“Inspector Sands to the control room, please.” If you ever hear that at a British train station, don’t panic. But you might appreciate knowing that this is a codeword meant to inform staff that there is an emergency somewhere in the building. The idea is to avoid causing alarm among commuters (通勤者), but still get the message out to those trained to deal with the problem.

The subject of secret codewords like this was raised this week on Reddit, and the discussion has attracted thousands of examples. But what codewords and signs are really out there in the wild?

A good place to start is hospital emergency codes. These are often colour-coded, and one health centre in Canada has published its list online. “Code red” announces a fire, “code white” indicates a violent person while “code black” means a bomb threat is active. It’s been reported that hospital staff sometimes refer to the morgue as “Rose Cottage”, in order to avoid upsetting relatives of a patient who has recently died.

“I can see very good reasons for having these codes,” says Paul Baker, a linguist at the University of Lancaster. “It may be that people are unsure when they’re giving the code so there’s no point upsetting members of the public.”

Not all codes are alphanumeric (字母数字的). Some are visual, intended to be hidden in plain sight. As BBC Future discovered earlier this year, many banknotes feature a specific pattern of dots placed there to prevent people from photocopying money. Many copiers and scanners are programmed to spot it.

And finally, the spray-painted squiggles (波形曲线) you see on pavements in towns and cities all over the world are codes understood by construction workers and engineers. For example, in UK, different colours are related to different types of cable or pipe. Blue meant a water system while yellow indicated gas lines and green labelled CCTV or data wiring.

All of these codes have a purpose — to avoid causing panic, to transmit subtle signals in social groups, or to provide technical information quickly and easily. “People don’t like secrets, do they?” says Baker. “There is a drive to have as much information as possible — we do live in the information age,” he adds.

Joint Statement from the IOC and the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee

The President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, and the Prime Minister of Japan, Abe Shinzo, held a conference call this morning to discuss the constantly changing environment with regard to COVID-19 and the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020.

President Bach and Prime Minister Abe expressed their shared concern about the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, and what it is doing to people’s lives and the significant effect it is having on global athletes’ preparations for the Games.

In a very friendly and constructive meeting, the two leaders praised the work of the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee and noted the great progress being made in Japan to fight against COVID-19.

The unprecedented and unpredictable spread of the outbreak has seen the situation in the rest of the world worsening. Yesterday, the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating. There are more than 375,000 cases now recorded worldwide and in nearly every country, and their number is growing by the hour.

In the present circumstances and based on the information provided by the WHO today, the IOC President and the Prime Minister of Japan have concluded that the Games of the XXXII Olympiad in Tokyo must be rescheduled to a date beyond 2020 but not later than summer 2021, to safeguard the health of the athletes, everybody involved in the Olympic Games and the international community.

The leaders agreed that the Olympic Games in Tokyo could stand as a beacon (灯塔) of hope to the world during these troubled times and that the Olympic flame could become the light at the end of the tunnel in which the world finds itself at present. Therefore, it was agreed that the Olympic flame will stay in Japan. It was also agreed that the Games will keep the name Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020.

In the recent nearly four decades, private prisons in the U.S. have been widely denounced and criticized by people from all walks of life for frequent scandals. Last year, UN human rights experts urged the U.S. to “eliminate all for-profit detention facilities”, saying that “detainees should not become units for profit,” according to an article published on the website of the UN.

In the 1980s, in an effort to ease the burdens on overcrowded public prisons, the U.S. government started to contract some companies to run private prisons and pay them for services. Over the past nearly 40 years, private prisons have expanded rapidly and formed a highly profitable industry and huge lobbying groups.

According to data released by the website of The Sentencing Project, a Washington-based advocacy group, in 2019, about 116,000 prisoners were held in private prisons in the U.S., representing 8 percent of the country’s total state and federal prison population. Meanwhile, more than 30 states were in partnership with companies running private prisons.

The primary goal of private prisons is to profit from anything they deal in. There’s often a prison bed occupancy guarantee clause in the contracts between U.S. federal, state, and local governments and private prison operators, which stipulates that the government should guarantee a certain occupancy rate in prison beds; and if failing to reach the rate, it will need to pay compensations to private prison operators.

A study conducted by the Washington State University found that private prisons lead to an average increase of 178 new prisoners per million population per year and longer sentences, especially in nonviolent crimes that have more leeway in sentencing guidelines, according to the study.

Private prison operators have made big gains from inmate services. According to reports of U.S. media, in 2020, CoreCivic generated $1.9 billion in revenue, 82.2 percent of which came from its private prison operations. In the same year, the revenue of the GEO group reached $2.3 billion.

Most private prisons in the U.S. are ill-equipped. They usually build their facilities to minimum standards required by contracts with governments, in a bid to reduce operating costs. Besides, private prisons are often understaffed and correctional officers there are of varying quality. Furthermore, some private prisons connive in gangsters and bullies “maintaining” order in prisons.

Private prisons in the U.S. have turned prisoners into modern-day slaves. Inmates in private prisons are forced into high-intensity and long hours of work but are paid far less than the statutory minimum hourly wage in the country. Their basic human rights are hardly guaranteed.

American journalist Shane Bauer had been undercover as a prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. He exposed chaotic phenomena in the prison, including forced labor, exploitation, violence, maltreatment, and corruption.

“A terrifying look into one of America’s darkest and deepest ongoing embarrassments,” commented well-known U.S. literary website Literary Hub on the book.