The very best 0% purchase credit cards

It's a letter I've received before, and one I'll probably get again before the year is out.

Last night when going through my post I happened upon a missive from the lovely people at Halifax, telling me I was guaranteed to be accepted for a new credit card.
The last time I took out a credit card offering 0% interest on purchases was almost three years ago, before my wedding. Back then the best offer on the market was the card I eventually went for, 12 months at 0%, from Tesco.
The letter informed me that this card from Halifax would also offer me a year off from the pain of interest charges. But is that still a good deal?

Growing 0% periods

A year of no interest is not to be sniffed at, but it's a long way from the best deal in the market these days.

Here are the longest 0% periods on offer today for purchases:

Card and 0% period

Nationwide BS Select

18 months

Halifax All in One MasterCard

15 months

Marks & Spencer Money Master Card

15 months

Tesco Clubcard

15 months

Barclaycard 14/14 Platinum Visa

14 months

Bank of Scotland all in One

13 months

Creation Purchase MasterCard

13 months

NatWest YourPoints World MasterCard

13 months

Royal Bank of Scotland YourPoints World MasterCard

13 months

Virgin Money 13/13 MasterCard

13 months

That's ten cards all offering in excess of a year before you face interest charges. There's then a handful of cards offering 12 months, matching the Tesco offer that I went for back in 2009.

That strikes me as a pretty incredible development, that borrowers have such a wide range of cards to choose from, all offering such a long period of 0% interest.

The pros of a 0% purchase card

The reason I went for a 0% purchase card was that I knew I had a lot of spending ahead of me. There were suits to rent, a wedding cake to buy, a DJ to book, and all the other fun stuff that goes with arranging a wedding.

I knew that it would be pretty tricky to pay for all of that in one go. By putting my spending on the 0% purchase credit card, I could spread those payments out over time, safe in the knowledge that every penny of my repayments were going towards reducing my debt rather than on interest payments.

Let's take an example. Say you spend £5,000 on the Nationwide Select card. If you pay £278 a month, that debt will be completely cleared by the time the 0% period finishes.

If you instead spend £5,000 on a normal credit card, with an APR of 19%, then it will take you an extra three months to clear that debt. In total you will pay more than £800 in interest!

So if you know you've got a big purchase ahead of you, going for a 0% credit card is a sensible course of action.

The downsides of a 0% purchase card

There are some hurdles to consider though. As I mentioned in the example above, pay £278 a month and the debt will be cleared by the time the 0% period ends. But what if you don't manage to do that? What if the 0% period finishes and you still have thousands of pounds sat on the card?

You face a couple of options. The first is to do nothing - leave your debt where it is, continue making your monthly payments, and your debt will eventually disappear. That said, you will end up spending a decent chunk of cash on interest.

Or you can move the remaining debt to a balance transfer card, which will also offer a period of 0% interest on your repayments. But you'll have to pay a fee for the privilege.

And then there's the fact that in order to get your hands on a 0% card you'll need to have a good credit record. Credit card providers don't make a habit of handing out these cards to any old borrower – ironically the borrowers who would most benefit from a bit of breathing space in paying off their debts are the ones who find it most difficult to get their hands on 0% cards.

Alternatively, you may find that your credit rating is good enough to get a 0% on purchases card, but not good enough to get the very best 0% card. Halifax is now offering 'tiered 0% deals' where some applicants get 0% cards but with shorter interest-free periods.

Therefore the best way to get a 0% card is to ensure your credit rating is as spotless as possible.

Hosepipe bans enforced in drought areas

The introduction of the bans follows the fifth driest March since records began in 1910

Hosepipe bans affecting about 20 million customers have been introduced by seven water authorities in parts of southern and eastern England.

People who flout the bans, which follow one of the driest two-year periods on record, face fines of up to £1,000.

Suppliers Thames, Southern, South East Anglian, Sutton and East Surrey, Veolia Central and Veolia South East have all introduced "temporary use bans".

The government has urged householders to be "smarter about how we use water".

Using a hosepipe to water a garden, water plants, fill a pond or clean outdoor surfaces are all banned as are filling and maintaining ornamental fountains.

But exemptions are in place for grass and surfaces used for national and international sports which means the Olympic and Paralympic games will be unaffected.

Disabled people with blue badges are exempt, while some businesses, including car washing firms, will also be allowed to continue using hosepipes in most areas.

And some drip irrigation systems featuring perforated hoses are allowed.

Water companies say they have no option but to put the bans in place to preserve essential water supplies but say they also need their customers to help cut down on their usage.

Most of the suppliers expect the ban to last all summer.

Anglian Water managing director Peter Simpson said: "Two dry winters have prevented rivers, reservoirs and aquifers from refilling with the water we treat and supply the rest of the year, especially during the hotter months when demand rises."

Sutton and East Surrey operations manager Mike Hegarty, meanwhile, warned there was no end in sight to the situation.

"We have said from the outset that we very much regret having to impose this bar but this drought is becoming increasingly serious."

He added: "We have no choice if we are to protect our customers by ensuring the long-term security of their water supply."

Householders are being urged by the companies and the government to cut their water use with measures including taking shorter showers and washing fruit and vegetables in a bowl rather than under the tap.

In some areas, drought has left groundwater below levels in the 1976 crisis when household supplies were cut off and standpipes used.

The introduction of the bans follows the third-warmest March - and fifth driest - since records began in 1910.

Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, parts of Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire, and west Norfolk have been in drought since last summer.

Much of south-east England, including London, is also affected and parts of North, South and East Yorkshire have become the latest to be declared as officially in drought by the Environment Agency.

Tips for saving water

• Use dishwashers and washing machines only when they are full
• Use bathwater and washing-up water to wash the car and the garden
• Save the cold water that comes through before a tap runs hot, and use it to water plants
• Keep a jug of water in the fridge instead of waiting for the tap to run cold
• Turn off the taps when you're brushing your teeth or shaving
• Install a water-saving device in the toilet
• Grow your grass a little longer. It will stay greener than a close-mown lawn and need less watering

Privacy backlash over Girls Around Me mobile app

The app fuses together data from Foursquare and Facebook to offer locations and details

An app that allowed users to find nearby women who had "checked in" on a social network has been withdrawn by its developer after complaints.

Russian developer i-Free removed its Girls Around Me app which used publicly available data from Foursquare.

Foursquare, a location-based social network, has already revoked the app's access to its data.

A company representative for i-Free said the reaction to the app was a "serious misunderstanding".

In a statement given via email to the wall street Journal, the company said: "We believe it is unethical to pick a scapegoat to talk about the privacy concerns.

"We see this wave of negative as a serious misunderstanding of the apps' goals, purpose, abilities and restrictions.

"Girls Around Me does not provide any data that is unavailable to user when he uses his or her social network account, nor does it reveal any data that users did not share with others."

'Wake-up call'

The company added that it had removed the app, which has been downloaded over 70,000 times, from the iTunes app store due to a recurring fault.

The app is powered by pulling data from Foursquare, which people use to "check in" to locations such as a shop or a bar. In the US, where the app is most popular, it is common for businesses to offer special deals to those who check in on the site.

In addition to the location data, the app used associated Facebook information to display images of nearby users - allowing people with the Girls Around Me app to view profiles in a map format.

Depending on a user's privacy settings, other information such as relationship status and photographs can be seen.

Popular Apple blog Cult of Mac described the app a "wake-up call about privacy".

Blogger John Brownlee wrote: "Girls Around Me isn't an app you should use to pick up girls, or guys for that matter.

"This is an app you should download to teach the people you care about that privacy issues are real, that social networks like Facebook and Foursquare expose you and the ones you love, and that if you do not know exactly how much you are sharing."

The developer has said it will develop the app further to make sure only check-ins at public venues are displayed to users. It is also working on an Android version of its app.

However, neither versions will currently function while Foursquare prevents i-Free from using its data.

Airlines urge review as UK air passenger duty rises by 8%

Every air passenger will now have to pay more in duty when they fly

Air passenger duty (APD) has risen by 8%, as announced by the government in the Autumn Statement last year.

For short-haul flights, the tax has increased from £12 to £13. For long-haul flights of more than 4,000 miles, it has gone up from £85 to £92.

In light of the increase, airlines called on the Treasury to review the impact on "hard working families".

A Treasury minister said the majority of passengers will only pay an extra £1 as a result of the rise.

Also as of 1 April, corporation tax in the UK falls by 1% to 24%.

The changes in APD will also see it extended to private business jets for the first time.

'Tax review'

In a joint statement the bosses of Easyjet, British Airways owner IAG, Ryanair and Virgin Atlantic said the increase would "hit millions of hard-working families and damage the wider economy".

"We urge [Chancellor] George Osborne to make APD the first tax to be examined under the Treasury's new review of the wider impacts of taxation on the economy," they said.

They added that further planned rises in the tax before 2016 would mean a family of four paying £500 in tax to fly economy class to Australia. In 2005, they said, the same family would have paid £80.

Sir Richard Branson, who owns Virgin Atlantic, told the BBC increasing the tax might put some people off visiting the UK.

"Tax is all very well when it's not actually costing the country money and I think it's getting to a stage where it's actually going to cost the country money," he said.

The business group the CBI has also called for a lower rise in APD.

The government defended the rise by saying it had frozen APD last year.

"Most passengers pay only a pound more on their flights as a result of the rise," said Economic Secretary to the Treasury Chloe Smith.

"We have made aviation tax fairer by bringing private business jets in for the first time.

"We were able to take action to freeze APD last year and we have been able to be clear about what will then happen to it this year - I think that does represent a fair deal for passengers and I think it does also represent a fair deal for businesses, who are today enjoying a historically low rate of corporation tax," she said.

There are four bands of APD. Tax on short-haul flights has gone up from £12 to £13.

Longer flights up to 4,000 miles have seen an increase from £60 to £65, while tax on flights between 4,000 and 6,000 miles has risen from £75 to £81.

APD on flights above 6,000 miles has increased from £85 to £92.

All these figures refer to economy class flights; business class passengers pay more.

Cancer: 'Book of knowledge' published

Cells from a cancer line known as HeLa

The first volume of a "book of cancer knowledge" has been published, which scientists say will speed up the search for new cancer drugs.

The "encyclopaedia" details how hundreds of different cancer cells respond to anti-cancer agents.

UK, US and European researchers say the data, published in Nature, is a step towards tailoring cancer medicine to a patient's genetic profile.

A cancer charity said the work would help in testing new cancer drugs.

Cancer cells grown in the laboratory are an essential tool in cancer research.

Hundreds of different cell lines exist, allowing scientists to study the effect of new cancer drugs on the human body.

Now, a team at the  Wellcome TRust Sanger Institute near Cambridge and various cancer institutes around the world have released two papers cataloguing data on hundreds of cancer cell lines.

The UK team, working with colleagues in the US, Paris and Switzerland, screened more than 600 cancer cell lines with 130 drugs, identifying genetic signatures linked with drug sensitivity.

Already clues are emerging that could be of benefit to patients, including the discovery that a rare bone cancer in children (Ewing's sarcoma) appears to be vulnerable to certain drugs.

Personalised medicine

Dr Mathew Garnett of the Sanger Institute is lead researcher on one of the two papers published in the journal Nature.

He told the BBC: "It's bringing together two very large and very powerful data sets and asking which cell line is the most sensitive and what is behind that sensitivity.

"This is the largest study of its kind linking drug response with genetic markers. You need these very large studies to identify small subsets of cells that are sensitive to drugs."

Dr Levi Garraway of The Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, US, is a senior member of the research team behind the second paper, which profiled 24 drugs across nearly 500 cell lines.

He told the BBC: "Developing this large cell-line resource with all the associated genetic details is another piece in the pie to get us to our goal of personalised cancer medicine.

"We're trying to get smarter about understanding what the right drug is using the genetic information in each tumour. This is a stepping stone along the way."

The next step is use the information to help decide on tailored treatments for cancer patients.

This would involve getting a genetic "fingerprint" of their tumour, which could be matched to information in the database.

Some cancer drugs are already available for individuals with a certain genetic makeup.

The best known is Herceptin, a breast cancer drug that works in patients with an overactive HER2 gene.

Professor Charles Swanton, based at Cancer Research UK's London Research Institute, said the papers were "an invaluable resource" that provided "extremely useful intelligence" for cancer researchers.

He added: "This new resource will help speed up cancer research and may well begin to guide further developments in personalised cancer medicine."

Cancer medicines linked to genetic profiles

• A new drug called vemurafenib offers hope to malignant melanoma patients with certain genetic markers
• Erlotinib helps some lung cancer patients by targeting a receptor found in some tumours. Another new drug, crizotinib, tackles lung cancer expressing the ALK gene
• The breast cancer drug Herceptin is given to patients with an overactive HER2 gene
• The cancer drug imatinib blocks cancer growth in white blood cells of patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia carrying a certain gene mutation

Chocolate 'may help keep people slim'

Chocolate contains antioxidants but is also high in fat and sugar 

People who eat chocolate regularly tend to be thinner, new research suggests.

The findings come from a study of nearly 1,000 US people that looked at diet, calorie intake and body mass index (BMI) - a measure of obesity.

It found those who ate chocolate a few times a week were, on average, slimmer than those who ate it occasionally.

Even though chocolate is loaded with calories, it contains ingredients that may favour weight loss rather than fat synthesis, scientists believe.

Despite boosting calorie intake, regular chocolate consumption was related to lower BMI in the study, which is published in Archives of Internal Medicine.

The link remained even when other factors, like how much exercise individuals did, were taken into account.

And it appears it is how often you eat chocolate that is important, rather than how much of it you eat. The study found no link with quantity consumed.

According to the researchers, there is only one chance in a hundred that their findings could be explained by chance alone.

Lead author Dr Beatrice Golomb, from the University of California at San Diego, said: "Our findings appear to add to a body of information suggesting that the composition of calories, not just the number of them, matters for determining their ultimate impact on weight."

This is not the first time scientists have suggested that chocolate may be healthy for us.

Other studies have claimed chocolate may be good for the heart.

Consumption of certain types of chocolate has been linked to some favourable changes in blood pressure, insulin sensitivity and cholesterol level.

And chocolate, particularly dark chocolate, does contain antioxidants which can help to mop up harmful free radicals - unstable chemicals that can damage our cells.

Dr Golomb and her team believe that antioxidant compounds, called catechins, can improve lean muscle mass and reduce weight - at least studies in rodents would suggest this might be so.

Mice fed for 15 days with epicatechin (present in dark chocolate) had improved exercise performance and observable changes to their muscle composition.

They say clinical trials are now needed in humans to see if this is the case.

But before you reach for a chocolate bar, there are still lots of unanswered questions. And in the absence of conclusive evidence, experts advise caution.

While there's no harm in allowing yourself a treat like chocolate now and again, eating too much might be harmful because it often contains a lot of sugar and fat too.

And if you are looking to change your diet, you are likely to benefit most from eating more fresh fruits and vegetables.

Avalanche research aids search for tastier ice cream

X-rays have revealed how the structure of ice cream changes as temperature fluctuates 

Avalanche experts are helping to study how ice cream's structure changes when it is stored in a household freezer.

Samples of ice cream have been scanned with an X-ray machine more typically used to study the ice crystals which are key to avalanche formation.

Nestle is hoping to reveal the exact conditions under which ice crystals merge and grow.

When the crystals get big enough they change the texture of ice cream and alter how it feels when it is eaten.

The study of ice crystal formation has been carried out with the help of scientists at the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research in Davos, Switzerland.

The X-ray tomography machine at the institute is one of the few that can take images of tiny structures at sub-zero temperatures.

"Previously, we could not look inside ice cream without destroying the sample in the process," said Nestle food scientist Dr Cedric Dubois.

Via the research, summarised in a paper published in the journal Soft Matter, Nestle hopes to find a way to combat the gradual degradation of taste ice cream often suffers. As with many foods, the structure of ice cream is the key to the way it tastes.

'Chewy feel'

Dr Dubois said the research had revealed that the white frost of ice crystals found on ice cream forms as a result of the temperature changes it undergoes as it is transported, sold and stored.

"Most home freezers are set at -18C, but the temperature doesn't remain constant," said Dr Dubois. "It fluctuates by a couple of degrees in either direction, which causes parts of the ice cream to melt and then freeze again."

The way ice cream is stored can change the way it tastes 

Time-lapse images of ice crystals only a few microns across were gathered during the study which cycled samples through a small range of temperature changes.

This showed that as water froze out it formed ice crystals that affected the structure of the ice cream and made it chewy. This could also make the dessert icier, hard to scoop, and less pleasurable to eat.

The study has started to reveal the ''life cycle'' of the crystals and the conditions which trigger some of them to merge, enlarge and significantly alter the texture of the ice cream.

"We already know the growth of ice crystals in ice cream is triggered by a number of different factors," said Dr Dubois. "If we can identify the main mechanism, we can find better ways to slow it down."