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A HUGE bargain supermarket chain is set to open multiple new stores across the UK.

Aldi is opening five new locations in the next couple of months giving a jobs boost to local areas.

The supermarket chain which already has more than 990 UK stores will be opening in Southampton and Whittlesey in June.

Further stores in Norwich, Castle Donington and Porthcawl will also open in early July.

Each new store will employ around 40 staff on average, boosting employment opportunities within local areas.

Aldi store assistants can earn up to £11 nationally and £12.45 inside the M25, with paid breaks included.

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This will rise to £11.40 and £12.85 respectively from July.

George Brown, real estate director at Aldi UK, said: “Demand for Aldi has never been higher, and more than two thirds of British households already shop with us.

“However, there are still too many people for whom shopping at Aldi isn’t a convenient option and we’re committed to changing that, giving even more people access to our award-winning products at unbeatable prices.

“To meet that demand, we are investing in new stores up and down the country and won’t stop until we’ve made quality, affordable food accessible to everyone.”

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Full list of store locations opening in the coming weeks:

• Hedge End Retail Park, Southampton
• Eastrea Road, Whittlesey
• Station Road, Castle Donington
• William Frost Way, Norwich
• Eastern Promenade, Porthcawl

Aldi recently caused a stir with shoppers when they introduced a new store policy.

Staff at some stores have been told to search shoppers empty carrier bags following a huge rise in theft amid the cost of living crisis.

But in good news for shoppers Aldi recently bagged the top spot as the UK’s cheapest supermarket.

Consumer group Which? found Aldi shoppers popping to the store for a few key items bagged the cheapest deal for the 12th month in a row.

Aldi is not the only supermarket looking to expand, Lidl is set to open hundreds of new stores across the UK as part of huge expansion plans.

B&M also has plans to open another 30 new stores over the next 12 months as it aims to meet its long-term target of increasing its number of shops from 665 to 950.

And discount retailer Poundland has recently opened new stores in three locations, and is set to open more.

It comes after the chain said it would open 50 new stores by the end of September this year.

A SINGLE mum with £24,000 of debt has revealed how she became a self-made millionaire whose company has £7million in assets.

Abi Hookway, from Doncaster in South Yorkshire , moved into a small rented house with her two children after divorcing her husband.

Appearing on Channel 5’s Rich House Poor House , Abi described the “really tough times” which followed the divorce – before she forged a new life for herself.

She said: “I decided to divorce my husband and anybody that goes through divorce with young kids you know how hard that is.

“‘I’d moved into a little rented house but I was in £24,000 worth of debt because I’d just been not very good with money.

“I can remember there being some really tough times.”

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Abi started an estate agency – which now makes £300,000 a year.

She specialises in selling newbuild homes on behalf of developers – and also runs Touchstone Education, which trains people in property management and investment.

The divorced mum has also written two guides on how to follow her path to success as a property investor.

Abi said: “I think the first year in property – I’d paid off all my debt.

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“Boom, that was the day my life changed. It was a game-changer for me and my children.

“My portfolio’s worth about £6-7 million pounds. It makes £300,000 a year.”

Now Abi lives in a luxury four-bed home with partner Gordie and kids Thomas and Ellie – and sometimes spends £5,000 on designer clothes in a single outing.

LIFE SWAP

She recently appeared on Rich House Poor House – swapping lives with struggling parents Heather, 24, and Brad, 22, from Mansfield in Nottinghamshire , who are £12,000 in debt.

For one week, the families swapped homes and lives, to discover whether money really does buy happiness.

The two homes are less than an hour apart and Heather, Brad and Louis headed 40 miles north of their home in Mansfield, to stay at Abi’s, in Doncaster.

Once they had arrived at each other’s homes, it was time to swap budgets.

While Abi and her brood were going to be budgeting for £12 a day, Heather, Brad and Louis were able to splash out on £172.31 a day.

Heather and Brad got to enjoy personal shopping and a trip to a theme park and spa, while the others got stuck in with food shopping, family lunches and DIY .

Reflecting on Abi’s success, Brad noted: “To see that she’s made this for herself from nothing, paid off all her debts and worked really hard, it’s inspired me to do the same.”

When looking at Heather and Brad’s bills, Abi and Gordie noticed that the couple were spending £695 on rent , £764 on childcare and £640 utilities, with 86% of their money going towards outgoings.

THANKS A MILLION

After swapping lives for a week, the two couples met to talk the week over.

Abi said: “We’d love to help you guys. We would love you to move to Doncaster, we will pay a relocation package, and we’d love you to come and work for us.”

“Heather – we know you do a bit of HR and we’ve got a vacancy for HR within the office and Brad, we do have sales positions.”

Gordie added: “I know what salary you’re on now, the sales guys earn four times what you’re on now.

“The potential to earn a significant amount of money is there.”

Brad said: “This is life changing and we are so grateful.”

Heather added: “We’ve been in this position for so long, it’s been hard to see a way out of it, so thank you.

“We’ve just been offered the most life-changing opportunity that we will ever get in our lives.”

It comes after an entrepreneur who grew up in a council house sold his beachfront home for £15million .

Another mum who set up her birthday party business with just £50 now hosts £500,000 galas for the rich and famous .

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Officer Darrell Lobe of the Bothell, Wash. police department “proofs” a hidden-drugs test at the start of a K9 certification. The location of drugs in the vehicles was determined by rolling a die to prevent bias. Martin Kaste/NPR hide caption

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Martin Kaste/NPR

Officer Darrell Lobe of the Bothell, Wash. police department “proofs” a hidden-drugs test at the start of a K9 certification. The location of drugs in the vehicles was determined by rolling a die to prevent bias.

Martin Kaste/NPR

Seven years ago, a researcher named Lisa Lit published a study that she now calls “a real career-ender.”

On the surface, the study tested the abilities of fourteen certified sniffer dogs to find hidden “targets.” In reality, the dogs’ human handlers were also under the magnifying glass. They were led to believe there were hidden target scents present, when in fact there were none. Nevertheless, the dogs “alerted” to the scents multiple times — especially in locations where researchers had indicated a scent was likely.

“I think the findings were a little surprising,” Lit says. “I don’t think the number of incorrect responses was what anybody was really anticipating out of this study.”

Police dogs searching for drugs sometimes “alert” for them when they’re not there. That raises questions about the influence of the dogs’ handlers. As NPR learned, there is now an effort by some in the training community to eliminate the influence of their handlers’ suspicions to make dog searches more fair.

Lit’s study made headlines in the U.S. and abroad , as it seemed to question the impartiality of police K9 teams. In most states, an alert by a certified drug-sniffing dog gives police the right to search your car; some cops jokingly refer to the dogs as “probable cause on four legs.” With this study, that probable cause looked shakier.

Dog trainers and handlers denounced the study and its methods, and Lit couldn’t get their cooperation for further research. Dr. Cynthia Otto, another researcher who runs the Penn Vet Working Dog Center at the University of Pennsylvania, recalls the backlash.

“At the time it was extremely contentious, mostly because it felt like people were duped,” Otto says. “That [the handlers] were kind of tricked into this and taken advantage of.”

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Fred Helfers observes a K9 certification test through a partially masked window, to avoid any possibility of influencing the outcome. Martin Kaste/NPR hide caption

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Martin Kaste/NPR

Fred Helfers observes a K9 certification test through a partially masked window, to avoid any possibility of influencing the outcome.

Martin Kaste/NPR

But now that some time has gone by, Otto says there are trainers and handlers who are willing to put those emotions behind them and look at the problem identified by the study: dogs are very good at reading humans.

“There is this elephant in the room, the human factors,” she says. “We have to grab onto that and address it, so that we can mitigate some of these effects.”

One organization trying to address handler bias is the Pacific Northwest Police Detection Dog Association . In the U.S., a drug-sniffing dog team — the dog and its handler — has to be periodically retested and certified, usually by one of the many regional K9 associations. Some groups have tougher testing methods than others; the PNWK9 has a method that aspires to scientific levels of impartiality.

“It’s a double-blind,” says Fred Helfers , the retired police K9 handler and trainer who designed the system. “No outside influence.”

In Helfers’ tests, nobody in the room knows where the drugs are hidden; not the handler, not even the test administrator. That’s to eliminate the possibility of someone unconsciously telegraphing signals to the dog as it gets close to the target.

The tests are also randomized. Ahead of time, Helfers spends hours rolling dice to determine in which suitcases or cars to hide the target drugs. By rolling dice, he avoids following any kind of pattern which handlers might try to guess, the way a student might try to guess the patterns of answers in a mutiple-choice exam.

Occasionally, the dice determine that there will be no drugs hidden at all — sometimes for several tests in a row. He recalls that happening at another certification event.

“There were some new teams that failed that sequence,” Helfers says. “Because they didn’t trust their dog.”

He says those handlers couldn’t get past their expectation that drugs should be there. “I think they ‘overworked’ the car. Instead of going around once or twice and trusting their dog and watching their dog work, maybe they’d seen something that wasn’t there,” Helfers says.

He hopes his double-blind testing approach will catch on more broadly. But it’s a tough sell. K9 handlers don’t like being told they might be unconsciously cueing their dogs; some don’t think it’s even possible.

And there are powerful incentives not to change how things are done, says Andy Falco, a former police K9 handler who now trains dogs and works as an expert witness for defense attorneys.

“All [police departments] care about is how many cars you’re pulling over, how much money is being seized because your dog alerted,” he says, referring to departments that use civil asset forfeiture to keep money and other property found in cars after a K9 alerts to the scent of drugs.

“They go, ‘It’s easy! All I gotta do is walk my dog around, and look for him to change his behavior slightly, and then we can go inside and sometimes we’ll find a million dollars and then we can seize it!'”

Does Falco think handlers are consciously cueing their dogs?

“I think in the beginning it’s subconscious, but at some point, you know, how hard do you want to work, right?”

Falco says the UC Davis study has put more pressure on police to show that their dog teams are unbiased. The study is often cited by the defense in drug cases, and he’s glad to see organizations such as the PNWK9 responding with more scientific certification methods.

But he’d like to see dog teams go further, by keeping detailed records on how often a dog alerts to a drug, but finds nothing. Some dog handlers do that; others say it’s not a fair method for judging a dog’s accuracy.

“There’s been cars that my dog’s hit on… and just because there wasn’t a product in it, doesn’t mean the dog can’t smell it,” says Gunnar Fulmer, a K9 officer with the Walla Walla Police Department. “[The drug odor] gets permeated in clothing, it gets permeated in the headliners in cars.”

Handlers also point out that scientific neutrality is not something you can reasonably expect during traffic stops, since police are trained to act on their suspicions.

“The dogs are mainly used to confirm what we already suspect,” says Fulmer. “When the dogs come out, about 99 percent of the time we get an alert. And it’s because we already know what’s in the car; we just need that confirmation to help us out with that.”

Still, the certification process developed by Fred Helfers may at least force K9 teams to prove they’re capable of searching for drugs in a neutral fashion. He says the tests serve as a reminder to handlers that they should trust their dogs — even when the dogs come up empty.