QUIRKY WORLD ... Students asked to do wee thing to save water
The campaign, called Go With The Flow, was dreamt up by Debs Torr and Chris Dobson at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.
They hope to get all 15,000 students at the university to take part — and are asking them to declare their habits on Twitter and Facebook.
Mr Dobson said: “We’ve done the maths, and this project stands to have a phenomenal impact.
“With 15,000 students at UEA, over a year we would save enough water to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool 26 times over.
“Imagine how big an impact it could have if we could get everyone in East Anglia, or even the UK, to change their morning habits.”
The idea has received a mixed reaction but they estimate £125,000 (€159,000) could be saved per year if the entire UEA student population took part.
The pair are representing UEA in the Npower Future Leaders Challenge, encouraging students to devise an environmental initiative on their campus.
: An opera company has been criticised for banning performances of Carmen because the 1875 French opera depicts smoking.
West Australian Opera will not stage the popular opera, about a Spanish gypsy named Carmen who works in a cigar factory, for two years. The ban will last for the duration of a A$400,000 (€275,000) sponsorship deal with a state government health promotion agency, Healthway.
The deal, which begins in March, has split Australians among those who complain of a nanny state and those who applaud its positive public health message. Prime minister Tony Abbott condemned the deal as “political correctness gone crazy”.
A major water firm is offering up to £200 off customers’ bills if they sign up to a scheme to monitor rivers and streams for pollution.
Northumbrian Water is looking for volunteers who regularly walk along certain waterways in the North East which are known to be hot spots for sewage contamination.
The firm wants members of the public to do visual tests of the water and is offering training to become a water ranger. The firm said details of the reward system were being finalised, but customers could receive up to £200 a year off their annual bills.
A rare Siberian tiger released into the wild by Russian president Vladimir Putin has strayed into China and may be in danger.
Russia has told Chinese forestry officials that the tiger, tagged with a tracking device, was observed in a nature preserve in north-eastern China’s Heilongjiang province, China’s official Xinhua News Agency said.
It said that officials were notifying local farmers and were setting up more than 60 cameras in the hopes of locating the tiger.
The Russian president was photographed in May releasing the 19-month-old cub, named Kuzya, and two other Siberian tigers in a remote part of the Amur region.
: 2014 was the year of the loom band and middle-of-the-night shopping, with UK consumers sending online sales in the early hours soaring by a third on last year, according to an annual report by John Lewis.
The study revealed that men logged on at 2am to buy formal wear, parents shopped for nursery items at 4am, and sales of women’s shoes and handbags spiked between 5am and 7am.
Among the year’s crazes was the playground obsession with loom bands, which went mainstream in May and saw the store’s biggest week-on-week uplift of 295%.
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