Новости за 17.07.2017

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Godfather of the zombie film genre, George A. Romero’s death at 77-years-old has undoubtedly been a sudden and tragic moment for horror fans the world over. Not least because it came only a few days after the news that the American film director began seeking financing for the latest instalment in his “dead” series, “Road of the Dead”.

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Activist investors are often presented as the bad guys of financial markets. They burst onto the scene, shout loudly their plans and can offer brutal verdicts on the performance of company bosses. Naturally, CEOs would prefer to prevent this public struggle, and the best way for a company to defend itself from these insurgents might be borrow some of their tricks.

Gino Santa Maria/Shutterstock

Activist investors are often presented as the bad guys of financial markets. They burst onto the scene, shout loudly their plans and can offer brutal verdicts on the performance of company bosses. Naturally, CEOs would prefer to prevent this public struggle, and the best way for a company to defend itself from these insurgents might be borrow some of their tricks.

Sylvain Szewczyk/Flickr, CC BY-SA

I belong to a generation that has been told there is no other choice other than to be flexible in the labour market. It means being flexible about where you go to work, when you go to work, and about what you work you are going to do. For many of us, the idea of a long-term employment contract in a company where there is the possibility to progress belongs to another time.

The only way isn't up. Shutterstock

A damning report into social mobility has concluded that successive UK governments have failed to tackle the issue for the past 20 years. But the analysis by the Social Mobility Commission (SMC) also fails on this front. Very little of its review of the past two decades is actually about social mobility.

Some of the earliest known galaxies in the universe, seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA/ESA

There was a lot of excitement last year when the LIGO collaboration detected gravitational waves, which are ripples in the fabric of space itself. And it’s no wonder – it was one of the most important discoveries of the century. By measuring gravitational waves from intense astrophysical processes like merging black holes, the experiment opens up a completely new way of observing and understanding the universe. Читать дальше...

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Teenagers in Britain are fortunate to have access to computers, laptops and smartphones from an early age. A child in the UK receives a smartphone at around the age of 12 – among the earliest in Europe. The natural consequence of this is that children spend a significant amount of their time on the internet. Nearly 20 years or so since the first social networks appeared on the internet, there has been considerable research into their psychological, societal, and health effects. Читать дальше...

Following the intense election campaign of 2017, Labour shadow home secretary Diane Abbott spoke out about the racist and misogynistic abuse she received online.

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More than 16m patient records were stolen from healthcare organisations in the US and related parties in 2016. That year, healthcare was the fifth most targeted industry when it came to cyber-attacks. And earlier this year, Britain’s National Health Service was crippled by a ransomware attack that locked up the computers holding many of its records and booking systems.

Beyoncé: the Annunciation. Courtesy of Beyoncé's Instagram

As befitting pop “royalty”, the singer Beyoncé Knowles has publicly released the first official photo of her twins – one-month-old Rumi and Sir Carter. The image – which quickly became one of the most liked on Instagram – echoed her pregnancy announcement from February, once again referencing religious and classical icons - this time Botticelli’s Venus. And, in a step that’s becoming something of a signature move for her, the Virgin Mary.

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The Home Office has just published a new drug strategy. The last one was published by Theresa May (then home secretary) seven years ago. The world has changed a lot in that time – not least for May – and so have drugs and the health problems that governments must deal with. So has the strategy changed with the times?

So while Matthew’s report is clear that many workers value the flexibility that zero-hours contracts offer them, and that banning such contracts altogether would harm more people than it would help, it is important that we continue to ensure that employers do not use these contracts to exploit people.

Chawton House Library

Two prominent writers died in July 1817. The first was arguably the most famous woman in Europe. The other was a country clergyman’s daughter whose life had revolved around her family and her home county.

“Spreading out into space will completely change the future of humanity,” says Stephen Hawking. It “may be the only thing that saves us from ourselves. I am convinced that humans need to leave Earth”.