Новости за 02.06.2017

Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement is certainly a blow for the global climate regime. But it is primarily a bad deal for the US. It is bad for America’s economy, its global leadership, and its non-climate policy goals. The good news is this: global efforts to tackle climate change will survive without the US.

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The grieving parents of a dead teenager in Germany were recently denied access to their daughter’s Facebook account. They wanted to read the profile page to see if she was being bullied, but the social network argued that doing so would compromise the privacy of her contacts – and a judge agreed. None of this, however, takes into account what the girl would have wanted.

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It is a bitter irony that politicians lament the threat to democracy posed by the internet, instead of exploiting its potential to enhance the existing system. Hackers and bots may help to sway elections, but modern technology has allowed the power of the multitude to positively disrupt the world of business and beyond. Now, crowdsourcing should be allowed to shake up the lawmaking process to make democracies more participatory and efficient.

Trust in election forecasting is probably as low as it has been since 1948, when political polling suffered possibly its worst ever humiliation. In that year’s US presidential election, the 8-1 underdog Harry Truman defied all predictions to defeat his Republican challenger, Thomas Dewey. “Dewey Defeats Truman” screamed the now-infamous newspaper headline printed before the actual votes were counted.

For the person who chose and was able to call it, the 2017 general election was always going to be characterised by risk. But of all the gambles taken by a politician whose appeal was based largely on the avoidance of risk, that of not participating in the BBC’s televised debate may be the most damaging for Theresa May.

Marine Staff Sgt Anthony Mannino uses art and music as part of therapeutic care for his traumatic brain injury. Marvin Lynchard/US Department of Defence

In the introduction to his beautiful book The Body Keeps The Score, psychiatrist Bessel Van der Kolk writes: “One does not need to be a combat soldier, or visit a refugee camp in Syria or the Congo to encounter trauma. Trauma happens to us, our friends, our families and our neighbours.”

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Ahead of the election on June 8, the UK’s main political parties have all proposed different solutions for the social care crisis. After the Conservatives’ proposals were labelled a “dementia tax”, and the party made a policy U-turn on the issue of whether there will be a “cap” on care costs, the issue of adult social care has become a key issue in the election, particularly for older voters.

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In moments of fierce political competition, there’s one topic where most candidates find common ground – and that’s infrastructure spending. Pledges to spend more on transport, energy, water, waste and telecommunications systems are seen as vote winners in democracies across the globe.

STS Steve Robinson on Canadarm NASA

Astronauts on the International Space Station are growing crystals that could help develop new drugs for use on Earth. Here are ten healthcare technologies that have already come from space:

What causes terrorism? The combination of the horrendous terrorist attack in Manchester and a British general election inevitably meant that this question would dominate political and media discourses. And so it has. Particular attention has, once again, been drawn to the role of western foreign policy, including that of the UK, as a driver of extremist violence.

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Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. Clay Enos/TM & © DC Comics

Wonder Woman is an unsettling superhero. More so than her male counterparts, she resists easy classification: she’s neither an alien or a billionaire – nor has she been exposed to some chemical to obtain her powers. The comic books cast her as a mystery to be unravelled and ultimately controlled.

Super-size me? Shutterstock

Half a million children are now being taught in super-size classes of over 36.

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In the first four months of this year, around 1,500 cases of measles were reported in Italy. As a response to the outbreak, the Italian government introduced a law making 12 vaccinations mandatory for preschool and school-age children.

Katsushika Hokusai, 'Mount Fuji viewed from the sea,' from One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, ca. 1834. British Museum., Author provided

By the time Katsushika Hokusai painted The Great Wave he was already a celebrity in Japan. The iconic print was produced in 1831 as part of a print series, Thirty-Six Views of Mt Fuji, when the Japanese artist was 71 years old. Within a few years of his death at 89 in 1849, Hokusai’s fame had spread around the world and his most famous work was on its way to becoming... Читать дальше...

Polling organisation YouGov has caused a stir with its latest findings, which appear to defy practically everyone else’s 2017 general election forecasts.

Fat fingers? Twitter

Just after midnight, Washington time, on the morning of Wednesday May 31, Donald Trump composed a short tweet. It simply read: “Despite the constant negative press covfefe.”