DINNER PARTY INTEL: Enjoy a wee on the wild side
A council in Hertfordshire, north of London, has included urinating in the countryside as littering
1. Vanishing act
Some the world’s tourist destinations are disappearing — and fast, thanks to climate change. One of these is the Mer de Glace, the biggest glacier in the French Alps, where thousands go each year to ski. (Early tourists included Mary Shelley and Mark Twain.) It’s melting rapidly and a new, higher lift opened recently to stay closer to the retreating ice.
2. The worm has turned
Guinea worm disease, a waterborne parasitic infection, used to be rife in most of Africa and South Asia. When Jimmy Carter left the White House 40 years ago, there were about 3.5-million human cases a year. He and his wife, Rosalyn, began a foundation to support community-based interventions to eradicate the disease. Carter, 99, may not live to see this but last year there were just 13 cases worldwide.
3. What a relief
A council in Hertfordshire, north of London, has included urinating in the countryside as littering. However, a man with a weakened prostate had his fine revoked recently after lawyers argued that “wild weeing” in a rural area (as opposed to on a street) wasn’t littering because nothing was left behind.