Juul explores opening its own e cigarette stores

Big Bend national park and Big Bend state park Everything is big in Texas, including the state's crown jewel, Big Bend national park and the adjoining Big Bend state park. Together the parks protect an area of Chihuahuan desert larger than the state of Rhode Island, tucked into a 90-degree curve in the Rio Grand river, along the Mexican border. Big Bend is a place of contrasts: hot in the summer and frigid in the winter, the terrain ranges from dry open desert to jagged mountains to the riparian river valley, a unique landscape that supports a diversity of plants and animals. Big Bend is also home to some big predators, including Mexican black bears and around two dozen mountain lions, but the rugged landscape provides plenty of roaming room and dangerous encounters with visitors are extremely rare. As the largest expanse of public land in Texas, Big Bend is a hiker's paradise with more than 200 miles of trails offering everything from short, sweet day hikes to multi-week epics. … [Read more...] about Top 10 state and national parks in Texas

I’m squashed in the doorway of the ladies’ loo in a London pub. It’s not at all a ladylike position to be in. Maybe I should be asking myself what the bloody hell I’m doing here, but I don’t have time for that now. I’m peeking out at two young girls a few yards away. They’re having a drink, their long legs folded underneath one of those small tables, talking in intimate whispers to each other. One is a tall, leggy creature with sad eyes; the other a pert little blonde. They’re lost in deep conversation. They could be any two girls from the streets of Swinging London; shop assistants, hairdressers, shorthand typists. But, apart from the Queen herself, they’re currently the two most famous women in the country, at the eye of a storm that’s rocking the nation. In years to come, it will even be said that they brought down the government. The year is 1963. The girls are Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies. It’s the first … [Read more...] about “Tart” Christine Keeler wasn’t on trial but she had already been judged, says photographer who put Profumo girl on front page

Yodelling and hiking, Austria Flex your vocal chords on Austria's first yodel hiking trail. A cable car from Königsleiten – part of the Zillertal ski area east of Innsbruck – takes you up to 2,200m, then you hike back down (or do it the other way round for more of a challenge). Five interactive stations – including a walk-in cowbell and the biggest alpine horn in Europe – have yodelling information and recordings. You listen, then belt them out to the echoing hills. Singing and exercise both release endorphins, so you'll feel great. • May-October, trail free, cable car €9 adults/4.50 kids, one way, jodelweg.at Zip Trek adventure, Lake District, UK Go Ape's treetop adventures are fun but the zipwires are always the best bit. This summer, the company is launching Zip Trek, a zipline-only course. With seven lines over 4.5km, it will be the longest such course in the UK. You'll spend two hours flying past tall firs in Grizedale Forest – … [Read more...] about Happy holidays! 10 trips to lift your spirits

In central Riga, people are laying flowers beneath the Freedom Monument. It's a green statue of a woman holding three gold stars on top of a 42-metre stone pillar at the end of a broad, busy street. One woman explains to me that it's the 65th anniversary of the day in 1949 when 42,000 Latvians were deported to Siberia by the Soviet government. She still remembers hiding underground and finding the neighbours' house empty the next day. "Only the dog was left," she says. In Riga, Latvia's capital city, the past is alive – and complicated. The road that the monument stands on is now called Brivibas bulvaris (Freedom Boulevard), but its previous names – Alexander, Hitler and Lenin – are a clue to the city's history of rule by foreign powers. It was founded in 1201 as a base for crusading German knights, and for three centuries it thrived as one of the Baltic ports in the Hanseatic League. In turn, Riga then became part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and then the … [Read more...] about Riga, a city revelling in its culture

'My job is to save the fucking wilderness. I don't know anything else worth saving." Thus the career plan of George Washington Hayduke, hard-nut hero of Edward Abbey's 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang. Pro-conservation, pro-guns and extremely pro-booze, anti-mining, anti-tourism and extremely anti-dams, Hayduke appoints himself protector of the remaining desert regions of the American southwest, and becomes a pioneer in the art of "eco-tage", also known as "monkey wrenching" – using the tools of industry to demolish the infrastructure of industry in the name of the biosphere. Hayduke is joined by three other activists – an anarchist doctor, a revolutionary feminist and a polygamist river guide – and this quartet of Quixotes heads out into red-rock country to wage war on techno-industry. They pour sand into the fuel tanks of bulldozers. They drive quarry lorries over canyon rims. They blast power lines and disrupt strip mines. Their weapons are audacity, wit and … [Read more...] about Rereading: Robert Macfarlane on The Monkey Wrench Gang