Daily Mail - 29.08.2019

Daily Mail, Thursday, August 29, 2019 Page 27

MILLIONS of pounds in charity dona- By Tom Witherow

tions could be going astray, the indus-

try’s watchdog has revealed.

The Charity Commission said as many as

32,000 charities in England and Wales are

failing to properly account for where money

is being spent.

One in four of the biggest charities – with

an income of more than £1million – were

making ‘significant’ errors that meant the

regulator could not be sure where dona-

tions were going.

Half of medium-sized charities, with an

income of more than £250,000, and 70 per

cent of small charities, who bring in

between £25,000 and £250,000 each year,

also failed to meet the standard.

Britons donate around £10.3billion per

year to charity, equivalent to around £380

per household. The regulator sounded the

warning after conducting an emergency

spot-check on 296 charities.

Nigel Davies, head of accountancy serv-

ices at the Charity Commission, said: ‘The

public care deeply about transparency. It is

therefore vital that charities are able to

provide an accurate and clear picture of

their finances.’

By Victoria Allen

Science Correspondent

THOSE who claim, as Margaret Thatcher

and Winston Churchill did, to need less

than five hours’ sleep are met with disbe-

lief by the rest of us.

But short-sleepers like the two former

prime ministers really do exist, and the

evidence is they have a gene mutation.

While most of us need around eight hours’

sleep a night, feeling foggy and confused if

we don’t get it, ‘natural short-sleepers’ feel

well rested after only four to six hours.

Researchers at University of California,

San Francisco, found more than 50 families

with members who require less than six

and a half hours’ sleep. Taking one of these

families, they isolated a mutation of the

ADRB1 gene, which increased the activity

of brain cells that promote wakefulness.

They found that those who needed little

sleep shared the mutation, while their

longer-sleeping relatives did not have it.

And when scientists tweaked the same

gene in mice, they slept for 55 minutes

less than regular mice, according to the

findings published in the journal Neuron.

Cash given to 32,000 charities

could be going down the drain

Found, ‘Thatcher gene’ that lets

you get by on a few hours’ sleep

‘Fastest woman

on wheels’ dies

in bid to break

512mph record

V1

A RACING car driver has

been killed as she attempted

to break the women’s land-

speed record of 512mph.

Jessi Combs, who was also a

TV presenter, died as she

piloted a powerful car built from

a decommissioned fighter jet.

Her family announced the

36-year-old’s death in a statement

but details of Tuesday’s crash in

the US state of Oregon have not

been released.

The American was hailed as

‘fastest woman on four wheels’

after setting a record of 398mph in

her jet-powered North American

Eagle Supersonic Speed

Challenger in 2013.

But she died trying to beat the

512mph women’s land-speed

record set in 1976 by American

daredevil Kitty O’Neil in her three-

wheeled rocket car the Motivator.

The location for both drives was

Alvord Desert, a dry lake bed in

south-eastern Oregon. Miss

Combs had chronicled her bid to

beat the record on social media.

This week, in a post on Insta-

gram she wrote: ‘It may seem a

little crazy to walk directly into

the line of fire... those who are

willing, are those who achieve

left this earth driving faster than

any other woman in history.’

Miss Combs, who began her

career as a builder of hot-rod cars,

was seen on US television in a

number of auto shows, including

Overhaulin’, Truck U, Myth-

Busters and All Girls Garage.

Her close friend and teammate

Terry Madden described yester-

day her as an ‘amazing spirit’.

‘Unfortunately we lost her

yesterday in a horrific accident,’

he said on Instagram.

‘I was the first one there and,

trust me, we did everything

humanly possible to save her.’

Last night, her former Myth-

Busters co-presenter Adam Sav-

age tweeted: ‘I’m so so sad, Jessi

Combs has been killed in a crash.

‘She was a brilliant and top-

notch builder, engineer, driver,

fabricator, and science communi-

cator. She strove every day to

encourage others by her

prodigious example. She was also

a colleague and we are lesser

for her absence.’

Miss Combs joined the North

American Eagle Supersonic Speed

Challenger team as a driver in

2013. She was also the first woman
      to compete in The Race of Gentle-
      men, in which modified vintage
      cars race on a New Jersey beach.
      Miss O’Neil, who died last

November of illness aged 72, had

overcome the obstacle of being

left deaf by a childhood illness to

become a stuntwoman.

Briton Andy Green holds the

land speed record of 763mph set

in Black Rock Desert, Nevada, in

1997. He was piloting the four-
      wheeled ThrustSSC, a supersonic
      jet car.

Mail Foreign Service

‘She strove to

encourage others’

Challenge: Miss Combs was a ‘rare dreamer’ said her family

Supersonic: The

jet-powered car

which Jessi Combs

had been driving

great things. People say I’m crazy.

I say thank you.’

Her grieving family’s statement

said: ‘Jessi’s most notable dream

was to become the fastest woman

on Earth, a dream she had been

chasing since 2012.

‘She was one of the rare dream-

ers with the bravery to turn those

possibilities into reality, and she