Новости за 11.09.2017

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It was “like a dog’s life”, one Vietnamese women told me about her experience of living in the UK. She had been trafficked into the country and said she had “no fixed job and no fixed accommodation”. The woman, who I interviewed as part of my research exploring human trafficking and Vietnam, has now returned to Vietnam.

Hurricane Irma has torn a path of devastation through the Caribbean. Current indications suggest that at least 25 people have been killed – a figure likely to rise significantly – while many thousands have lost their homes and businesses. The clean-up operation will take years to complete, with costs running into the hundreds of millions.

France’s National Assembly is soon to debate counter-terrorism legislation proposed by Emmanuel Macron’s government. This legislation, Macron claims, will enable France to end the state of emergency which has been in place since 2015. The state of emergency grants extended powers of repression and surveillance to state authorities; since it was applied, it has been widely criticised as enabling human rights abuses.

The star TRAPPIST with three planets. ESO/M. Kornmesser/N. Risinger (skysurvey.org) - http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1615c/, CC BY-SA

The seafaring explorers of the 16th century famously found many new homes for humanity in faraway, unknown corners of the world. While it may seem that such colonisation has since ground to a halt, some have argued it is only a matter of time before humans start moving to “exoplanets” in foreign star systems. But how close are we to such an expansion?

Nuttawut Uttamaharad / shutterstock

The price of offshore wind continues to fall dramatically. The UK government’s latest round of contracts for renewable generation have just been announced, and they show the costs of subsidies have halved in just two years. Cheap wind power is a great source of low carbon electricity, and it’s good news for politicians who may have been worried about subsidies bumping up household bills. But the scale of investment in offshore wind raises bigger, more systemic questions. Читать дальше...

Nuttawut Uttamaharad / shutterstock

The price of offshore wind continues to fall dramatically. The UK government’s latest round of contracts for renewable generation have just been announced, and they show the costs of subsidies have halved in just two years. Cheap wind power is a great source of low carbon electricity, and it’s good news for politicians who may have been worried about subsidies bumping up household bills. But the scale of investment in offshore wind raises bigger, more systemic questions. Читать дальше...

Jane Austen enters circulation this month as the new face of the Bank of England £10 note. It is a fitting choice – as Austen increasingly passes through hands and wallets, the nation will be helped to remember that 2017 marks the 200th anniversary of the celebrated author’s death.

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The UK is in the midst of a wide-ranging national industrial strategy which will influence the country’s future role in the global economy. The latest proposals look at the life sciences and healthcare sectors, perhaps the areas of this grand plan which will affect most people, including through the successful development – or otherwise – of the National Health Service.

Chains of employment. Shutterstock

I can tell you the farm where the steak on your plate came from. Probably even the name of the cow. But we have no idea where the workers came from that work in our kitchens.

© Warner Bros

What used to terrify you as a child? For me, it was being asked to retrieve anything from my grandmother’s bedroom (which was almost certainly haunted) – and scenes from the 1990 television adaptation of Stephen King’s IT, which tells the tale of a clownlike demon, Pennywise, that stalks the children of a small town in Maine. Like many, I watched IT illicitly at a friend’s house on VHS video. Certain set pieces would haunt me for years: Pennywise’s unnerving grin; his scratchy voice... Читать дальше...

Can Brazil's judges really hold powerful feet to the fire? Ricαrdo from Fortaleza/CE, Brasil, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

With the current president Michel Temer under suspicion and two former presidents, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) and his successor Dilma Rousseff, now facing fresh corruption charges, Brazil’s political crisis is very much still underway. Although widely anticipated by the press and the public, the cases against Brazil’s most recent presidents have nevertheless left the country shocked ... Читать дальше...

Satellite view of Hurricane Irma. NASA

There’s been a devastating trail of destruction and flooding along the east Atlantic coast in the last few weeks following Hurricane Harvey and now Hurricane Irma. The latter, currently moving across Florida, is the strongest sustained hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic outside the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.

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Donald Trump’s about-face diktat that America is to galvanise its gig in Afghanistan was met with derision by many but will have caused others to sit right up. These will have included troops about to be dispatched to Afghanistan for a second, third or fourth helping of wack-a-mole, and especially those to be deployed in medical roles.

The terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils in August brought the vulnerability of Spain to jihadi terrorism into sharp focus. Since 2004, when 192 people were murdered in an attack on the Madrid metro, Spain has remained a key target. Despite pulling its support from the war in Iraq and refusing to participate in the bombing of Syria, Spanish security services continue to deal with the threat from jihadi terrorism, and have arrested some 180 suspects since 2015 within Spain.