World News for Students of English

01-04-2015 07:00

If you live in America, you could soon own a personal handheld flamethrower. American company Ion Productions, which says it designs entertainment software and innovative devices, is looking for funding to help it produce the XM42. The company says it will be the world’s first commercially available handheld flamethrower.

Though they might easily be considered pretty dangerous weapons, the XM42 is actually considered to be legal in 48 US states. Only California and Maryland have laws regulating them. The XM42 shoots metres of fire and can be yours for just 699 dollars, which is around 469 pounds.

While some may question the possible uses of a device that shoots out a stream of 25 feet (7.6 metres) of burning petrol, Ion suggests melting snow, burning insects, and getting rid of garden weeds, to name a few. The company has said it strongly encourages users to only use the flamethrower away from others and away from anything that could be accidentally set on fire.

The XM42 is only at the development stage at the moment, and Ion is looking for funding from website Indiegogo to help it get through to production.

Difficult words: innovative (new, interesting and exciting), device (an electronic thing), funding (financial support), stream (a long amount of something), melt (to make something turn into liquid), suggest (to tell someone what they can do), to get rid of (to take something away), encourage (to tell someone to do something), user (a person who uses something – works with it), development stage (the beginning step of making something new), production (all of the steps to make something new).

Source: www.ondemandnews.com