Новости за 06.10.2017

sigaudiovisual.com, CC BY-SA

Fundamental human rights are now recognised across much of the world. Humans, however, cannot exist without the natural world. So should we also award rights to environmental entities? The idea has gained traction in recent years – and it is rivers that have found themselves at the vanguard of landmark legal developments.

epa, CC BY-SA

The heavy-handed police intervention against the Catalan nationalists during the unilateral referendum on October 1 produced some shocking images: police in riot gear beating unarmed protesters and seizing ballot boxes.

cawayne/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

After dodging the worst of Hurricane Irma, Florida’s coastal real estate boom shows no signs of slowing. In Miami and nearby waterfront cities, a survey of local records show that more than 90 luxury high-rise apartment blocks are under construction or have been completed since 2015, increasingly financed by overseas investors looking for “safe” opportunities in a turbulent global economy.

Shutter stock

As soon as women find out they’re pregnant, they are overwhelmed with information about what they can – or more likely can’t – eat and drink. Off the menu go soft cheeses, partially cooked eggs, raw meat, pâté, liver, caffeine, alcohol. It’s a lot to remember.

Are two heads better than one? Dragon Images/Shutterstock

Decision making is an integral part of our everyday life. When it comes to important decisions, we generally want to work with others – assuming that groups are better than individuals. This has, after all, been shown to be the case in both humans and animals. Committees, panels and juries usually achieve this “wisdom of crowds” by sharing individual opinions and views – discussing them within the group until there is consensus.

The 2017 general election was highly unusual as far as the youth vote was concerned. The Labour party won 65% – the lion’s share – of the youth vote. The nearest comparisons are with 1964 and 1997. In both those years, Labour took 53% of the youth vote. In the 2015 election, just two years earlier, the party had won just 38% of the youth vote.

Sony Pictures

The idea of dangerous, inhumane artificial intelligence taking over the world is familiar to many of us, thanks to cautionary tales such as the Matrix and Terminator franchises.

Komsan Loonprom/Shutterstock

The human body is incredibly resilient. When you donate a pint of blood, you lose about 3.5 trillion red blood cells, but your body quickly replaces them. You can even lose large chunks of vital organs and live. For example, people can live relatively normal lives with just half a brain). Other organs can be removed in their entirety without having too much impact on your life. Here are some of the “non-vital organs”.

Poverty and isolation is leading to nutritional problems for older people. via shutterstock.com

Welfare reform and austerity in the UK has led to reductions in public spending on services that support older people. Age UK has highlighted how nearly one million older people have unmet social care needs. This is of particular concern as the winter months approach.

When My Little Pony: The Movie lands in cinemas this October, producers Hasbro will be hoping that the animation proves popular with its target audience of young girls. The film will also attract a very different group of viewers: adult My Little Pony fans known as “Bronies”. Made up predominantly of young men aged 18-30, the fandom has evoked reactions ranging from bemusement to celebration since it emerged at the beginning of this decade.

With plans underway for the UK’s biggest peacetime repatriation of 110,000 customers following the collapse of Monarch Airlines – the biggest UK airline ever to cease trading – questions are quite rightly being asked about what went wrong.

The 2017 hurricane season has brought unprecedented destruction to the Caribbean and southern United States. As millions of people around the world have watched these events unfold from afar, no doubt some have found themselves wondering why people continue to live in places under threat from natural disasters – and even return to rebuild these places after they’ve been destroyed.

Theresa May’s party leader speech at the Conservative conference on October 4 was noteworthy for all the wrong reasons. As Kenzie Bryant noted in Vanity Fair, it became a speech about “a cough, a merry prankster, a bracelet”.

The Norman-built keep at Cardiff Castle. Matthew Dixon/Shutterstock

Britain in the early Middle Ages was very different to the country it is now. Rather than England, Scotland and Wales, the island consisted of numerous kingdoms, the fate and fortune of which fluctuated, as some kings gained lordship over others, some smaller kingdoms were swallowed by their larger neighbours and others fell to foreign invaders – including Vikings, in the ninth and tenth centuries.

Blade Runner Movie.com

The year 2019 must have seemed like a long time in the future 35 years ago, when the original Blade Runner film was set. Based on the US science fiction writer Philip K Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Ridley Scott’s dystopian vision tells the story of a hunt for four dangerous “replicant” humans.