Новости за 24.04.2017

Fioramonti in Edinburgh.

The South African economist Lorenzo Fioramonti is one of the leading critics of the fact that we measure the well-being of society using a single statistic. In three books, most recently The World After GDP (2015), he argues that the economic activity captured in gross domestic product (GDP) has been the priority for policies and incentives around the world for the past few decades – with disastrous results.

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If you use Facebook’s mobile app, you may have recently noticed the sudden appearance of circles at the very top of the display. The social media giant has previously tried pushing this “Stories” feature into three of its other products: Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram. This point wasn’t lost on many internet users, who quickly began sharing memes mocking Facebook’s addition of Stories to everything.

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If news stories are anything to go by, Europe is performing poorly when it comes to vaccination – and the “anti-vaxxer” is to blame.

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A not-so-quiet repair revolution is taking place in communities across Britain. Consumers, fed up with having to throw away broken phones, toasters and other appliances, are instead meeting to learn how to repair them and to extend the lifetime of their products. These repair “pop-up parties”, where like-minded people can improve or learn new skills in a supportive environment, can prevent still-useful products from ending up in the bin, while saving money.

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Scientists have just discovered massive amounts of a rare metal called tellurium, a key element in cutting-edge solar technology. As a solar expert who specialises in exactly this, I should be delighted. But here’s the catch: the deposit is found at the bottom of the sea, in an undisturbed part of the ocean.

With inflation rampant and many basic goods in short supply, Venezuelans are furious at their government. Violence at protests in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, turned deadly, and the country is in a deep political and economic crisis that shows no sign of abating. And this is much more than a sudden collapse: Venezuela was set on this disastrous course nearly a decade ago.

The aurora Steve. Rémi Farvacque‎/Alberta Aurora Chasers (facebook)

A collaboration between aurora-hunting citizen scientists and a team of professional researchers has resulted in the discovery of a completely new type of aurora. The finding was made possible thanks to photos taken by aurora enthusiasts from across the globe which scientists could then compare with data from satellites.

With Marine Le Pen through to the second round of the French presidential elections, the prospect of Frexit, which is at the centre of her economic policies, is beginning to spook financial markets. While the possibility of Le Pen winning in the second round remains remote, two weeks can be a long time in politics.

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Political opinion polls have taken a bit of a battering in the past few years. There was wide agreement on the eve of the last UK general election that the outcome would be a hung parliament. Few pollsters saw Donald Trump winning the 2015 presidential election in the US. And almost everyone agreed that Brexit would not happen. So are opinion polls worth the paper they’re written on any more?

The 2017 French presidential election was destined to go down to the wire and it didn’t disappoint. The traditional political landscape has been shot through by the victory of two outsiders, Marine Le Pen, the candidate of the far-right Front National, and Emmanuel Macron, the new kid on the block.

I was in Jakarta, Indonesia in 2008 and lucky enough to examine the bones of one of the most controversial hominin species that has ever been discovered. The skeletal remains belonged to an ancient people with tiny brains, and so short that they have been nicknamed “hobbits”.

April 24 marks the anniversary of the start of the Armenian Genocide, during which the Ottoman state murdered 1.5m Ottoman Armenians. But while it might have begun 102 years ago, in a sense, the genocide did not end; the inheritor Turkish state then embarked on a project of denial – the final stage of genocide.

In the end, the polls were right. Emmanuel Macron will go into the second round of the French presidential election against Marine Le Pen. For a while it seemed as though a dead heat were on the cards but, in the end, Macron took first place, with nearly 24%, ahead of Le Pen at just under 22%.