Scout’s honour

Thousands of teenagers were evacuated from the World Scout Jamboree in South Korea as flooding, a heatwave and then the threat of a typhoon affected the event. What exactly is a ‘jamboree’?

– Lord Baden-Powell adopted the word for the first gathering of scouts at Kensington Olympia in 1920. But the word itself can be traced back to the mid-19th-century American West, when it was used for a drunken revel – presumably not what Baden-Powell nor subsequent heads of the scouting movement would encourage.

– The first documentary evidence for use of the word is in the report of a murder trial in the New York Herald in 1868, when two of the accused were described as indulging in a  jamboree before the crime was committed.

Home comforts

Is Britain’s fondness for working from home shared globally? Mean answers to the question: how many full-paid days are employees working from home this week?

India 2.6

Canada 2.2

UK, Australia 2

Netherlands 1.8

US 1.6

Italy 1.5

Germany 1.4

France, Spain 1.3

China, Japan 1.1

South Korea 0.5

Source: Centre for Economic Policy Research

Gimme shelter

There were 112,294 asylum-seekers receiving support from local authorities on 31 March. Where were they housed?

London 26,098

North-west 18,176

West Midlands 12,928

Yorkshire and the Humber 10,847

South-east 8,237

East Midlands 6,900

East 6,858

North-east 6,200

Scotland 5,086

South-west 4,603

Northern Ireland 3,030

Wales 2,966

Source: Home Office

Mum’s the word

Some figures on maternity:

Obesity rate in early pregnancy 22.1%

Drinking in early pregnancy 4.1%

Smoking rate in early pregnancy 12.8%

Smoking rate at term 9.1%

Babies born with low weight 2.8%

Babies initially breast-fed 71.7%

Source: Office for Health Improvement and Disparities

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