Barometer | 5 July 2018

Trapped

Twelve Thai boys and their football coach were found in a cave ten days after being trapped by rising water. It may be months before they can be brought to the surface.

— The longest anyone has been trapped underground and then rescued is 69 days, after the San José mine in Chile collapsed in 2010. The 33 miners were rescued via a shaft drilled to 2,257ft below the surface.

— Less fortunate was Floyd Collins, a caver trapped 55ft below ground in Crystal Cave, Kentucky, in January 1925. He survived 14 days, but died around three days before a rescue shaft reached him.

Bouncy castles

A four-year-old girl died after a bouncy castle on a Norfolk beach was reported to have exploded and blown her 30 feet into the air. How dangerous are bouncy castles?

— At Easter 2016 a seven-year-old girl was killed when a bouncy castle in Harlow, Essex, was blown from its moorings. Two fairground workers were convicted of manslaughter through gross negligence.

— In 2003 a five-year-old boy died in Rotherham after climbing the wall of a bouncy castle and falling over it headfirst.

—In 2015 a boy had to be rescued from the Irish sea after a bouncy castle was blown off the promenade in Douglas, Isle of Man.

—In 2010 a US journal, Paediatrics, reported that children visit emergency departments at a rate of one every 45 minutes as a result of bouncy castle-related incidents.

Trans stats

The BBC said that 417 of its staff (around 2% of the total) are transgender. How does this compare with the general population?

1% ‘are likely to be gender incongruent to some degree’, according to the Gender Identity Research and Education Service, quoted by the Commons select committee on women and equalities.

0.58% of the US population are transgender, according to an estimate by UCLA School of Law.