely out of the ordinary. I think people were starting to get bored with marathons and Tough Mudder offers such a physicality. Just the running through mud alone is difficult. But then you throw in the water, electricity and fire and it becomes a mental challenge, too. I think people really love getting back to nature. If you live in the city and work in the city, you’re not connecting with nature at all. And then suddenly you’re running through the woods, knee-deep in mud, and walking through creeks.’

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A soldier blown up 17 times by insurgent attacks has received a Military Cross from the Prince of Wales

A soldier nicknamed “bomb magnet” after being blown up 17 times by insurgent attacks in his career has recalled how he thought he had lost his leg in the most recent incident, as he received a medal at Buckingham Palace.

The Prince of Wales even questioned WO1 Patrick Hyde on how he had been caught in so many blasts as he presented the 38-year-old with a Military Cross for “the extraordinary extent of his sense of responsibility and personal gallantry”.

WO1 Hyde, Regimental Sergeant Major of the 4th Bn The Rifles, said after the ceremony that the risk of being caught in bomb attacks in Helmand province was “an occupational hazard”. His frequent brushes with death had not made him superstitious.

He said: “There's no lucky charms, when you operate in Sangin, as I have done, it becomes a bit of an occupational hazard up there. I'm just fortunate enough that I've survived.

"We're trained to do what we do and it becomes second nature. You work together as a team and regardless of the threat there's a job to be done at the end of it."

WO1 Hyde, from Cheltenham, was awarded the decoration for actions last July, when he was part of a unit advising Afghan troops. Fearing the area was sown with booby-traps, he went into a compound to retrieve his commanding officer who was with a senior Afghan commander.

Before they could get out, an Afghan soldier stepped on a bomb feet away. The Afghan lost a leg and WO1 Hyde was knocked to the ground, badly wounded.

He said: “I remember it bloody hurt. I thought I had lost my leg, but fortunately it was still there and once the dust had settled, we got out of there.”

His citation said that despite lying wounded on the ground, he arranged for troops to be removed by helicopter and avoided more casualties.

On a previous tour of Helmand, when he fought in the notorious Sangin district in 2009, his vehicle was hit by homemade bombs 11 times and he was on foot patrols hit by bombs twice. On two other occasions his Mastiff armoured troop carrier was struck by rockets. He had also been in blast once before, on a tour in Iraq.

He joked: “My family don't want me to go back.”

Two other soldiers also received the Military Cross at the investiture on Friday.

Cpl William Mills of 4th Bn The Rifles, was praised for his “exceptional courage and front line leadership” that were “an inspiration to each and every man”.

The 25-year-old from Stroud in Gloucestershire led his section on 28 air assaults behind enemy lines during his six month tour as part of the Brigade Reaction Force.

One occasion he led an attack across 400 yards of open ground under heavy fire to push back insurgent fighters. During another operation he was narrowly missed by heavy fire charging across 100 yards of open ground.

He said: “You don’t really think about it, you just carry on with the job.”

Major Geoffrey Brocklehurst, of the Royal Regiment of Scotland, was awarded the Military Cross for “exemplary leadership and inspirational motivation”.

His citation said he had personally led patrols to force back insurgents surrounding a besieged patrol base.

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A photograph of Bethany Townsend wearing a bikini with her colostomy bags on display has become a turning point for those with Crohn's disease, says a fellow sufferer

It’s normally about now, halfway through the summer, that Facebook users start suffering from “hot-dog fatigue”.

Nothing to do with an overdose of barbecuing, this is the exhaustion experienced by social-media addicts after being bombarded for six weeks with photographs of their female friends’ tanned, glossy legs looking a little like sausages simmering in the sun of one holiday destination or another.

Earlier this month, though, a holiday photograph posted online knocked all those “hot-dog selfies” into a cocked hat. Bethany Townsend, 23, from Worcester, was pictured lying on a sunbed in a bikini, with two colostomy bags on show.

Within days, it had been viewed more than 10 million times, had more than 200,000 “likes” on Facebook and elicited more than 10,000 comments from users, many of them sufferers, like Ms Townsend, of Crohn’s disease.

Typical replies included “Thank you, you’ve been an inspiration” and “You’ve made me feel like I can go on holiday and wear my bikini”. Some were so inspired they posted selfies, complete with “bags”, or bared their abdomens to show the long, thick scars they carried as a result of bowel surgery for the debilitating illness.

Ms Townsend may only have published her photograph a matter of days ago, but, already, it feels like an important turning point for all those who suffer from Crohn’s and the related condition, ulcerative colitis.

More than 250,000 people in Britain have one or other of these diseases – or another inflammatory bowel condition – but the illness is still mired in secrecy, embarrassment, ignorance and fear. Thousands will have no idea that their friends or family members have been fitted with a colostomy bag and have been told they must live with it for the rest of their lives.

It’s perhaps not surprising. An inflammation of the gut affecting the sufferer’s ability to digest food, absorb nutrients and get rid of waste, Crohn’s draws attention to an aspect of our existence – our toilet habits – that we would all rather keep private. The fact that you might be getting rid of your body’s waste through an external bag, connected to a surgical opening in the body called a stoma, is not something most would care to broadcast. Consider, too, that most sufferers are diagnosed in their teens or twenties, a time when we are still uncertain about who we are and the opinions of others still loom large in our lives, and one can understand why a taboo exists.

But the truth is, this ignorance and secrecy actually adds to the suffering of those afflicted.

I know something about this. I was diagnosed with Crohn’s in 1999 after noticing I had failed to get rid of a stomach bug I’d picked up on a holiday in Egypt four years previously. I was incredibly lucky – the only symptoms I had were slight diarrhoea and occasional stomach cramps – and, after a short course of steroids to combat the inflammation, I carried on with my life, only needing to take an anti-spasmodic roughly once every nine months when I was laid low.

A surgeon had wanted to operate on me privately, but I decided at the time I didn’t want to go down that path while I was still more-or-less asymptomatic, so declined his (I’m sure completely un-self-interested) offer. I pat myself on the back for that decision every day.

Things did get a tiny bit worse in 2012 and I started taking azathioprine, an immunosuppressant, which has, so far, ameliorated the symptoms (there is not cure for Crohn’s or Colitis). I don’t even get the stomach cramps anymore.

Sadly, most people are not as fortunate as me. Charlotte Guinea lived with the worsening symptoms of ulcerative colitis for four years. From the day in 2008 when, aged 17, she doubled up in pain during a college trip to America, doctors struggled to control her condition.

“Life with colitis is 'Where’s the next toilet?, 'Do I need to take spare clothes out with me in case I have an accident?’ At 17, 18, 19 years old, I just thought, 'This shouldn’t be happening to me’. It was difficult and very embarrassing,” she says.

She had a bedroom with an en-suite bathroom at her home in Fleet, Hampshire, but the pain was sometimes so bad that she did not even have the energy to walk from her bed to the lavatory. Instead, she would end up sleeping on the bathroom floor.

The various drugs she was prescribed to tackle the disease also had debilitating side-effects. Steroids made her face swell up and produced mood swings. Another drug, methotrexate, which she took once a week, was so strong that she was unable to get out of bed for the following 24 hours.

“All my dreams, all my ambitions just went out the window,” she says.

There was one answer: surgery. Involving, as it would, the removal of her large intestine, her colon and part of her rectum, she was understandably reluctant. She also hated the idea of having to use a colostomy bag.

But her mind was made up for her in March 2012. “I had an accident on the way to work,” she says. “When I arrived, I phoned a colleague in the office and asked her if she could come outside and help me, but when she got there I just broke down. I’d had enough of it.”

Charlotte was told by doctors her colitis had spread and her bowel was on the verge of rupturing, which could kill her. It was, as she puts it, “a bag or a box”; she had the operation that week.

Today, she regrets being so scared of the bag and wishes she’d had surgery earlier. “Three weeks after the operation, I went out with friends and had my first drop of alcohol for two years. I was in a restaurant and I thought, 'This is wonderful. I don’t need to go to the toilet, I’m out in public, I’m out with my friends again, I’m being a normal 21-year-old.’ Life was just amazing. All of a sudden, everything I wanted to do, I could do. It gave me that second chance.”

She now works with the charity Crohn’s and Colitis UK to support other sufferers and raise awareness of the disease. She is also one of the many people who have posted a holiday bag photo online.

“I was on holiday in Ibiza with a friend, on a girls’ holiday. I began the holiday wearing high-waisted bikinis and swimsuits thinking I needed to cover up. But after four days I just thought, 'Do you know what? I don’t care any more. I don’t want to keep having to hide it. People will stare at me, but people need to be educated.’

“My friend took it and I posted it to the Crohn’s and Colitis website. I thought it would just be seen by people who used the site. I didn’t realise it was actually visible to all of my friends on Facebook and all of my friends’ friends. It was a bit of a shock, but the feedback I’ve had has been amazing. Lots of people have said I’ve been an inspiration to them. I just want people to be able to talk about it without being embarrassed and for people to be educated.

“People always used to say how well I looked, but they had no idea how I was feeling inside. If people can see there’s something there, they will finally realise that you really are ill.”

Drugs work for many sufferers. They’ve worked, so far, for me. But 50 per cent of patients with Crohn’s will have to have an operation within five years. That doesn’t always mean they will have to have a colostomy bag or a stoma – in some cases, the surgeon can cut out the ulcerated section and staple the healthy bowel back together. But anyone with the disease, or with colitis, needs to know it’s a possibility

With the disease on the rise in the UK, particularly in immigrant populations – it is thought to be linked to a western diet and an over-sterile environment, among other things – it is vital to explode the myths around Crohn’s and colitis.

Dr James Lindsay, consultant gastroenterologist at Barts Health NHS Trust in London, is one of many doctors working with Crohn’s and Colitis UK to raise awareness. “Anything that explains to the public that you can have a normal life and decreases the understandable and very prevalent fear of having a stoma is a positive thing,” he says.

Charlotte adds: “People think it’s just a bit of a tummy upset – they don’t know the effect it has on you and how hard the treatment is.”

For more information, visit www.crohnsandcolitis.org.uk

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A new bag scanning system, which was put through its paces at the World Cup in Brazil, could be used in airports to help cut waiting times

The Qylatron Entry Experience Solution consists of a honeycomb-shaped machine that is capable of scanning up to five bags at once and can detect a number of threats, including explosives, weapons and chemicals, eliminating the need for officials to look inside or carry out manual checks.

It was used ahead of matches at the 43,900-capacity Arena da Baixada Stadium in the southern city of Curitiba, and is now being touted as a less invasive alternative to current airport security methods.

Fans in Curitiba were asked to hold their match ticket up to the machine, which then assigned them one of the scanning “pods”. Bags were placed inside and collected on the opposite end. When a threat was detected, the pod turned red and a security officer alerted. Otherwise it turned green and the fan was free to take their bag and go.

The Qylatron was programmed not only to detect dangerous items, including weapons, but also more mundane items on the FIFA banned list, such as giant flags, megaphones and vuvuzelas.

Tweaks to the system, and more testing, could eventually see it trialled at airports, according to Qylur, the Californian company behind it, which is – perhaps understandably – not keen to disclose exactly how it works.

According to its website, the Qylatron screening system “ scans significantly more people than current airport checkpoint lanes, and also offers a drastic reduction in operating costs coupled with higher threat-envelope screening.”

It adds that, though air travel poses a somewhat different “threat envelope”, they also need to be able to handle “high traffic flows while affording passengers the respect and dignity they so rightly deserve… putting an end to the inconvenience of passenger divesture of personal items, such as clothing and laptops. This will significantly increase passenger flow, lower overall operating costs, and provide drastic improvement to the passenger security experience.”

Lisa Dolev, CEO and founder of Qylur, said: “We heard from dozens of soccer fans at the World Cup about how much fun they had personally interacting with the Qylatron. This is especially gratifying as it validates the core principle of why I founded Qylur – to preserve human liberty while offering the most advanced security-screening technology in the industry.”

A report last year by Telegraph Travel found that current airport security measures are increasingly being called into question by travellers and security experts, with Chris Yates, the former aviation security editor at the specialist publisher IHS Jane’s, saying: "I’m not sure airport security has ever stopped anybody from doing anything, anywhere." In a poll of more than 3,000 readers, 84 per cent said they thought airport security measures did not make them feel any safer.

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SEE ALSO: Everything You Need To Know About Windows 9, Microsoft's Next Major Software Release

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MH17 flight feared to have been shot down over Ukraine was taking a significantly different route to the usual course for flights from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, according to aviation expert.

The crashed MH17 flight took a route 300 miles to the north of its usual path, an aviation expert has said.

Robert Mark, a commercial pilot who edits Aviation International News Safety magazine, said that most Malaysia Airlines flights from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur normally travelled along a route significantly further south than the plane which crashed.

Malaysia Airlines has insisted its plane travelled on an "approved route" used by many other carriers.

But Mr Mark said: "I can only tell you as a commercial pilot myself that if we had been routed that way, with what's been going on in the Ukraine and the Russian border over the last few weeks and months, I would never have accepted that route.

"I went into the FlightAware system, which we all use these days to see where airplanes started and where they tracked, and I looked back at the last two weeks' worth of MH17 flights, which was this one.

"And the flight today tracked very, very much further north into the Ukraine than the other previous flights did ... there were MH17 versions that were 300 miles south of where this one was."

Records of recent MH17 flights on the FlightAware appear to bear out Mr Mark's claim, with earlier flights significantly further south than the flight that crashed.

Mr Mark’s intervention came amid mounting questions over why passenger jets were flying over the war zone three months after pilots were warned to avoid it.

Aviation safety authorities in America and Europe warned pilots in April about potential risks flying in or near Ukraine airspace.

However experts claimed that operators continued to fly across the zone because it was the quickest and cheapest route for some flights.

Norman Shanks, a former head of group security at the BAA airports group, said: "Malaysia Airlines, like a number of other carriers, has been continuing to use it because it is a shorter route, which means less fuel and therefore less money."

Attacks on aircraft in the area have been rife. In the past week alone two Ukrainian military aircraft were shot down and a third was damaged by a missile.

Eurocontrol, which coordinates European air traffic control, said Ukrainian authorities had now closed all routes in the east of the country.

A spokesman for Malaysia Airlines said: "This route is an approved route. 15 out of 16 airlines use this route. It's a safe route - most other countries use this route.

"So we were not given any notice to change this."

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The accepted wisdom is that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to excell at any discipline, but teaching kids to be good at sport is actually more complicated than that, finds Matt Gaw.

It’s the primary school sports day this week and I’m feeling guilty. While my preparation for the centrepiece "dad’s race" has been almost flawless (the personal trainer, the fitness shakes, the shiny new running spikes), my five-year-old son has hardly balanced an egg in anger.

Granted his raw ability and giddy enthusiasm may be enough to see him through this time (we have medal hopes for skipping, running and a strong chance of a good showing in the sack race) but I fear his woeful lack of dedication could put him on course for being nothing more than an “also ran”.

After all, practice makes perfect. Or at least, that’s what popular wisdom would have us believe, with writers and authorities lining up to tell us that it takes 10,000 hours of practice and graft for an athlete to become distinguished from the rest. First formulated in a 1993 paper by Anders Ericsson, professor at the University of Colorado, the 10k hour concept has been popularised in Geoff Colvin's Talent is Overrated, The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle and most notably by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers .

According to such thinking if my son is to stand a solid chance at competing at a serious level (and not being embarrassed at future sports days) he needs to put in serious levels of work. By my reckoning, if he wants to hit the magic 10,000 hour marker and swap the egg and spoon for an Olympic start in 2028, he needs to train for two hours a day.

Only two hours a day?! I hear you say. Easy, especially considering that he will probably do many more hours of training in the run up to the games. Who knows, if he really puts his back into it, he might even be able to have some down-time on his sixth birthday or a lie in at Christmas.

Of course, I’m joking (he will be up at the crack of dawn this Christmas). But the idea of early specialisation, where a child is intensively drilled in a single discipline does appear to have been normalised. A glance at any forum-based discussion on children and sports is guaranteed to mention 10,000 hours at least once.

But does it work? According to Stewart Laing, senior lead performance pathway scientist for the UK talent team, working for the English Institute of Sport, the simple answer is no.

“The list of things that are related to possible risks of early specialisation is physical and mental exhaustion, risk of over-use injuries and increasing risk of premature drop out,” he explains.

“In targeting the 2028 Olympics by drilling one item, you risk them (your child) dropping out of the sport prematurely, while they might naturally go on and progress anyway."

Instead, argues Laing, it’s important that children experience a wide range of sports, especially those with "foundational elements" like swimming and gymnastics.

He adds: “Gymnastics has a huge transfer over in terms of spatial awareness the ability to rotate roll and twist. All of those things are transferable. I have just run the Girls For Gold recruitment campaign for canoeing and we’ve got athletes there who have gone into sprint kayaking that come from a multitude of backgrounds, some come from equestrian, athletics, hockey, some golf.”

Jacquie Beltrao, Sky presenter and former Olympian, is currently supporting her child’s push to take part in tennis at a top level.

“I think parents have to ask the question ‘Am I doing this for me, because I didn’t realise my sporting ambitions?’ Or ‘Am I doing it for them because that’s what they want to do?’”, she says.

“The main thing about sport and people that do well at any sport, whether it is running, cycling or tennis, is they have a real passion for that sport. That passion has to come from themselves, it’s not going to come from their parents no matter how much you want it. It has to come from within the child.”

Echoing Laing’s advice about trying a variety of sports, she adds: “Your job as a parent is to make them try as many sports as possible and see if they have an aptitude for something, or really fall in love with something.”

So, does this mean that sport for children should just be about the taking part in as many possible events? And furthermore, does this also mean winning goes out the window?

Not so, according to Beltrao.

“Children have to do competitions and go to practice once or twice a week,” she says. “If they are asked to compete, you should get them to compete, because that’s what it’s about and it’s how they learn. It’s also when parents learn whether children are up for it or not. You don’t want to waste your time pushing them into competitions if they don’t like it, but equally if they like the training let them train.”

Laing sounds a note of caution about the number of competitions young athletes take part in, but agrees. “Competition for development is important, and by that I mean developing the mindset and attitude of competition.”

There is another point worth bearing in mind. Most advice so far points to parents as having a purely supportive role in the development of young athletes, as opposed to drill sergeants standing over whimpering five-year-olds. But this doesn’t mean parents can’t be, or shouldn’t be, involved in guiding their child, especially when it does come to specialisation later down the line.

Beltrao explains her views were reinforced after a conversation with the father of double Olympic gold medal-winning cyclist Laura Trott. “He said what you need to do is carry on doing the sport you do and if it’s not happening for them at the age of 14, whip them out and put them into something else. If you’ve trained all your life as a gymnast, there nothing to stop you being a track cyclist, you’ll probably have factors that will translate into another sport.”

So, while my training will continue (after all this could be my last chance for glory) the badgering of my five-year-old will stop. Indeed he is already planning his own sporting schedule. It’s now just a case of finding a sword-fighting class and a ski jump in Suffolk.

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A team of international monitors on Monday inspected refrigerated railcars in the Ukrainian town of Torez.

As each of the train wagons carrying a total of more than 200 corpses was opened and examined by two men wearing masks and headlights, an overpowering stench emanated.

"I think the storage of the bodies is (of) good quality," Peter Van Vliet, the forensic expert leading the Dutch team, said after examining the corpses.

The expert, speaking as 50 armed insurgents looked on, said his team would head to the main crash site about 15 kilometres (nine miles) away.

The investigators were accompanied by a team of international monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) who have been visiting the impact site over the past few days.

Mr Vilet told the press that the train was soon to move, but admitted he didn't know where.

"The train is going on transport, we don't know the time, we don't know the destination, but got a promise (that) the train is going."

A reporter then asks: "Where is the train going?"

"We don't know yet."

"Why?" the reporter presses.

"I don't know really, that's not my decision."

Source: APTN

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Homeowners in London’s most costly postcodes have a unique opportunity to trade in city living for a life in the countryside.

A 23,000-acre luxury hotel in Colorado, Kessler Canyon has been placed on the market for £21 million ($35 million) – less than the price of a five-bedroom house in Mayfair– and it comes with a host of enticing features. Located in a secluded, private valley its vast grounds are home to bears, bobcats, lynx, eagles, elk and deer and its lakes teem with trout; for guests who want to explore their surroundings, hiking and biking trails run to the mountains.

The property is owned by the Kessler family, who run a small chain of high-end boutique hotels throughout the region. Bought by them 10 years ago, it was initially a basic western ranch. Now fully modernised and well-established, it is being offered for sale so the family can concentrate on new projects. Whoever purchases the estate will be permitted to convert the hotel and its surrounding grounds into a private residence should they wish. Alternatively they can continue to operate the property as a resort, but that path of action is perhaps best for individuals who would view that endeavour as a labour of love rather than a lucrative investment opportunity. Mike Hall, director of the estate agents brokering Kessler Canyon’s sale, says: “Kessler Canyon is not a commercial real estate investment, it’s more of a lifestyle investment”.

The property is currently part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection, which alongside Ritz-Carlton, Edition and Renaissance, is one of the hotel group’s luxury hotel brands. As such, standard facilities are as expected – a spa, games room, gym and cinema are all on hand for guests who wish to remain indoors – but other features are more in keeping with the hotel’s southern states setting.

In place of a traditional hotel restaurant the resort offers a ranch-style dining experience and a significant number of guests visit the retreat to hunt. A shooting academy will teach students “proficient, ethical and strategic shooting in a variety of shooting regiments in a world-class setting.” Groups can hunt the aforementioned elk and deer using a bow, rifle or muzzleloader, and pheasant and quail can be shot upland.

Guest accommodation, spread across 13 guest rooms and two suites in the Orchard Lake Guesthouse and Homestead buildings, is luxurious but intentionally rustic. Handmade wooden furniture decorates the room, most of which are without televisions, and a scattering of cabins, with wood-burning stoves, can be rented in the woodlands that surround the main property.

All-inclusive low-season room rates at Kessler Canyon star at £480 per night including service. It is for sale through American estate agents Hall and Hall .

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A 23-year old from Portsmouth is more popular on Youtube than Justin Bieber or One Direction. Theo Merz tries to fathom the appeal

You know you’re a proper grown-up when you can do three things: drink a Bloody Mary without gagging, discuss house prices and greet a youth trend with bewildered incomprehension. You'll have to believe me when I say I can do the first, the evidence for the second is here, but the third had always eluded me. Until now - until the moment I discovered Stampylongnose.

Stampylongnose, Stampylonghead, Stampy Cat, call him what you will. All I know is that my nephew and niece love him. They say they like him more than the TV and, though I didn’t ask for fear of appearing needy in front of a ten-year-old and an eight-year-old, they probably like him more than me. They spend up to two hours a day watching videos that Stampy - real name Joseph Garrett, a 23-year-old from Portsmouth - has uploaded to Youtube of him and his friends playing Minecraft, a computer game in which users construct their own world out of building blocks.

They are not alone in their obsession. The Stampylonghead channel on Youtube is one of the top ten most-viewed in the world, ahead of Katy Perry, One Direction and Justin Bieber. Stampy uploads a video a day for more than three million subscribers, which could be making him £200,000 a month in advertising revenues from the site, though Garrett himself has refused to confirm this.

All he will say is that it was his income from the Stampy videos and merchandise that allowed him to quit his post-university bar job. Until recently this graduate in TV and video production was living at his parents’ house rent-free, allowing him to develop what was once a hobby into a full-time living. Stampy’s popularity has, too, been built on the success of Minecraft, which was created by the independent Swedish developer Markus ‘Notch’ Persson and last month became the second most popular computer game of all time.

I’m not alone in not really understanding the appeal of Stampylongnose, either, as a quick look at the Mumsnet forums devoted to the subject confirms. “I have a long list of terrible things I would like to do with him,” writes one irate mother. “His voice and laugh are like fingers down a blackboard,” says one, while another describes his voiceover as “a combination of Noel Edmonds and Jimmy Carr.” Aside from his presenting style, it’s hard to think of anything more frustrating than watching somebody else play a computer game. Though clearly my nephew and niece disagree, saying they prefer Stampy’s videos to playing Minecraft themselves.

In an attempt to fathom the appeal, I sat through Fun and Games, one of their favourite videos, along with the ones in which Stampy and his friends go to the moon and eat loads of cake. After a couple of minutes watching these characters run around the Minecraft world I thought I was starting to share their excitement, but soon realised this feeling was just motion sickness from the in-game camera movements. (Studies show that complaining about jerky editing significantly increases the signs of ageing.) And yes, Stampy’s voiceover is reminiscent of Noel Edmonds and Jimmy Carr, though no less bearable than the forced enthusiasm of any CBBC presenter.

Stampylongnose is the Pied Piper of Youtube, calling a generation of children to their computers every afternoon while apparently bypassing anyone who has been through adolescence. He’s less dangerous than the Piper though - he doesn’t even swear in his voiceovers, in contrast with many others who upload gameplay videos from Minecraft. In any case, resistance is futile: Garrett is currently testing the waters in Hollywood and has plans to launch a second, educational channel. I don’t get it, but as a member of generation Teletubby and Tamagotchi, my opinion should probably be ignored when it comes to children’s entertainment. It’s Stampy’s world now.

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Feeling a little self-conscious in your five-star hotel? Anthony Peregrine has the answer:

I have recently returned from a plush hotel in the hillside village of St Paul-de-Vence, near Nice. Due to St Paul’s artistic antecedents - Picasso, Chagall and Matisse were village regulars - the tiny streets of the old centre are now overcome with galleries featuring artists no-one’s ever heard of. I find the art overkill as tedious as hell, but it clearly suits many people. The hotel, on the other hand, is a cracker.

Built on a ridge out from the village, the Mas de Pierre is a series of independent stone buildings - bastides, they call them round here - engulfed by the sort of Mediterranean gardens which always appear to be on the point of breaking loose. The place looks as if it’s been there forever, though it’s barely 10 years old, built on what was olive-growing land.

Even newer - opened last month - is the hotel’s seventh building, the Bastide-des-Fleurs which, with six suites and bedrooms, reckons go beyond luxury to whatever comes next. That’s where we’ve just been. This bastide had its own swimming pool and butler. Rooms were the size of the Maracana. Our suite had three TVs - one in the salon, one in the bathroom and a third which popped up at the end of the bed. Causing it to appear and disappear was significantly more entertaining than French daytime TV. Almost everything was beige, blue or cream and ridiculously comfortable. Towels were so fluffy, you could have smothered poodles in them. We had a little courtyard, white roses as pre-ordered on the form they sent out to future guests, and seating options sufficient for a G8 summit.

The bastide’s was, in short, accommodation where the inconveniences of daily life - the unavailability of butlers, the lack of really good macaroons, an inadequacy of plump cushions - fell away. The rest of the world was imperceptible beyond the gardens.

I have no trouble handling any of this. I am a talented sleeper, with widely-acknowledged gifts in the matter of sitting round pools, sipping in bars and eating free meals in alfresco restaurants. A childhood in Preston, Lancashire prepared me early for the rigours of extreme leisure. Not so my wife, whom I rescued from a French farming life some years ago. A subsequent career as teacher and children’s author scarcely fitted her for the finer things in life.

In our early days in top hotels, she would make the bed and dust, to ease the chambermaid’s burden. She would thank everyone for everything - and draft replies to the printed notes of welcome from the hotel manager. She’s better now - so that, as we toured the gardens at the Mas de Pierre she didn’t offer to do any dead-heading. Nor did she lean into our car, to show the voiturier how the gears worked.

Even so - as we pored over the pre-arrival form, deciding what flowers we wanted, what music and which newspapers should be loaded onto the IPad, and whether we wished the staff to be “Discreet” or “Private” - she did fix me with a stare and say: “This isn’t for us; we’ll be out of our depth.”

“Nonsense,” I cried. “You’re talking to a man who once interviewed Jeffrey Archer. I know my way around the higher echelons. Follow me.” And so she did. On the way, however, I reminded her of the elementary rules for tackling five-star hotels. These may be useful as your own holidays get under way. They are as follows:

* Walk in as if you own the place: Brad and Angelina don’t sneak into places, smiling apologetically. They stride in, bristling with entitlement. Do the same. The Mas-de-Pierre may have employed almost all the polite people available on the Côte-d’Azur but, if they were so startlingly fantastic, they’d be on our side of the reception desk, we’d be on theirs and we’d be serving them. And, let us be honest, standing outside a hotel, usually in uniform, to open the car doors of arriving guests is not the sort of extraordinary performance which need generate awe, applause or the exchange of coinage. And, if you’re going to give a bloke a tenner for, say, hailing you a taxi, how much should you tip the heart surgeon? (“Here you are, doc; buy yourself a small house.”)

* Though usually polite (see above), five star staff are not your friends: However much she smiles, the person cleaning your bathroom or bringing your pina colada is doing it for money. It’s not because she likes you. You’re going to get a very big bill. No need, therefore, to invite her back to your home the following year.

* Careful whom you bump into: Five-star hotels are full of nobodies - but also the occasional somebody. The latter need treating with circumspection. Stumbling in the lobby of the Hotel Negresco in Nice, my rather small wife bumped into, and almost felled, an even smaller Chinese lady. This turned out to be the wife of the then prime minister of China. Yeti-sized Chinese fellows in crazily tight suits suddenly emerged from all quarters. I thought we were in for a lifetime’s re-education somewhere remote in Guangdong province. Only desperate sign language convinced all concerned that this had been a trip rather than an attempted coup-d’état.

* But do wallow in it: The central irony of five-star hotels is that, for those who can afford them regularly, they’re no big deal. They merely reproduce the luxury and service standards to which the wealthy are accustomed wherever they go, home or elsewhere. The people they really pay off for are the rest of us, who only get a shot at these kind of lodgings once in a while. If then. So, while remaining apparently blasé, take full advantage. I have rarely recently been happier than, champagne glass in hand, strolling the classical gardens of a fab hill-topping Italian spot near Bergamo, walking to the edge - and looking down to see how the rural working classes were getting on. Sitting at the baby grand piano in the second salon of my suite at the Athénée Plaza in Paris also promoted a sense of profound well-being. (Should you wish to follow suit, incidentally, note that the Plaza re-opens next Friday, August 1, after a 10-month refurb.)

* No excess, mind: ... unless you’re so famous that you can get away with it. Michael Jackson springs to mind. In a Riviera hotel, he had one room turned into a dance studio and another into a kitchen for his private chef. He would wander out at night disguised - occasionally as a hooker. We may imagine the double surprise of potential clients. Then again, most of us are not Michael Jackson; excess leaves us looking boorish. Or Russian.

* Reading material: Luxury hotel bedrooms are the only places you find magazines with titles like £connexion or (A)musebouche4. They comprise ads for Cartier, Dolce & Gabbana and Dior, intercut with articles about spa-resorts on Wallis and Futuna promoted by a fellow who’s made a fortune designing cutting-edge sarongs. He wears flowing white robes and uses only renewable resources. The article will inspire you to travel to W&F to shoot him. Don’t. Simply hurl the magazine into the bin..

* Tipping: Again, don’t. Doormen and barmen in these places are richer than you or me. No use in patronising them. I now leave nothing, and they’re clearly appreciative.

* Le Mas-de-Pierre, St Paul-de-Vence (0033 493 590059; lemasdepierre.com . Doubles in the Bastide-des-Fleurs from £300; elsewhere in the hotel, from £158).

SEE ALSO: The 25 Best Hotels In The World

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Search giant agrees to more than 50pc of Right to Be Forgotten requests outright, and ask for more information in a further 15pc

Google has received requests to block search results for 328,000 websites from 91,000 individuals.

The search giant said the French had submitted 17,500 requests relating to 58,000 websites, the Germans 16,500 relating to 57,000 and the British 12,000 relating to 44,000. Spanish, Italian and Dutch citizens submitted 8,000, 7,500 and 5,500 respectively.

The European Court of Justice ruling, which was passed in May, allows European citizens to request the removal of links to “inadequate”, “irrelevant” or “no longer relevant” search results from European branches of Google and Bing. Individuals can only apply for the removal of a link to an article or picture, rather than the deletion of the information itself.

Google said that it rejects more than 30pc of requests outright, and asks for more information in a further 15pc, but is currently acceding to more than half in total. That rate would mean links to 164,000 websites will not be provided via the Google search engine.

A meeting the European Commission’s Article 29 Working Party group on data protection was described by sources as cordial, and is the first step to working out a European consensus on how to handle the requests from individuals unhappy with Google’s ruling.

European sources are also said to be concerned about the ease of access to uncensored results via Google’s US website, and about the search giant’s policy of notifying sites after links are removed, encouraging some to give them extra publicity.

Google has made clear its reluctance to comply with the ruling, after spokesperson Peter Barron said it forced Google to go against its own principles, but claimed it was left with no option, and CEO Larry Page said the decision may encourage repressive regimes intent on internet censorship.

Those complaints which Google is rejecting are increasingly finding their way to national data protection authorities. In the UK the information commissioner has warned of a coming “tsunami”, although few requests for adjudication have yet been received.

Germany’s Hamburg authority, the lead Google regulator in the country, said "So far we received 33 complaints in that matter. There is no fixed timescale for dealing with the individual complaints. As they vary substantially in their nature and complexity our ruling may take up to a couple of weeks. We consider a common understanding of the ECJ ruling very important and we are indeed in close contact with other DPAs that have received such complaints. We are looking forward to discussing these issues and soon to come to main principles which will be the guidelines for all DPAs throughout Europe."

The Bavaria authority, responsible for Bing and Yahoo, said they had yet to receive any requests.

SEE ALSO: European Regulators Say Google Is Defeating The Purpose Of Its Right To Be Forgotten Rule

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As businesses hire unpaid interns in breach of minimum wage regulations, we chart the story of interns

Internships are now a rite of passage for anyone hoping to secure a job after graduation.

If you’re lucky, you might get valuable experience within your chosen career. Or you might spend two weeks making cups of tea and photocopying.

There are 100,000 unpaid interns in the UK, according to data from think-tank IPPR, but the practice could be in breach of employment law.

Interns that perform valuable tasks are considered workers, not volunteers, according to government guidelines, and so they are subject to national minimum wage.

According to a YouGov survey of 682 businesses on behalf of Intern Aware, 69 per cent of companies find interns useful for their business.

But 26 per cent of the companies surveyed pay their interns nothing, or less than the national minimum wage.

And 82 per cent of companies using unpaid interns admitted that they were doing work that was useful to the business — which would classify as a breach of employment law.

Of the companies surveyed, education businesses were the most likely to use unpaid interns, with 43 per cent of internships not receiving a salary for their work. Although more IT & telecoms interns were paid, with 15 per cent receiving no money at all, a further 26 per cent were paid less than minimum wage.

Construction companies were best for interns, with 57 per cent paying minimum wage or above, while hospitality and leisure firms were the most generous, with 45 per cent paying more than minimum wage.

Ben Lyons, co-director of Intern Aware, says that unpaid internships can limit opportunities for less affluent graduates, who can’t afford to support themselves without a salary.

And hopes of unpaid internships leading to a job could be unfounded—companies that pay interns are more likely to see internships as a valuable recruitment strategy than businesses using unpaid interns.

Some 48 per cent of employers who paid interns regarded internships as an important means of recruitment.

Companies that pay interns:

Compared to 32 per cent of businesses who did not pay their interns.

Companies that don't pay interns:

Most graduates expect to experience an underappreciated slog at the beginning of their careers. But don’t let employers confuse an enthusiastic graduate with a chance to stop paying wages.

Related articles:

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McQueen apologises for advertising unpaid, full-time internship
How to succeed as a fashion intern

SEE ALSO: The 19 Worst Mistakes Interns Make

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Exclusive: Hamas has paid North Korea for missiles and communications equipment in arms deal worth hundreds of thousands of dollars

Hamas militants are attempting to negotiate a new arms deal with North Korea for missiles and communications equipment that will allow them to maintain their offensive against Israel, according to Western security sources.

Security officials say the deal between Hamas and North Korea is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and is being handled by a Lebanese-based trading company with close ties to the militant Palestinian organisation based in east Beirut.

Hamas officials are believed to have already made an initial cash down payment to secure the deal, and are now hoping that North Korea will soon begin shipping extra supplies of weapons to Gaza.

“Hamas is looking for ways to replenish its stocks of missiles because of the large numbers it has fired at Israel in recent weeks,” explained a security official. “North Korea is an obvious place to seek supplies because Pyongyang already has close ties with a number of militant Islamist groups in the Middle East.”

Using intermediaries based in Lebanon, Hamas officials are said to be intensifying their efforts to sign a new agreement with Pyongyang to provide hundreds of missiles together with communications equipment that will improve the ability of Hamas fighters to coordinate operations against Israeli forces.

Like other Islamist terror groups in the region such as Hizbollah, Hamas has forged close links with North Korea, which is keen to support groups that are opposed to Western interests in the region.

The relationship between Hamas and North Korea first became public in 2009 when 35 tons of arms, including surface-to-surface rockets and rocket-propelled grenades, were seized after a cargo plane carrying the equipment was forced to make an emergency landing at Bangkok airport. Investigators later confirmed that the arms cache has been destined for Iran, which then planned to smuggle the weapons to Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Following Israel’s latest military offensive against Hamas operatives based in Gaza, Western security officials say Hamas is now trying to persuade North Korea to provide fresh supplies of rockets to replace the thousands of missiles that have been fired at Israel since the commencement of hostilities two weeks ago.

Israeli military commanders supervising operations against Gaza believe North Korean experts have given Hamas advice on building the extensive network of tunnels in Gaza that has enabled fighters to move weapons without detection by Israeli drones, which maintain a constant monitoring operation over Gaza.

The North Koreans have one of the world’s most sophisticated network of tunnels running beneath the demilitarised zone with South Korea, and Israeli commanders believe Hamas has used this expertise to improve their own tunnel network.

The Hamas arsenal has become increasing sophisticated with foreign assistance and now boasts five variants of rockets and missiles. Its basic weapon is the Iranian-designed Qassam rocket with a range of less than ten miles but it also has a large stockpile of the 122mm Katyushas which boast a range of up to 30 miles.

The introduction of the M-75 and Syrian-made M0302 missiles means Hamas boast offensive weapons with a longer range of up to 100 miles and a much greater explosive impact.

Since the 2012 eight-day war, Hamas has increased the size and strength of its rocket arsenal. Israeli military intelligence puts its stockpile at around 10,000 rockets and mortars, including long-range rockets capable of reaching Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and the northern port city of Haifa.

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With 700 mostly evangelical places of worship Nashville, Tennessee is often described as the "Protestant Vatican", but even here a secular church is finding its niche.

Viewed from the outside, the pointy-roofed building in a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee deep in the heart of America’s Bible Belt, looks very much like a church.

And stepping inside, where a congregation is swaying along to music, listening to sermons and discussing ways to help their local community, it sounds very much like a church too.

There is, however, one rather fundamental missing ingredient that sets this congregation apart from the hundreds of others turning out to worship this Sunday morning in Nashville: this is a church without God.

“I pass seven big churches between my house and the main road two miles away, there are plenty of churches in Nashville, but we needed a place for us,” says David Lyle, a founder-member of the Nashville branch of the “Sunday Assembly” secular church movement.

Started in London in January 2013 by a pair of British stand-up comedians, Sunday Assembly offers a church experience but without the ‘God part’ and, according to organisers, it is starting to catch on in America.

Sanderson Jones, one of the London co-founders, says that almost 400 towns from Sao Paolo to Singapore are now expressing interest in setting up an Assembly, and more than 150 of these are in America.

“People hear about it and email saying 'I've been waiting for this my entire life’,” he says, “It turns out that loads of us had this idea, we were just the ones who were stupid enough to try it.”

The movement is non-profit, founded with GBP 12,000 in crowd-sourced funding and a GBP 7,000 grant and it has resonated not just on America’s liberal coasts, but also in conservative places like Nashville, where liberals and non-believers are a beleaguered minority.

It also hopes to tap into a rising tide of secularization which — for all the continued power of the US religious right — now sees almost a third of American’s under-29 saying they have no religious affiliation. These are the so-called “fuzzy faithful”.

For Kris Tyrell, a 28-year-old atheist who was raised as a Catholic in Jamaica but brings up her six-year-old daughter, Kai, outside any faith, the Sunday Assembly provided a welcome opportunity to belong to something without having to believe.

“We came here from South Florida where religion was a ‘thing’, but nothing like it is here. It’s difficult for my daughter in a classfull of kids saying ‘I’m thankful for my Jesus’ and she wants to know why we are different. So this is something for us,” she says.

While the Nashville congregation is mostly atheist — several jokes about being “recovering Fundamentalists” — it is also careful not to be aggressively so.

Adam Newton, a 38-year-old musician who marriage broke up when he lost his faith, describes the group as “radically inclusive” — positively embracing a life without God, not looking to run down the faithful.

“The idea is why not steal all the good bits about church — the music, the fellowship, the community work — and lose the God stuff,” he says, “Luther said ‘why should the Devil have all the good tunes’. We kind of feel that way about the church.”

The Nashville group, conscious of the continued stigma attached to atheism in bible-minded places like, also does public works, providing a monthly meal for the homeless and rounding up volunteers to clean up a local creek.

“Not having a church doesn’t mean I don’t have a moral code,” says Landry Butler, a 46-year-old graphic designer who co-founded the Nashvillebranch, “I want to get away from this idea that ‘you have to have God to be good’. You don’t.”

The group’s monthly service is held in an old church building that is now used as a recording studio and, under a rubric laid out in a charter from London headquarters, they rotate the master of ceremonies role to avoid any one person or charismatic individual taking over the show.

This weekend Mrs Tyrell is leading, and she introduces the movement for the sake of any first-timers in the audience. “Sunday Assembly is all about coming together to celebrate the one life we know we have,” she says, “our motto is ‘Live better, Help Often, and Wonder More’.”

It is a snappy formulation which sets Sunday Assembly apart from a long history of secular churches, according to James Croft of the Humanist Community Project at Harvard and a leading scholar on humanist movement.

“Atheist congregations need to update their business models, and they haven't for 140 years,” says Mr Croft, referring to the Ethical Culture Movement, a network of atheist congregations set up by the son of New York Rabbi that is still around today.

“Most humanist congregations are all classical music and long talks on some social concern; a hymn or 60s protest song maybe,” he adds. “The Sunday Assembly model is more like an Evangelical Christian church but without God. Music and clapping, active participation, short talks, humour and pop music.”

The service or the “show” (no-one is quite sure what to call it) fairly fizzes along, although there is a long moment’s silence, at which the congregation is invited to “turn down their inner volume knob” and, in a little dig at the idea that only God can bring meaning, “be grateful to this impersonal universe that you have a place, and people in it that love you.”

But mostly the emphasis is upbeat and life-affirming. At one point members of the congregation are literally dancing in the aisles as the band plays a cover of Jesus Jones’s “Right Here, Right Now” before speakers step up to “share” on a range of topics around the theme of “balance”.

One member talks about coping with depression; then a life-coach talks about the importance of self-knowledge that isn’t narcissism while a third – it being Mother’s Day – talks movingly about his mother’s battle with an abusive husband and his decision to respect, not mock her Christian faith.

It all ends with a quotation from Albert — “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving” - before coffee and doughnuts are served, followed by lunch at a local Southern barbecue restaurant.

Soon the hall is filled with running children, suddenly release from the discipline of having to sit through the service, a joyous cacophony which also points to one unavoidable similarity between going to Sunday Assembly and going to church.

“The kids still moan about it,” admits Craig Mueller, a lapsed Catholic who has four children under 10 and comes to the service because he enjoys the sense of community. “I tell my nine-year-old son, it’s time to go to Sunday Assembly and he’s like ‘argh, no, boring’.”

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Economic sanctions causing divisions in Russia despite Vladimir Putin's attempts to show world a united front, according to German intelligence reports.

Germany's intelligence services have informed Chancellor Angela Merkel's government that a power struggle is under way in the Kremlin with hardliners and oligarchs at loggerheads over how best to respond to western economic sanctions, according to media reports.

German intelligence chief Gerhard Schindler has told the Berlin parliament's foreign affairs committee that cracks are beginning to appear in the united front that President Vladmir Putin is seeking to present to the world, Der Spiegel magazine said on Sunday.

Mr Schindler was reported to have told the committee and subsequently Mrs Merkel personally that a struggle had broken out in the Kremlin with hardliners and oligarchs seeking to exert their influence on President Putin.

"According to German intelligence it is quite possible that some of the oligarchs who are worried by European Union sanctions will soon start putting economic interests above political concerns and try to put the brakes on Putin," Der Spiegel wrote.

Mr Schindler told MPs that unlike at the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, cracks were now beginning to appear in Vladimir Putin's power block. He was said to have made his comments during a weekly intelligence report "to parliament and the Berlin Chancellry.

German intelligence service assessment of the power struggles under way in the Kremlin is likely to have influenced the Berlin government's position regarding economic sanctions against Moscow.

Germany had until only recently been wary of imposing economic sanctions against Russia for fear of damaging its wide- ranging business interests in Russia. German industry heads had warned that there would "only be losers" if sanctions were imposed.

However last week Mrs Merkel dropped her initial opposition to the idea and demanded that the EU impose rapid sanctions including economic penalties against Russia. The move underlined Germany's growing exasperation with President Putin's failure to investigate the shooting down of flight MH17.

The head of Germany industry's key eastern committee which oversees trade and business interests in Russia also recently dropped his opposition to economic sanctions and said it was now time to put political interests above business concerns.

German economics minister Sigmar Gabriel appeared to endorse the German intelligence findings. In an interview on Sunday he said that EU sanctions should specifically target wealthy Russian business leaders. "Above all we must hit the oligarchs, we have to do this, this coming week" he told Der Spiegel.

His remarks were echoed by Germany's veteran finance minister Wolfgang Schaüble. In an interview with Germany's mass circulation newspaper Bild am Sonntag on Sunday he said German business interests were "second" in importance when it came to foreign policy and Russia.

"Safeguarding stability and peace have top priority," he told the newspaper, " Any threat to peace and stability would moreover be the biggest danger for economic development," he added.

Mr Schauble said that the existing sanctions against Russia were already beginning to take effect.

"The Rouble is losing value, Russia's budget deficit is growing and its economic development is bad. Even the Russian president sees this," he said Calling for a united western front against Russia, he added: " Nobody is Moscow should start thinking that Russia can win with its approach."

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