Thursday, February 13

Extras

How food couriers are exploiting migrants
Extras, Featured

How food couriers are exploiting migrants

    Aymen Arfaoui strapped on a plastic Uber Eats bag and checked his cellphone for the fastest bicycle route before pedaling into the stream of cars circling the Place de la République. Time was money, and Mr. Arfaoui, a nervous 18-year-old migrant, needed cash. I’m doing this because I have to eat, he said, locking in a course that could save him a few minutes on his first delivery of the day. It’s better than stealing or begging on the street. Mr. Arfaoui has no working papers, and he would pocket a little more than half that day’s earnings. He said that he owed the rest to a French bicycle courier who considered Uber Eats’ terms too cheap 3.50 euros (just under $4) per order plus a bit for mileage to do the work himself. The Parisian courier had outsourced the job ...
The best way to resist junk food cravings
Extras, Featured

The best way to resist junk food cravings

    The need for something gooey, crispy, or sweet seizes everyone's brain at some point. But you don't have to reach for junk. Fight back against the four stages of cravings with these tips from neuroscientists Peter Hall, Ph.D. of the University of Waterloo, and Nicole Avena, Ph.D. of Mount Sinai Health System. Trigger: An urge arises The smell of fries drifts through the food court; pepperoni sizzles in a pizza commercial. Your senses lead to your brain retrieving memories from your hippocampus and moving them into your working memory. Feel-good neurochemicals dopamine and opioids start to trickle into your reward-focused areas. How to fight it: If you intervene right now, you’re more likely to resist the temptation. So try to distract yourself by taking a bris...
How the Airbnb boom is putting pressure on housing
Extras, Featured

How the Airbnb boom is putting pressure on housing

    Everyone knows that Google, Apple and Facebook are big, and that Uber and Netflix are fairly sizeable too. But far fewer people are aware just how enormous Airbnb and its rivals have become not in the boulevards and piazzas of foreign cities, but right here, in the UK. The scale of the growth is not only remarkable, but also largely untracked. We are blind to the amount of short-term letting that goes on, said Ian Adams, cabinet member for Westminster Council, which estimates that as many as one in 15 housing units in the borough are being let as short-term rentals. According to the last figures released by Airbnb, two million guests stayed at 64,000 London listings between 1 July 2016 and 1 July 2017, a growth of 49% on the previous year. When you factor in riva...
Brits unwilling to cut back to fight climate change
Extras, Featured

Brits unwilling to cut back to fight climate change

    The majority of Britons are unwilling to significantly reduce the amount they drive, fly and eat meat in order to combat climate change, a Sky Data poll reveals. Just over half 53% say they would be unwilling even in principle to significantly reduce the amount they fly, while 28% say they would be willing to give up travelling by plane or reduce the amount they do so significantly (19% say they never fly anyway). People responding to polls often overclaim their willingness to change their behaviour in ways considered socially desirable but despite this some 52% say they would be unwilling to reduce the amount of meat they eat much (31%) or at all (21%) to help reduce global warming. Four in ten say they would be willing to either reduce their meat consumption sign...
Fears for safety of Nissan jobs in UK after sales and profits tumble
Extras, Featured

Fears for safety of Nissan jobs in UK after sales and profits tumble

    Japanese firm Nissan has become the latest car manufacturing giant to publish gloomy sales figures amid concerns about its future in Britain. Turnover at Nissan’s UK business, which is headquartered in Sunderland, fell by £93million last year to £6.3billion while its profits plunged 6.6 per cent to £133million. The automotive behemoth, which employs nearly 8,000 people in the UK, also revealed its car production fell 6.2 per cent to 487,000 vehicles in the year to March 2018. In an interview with The Mail on Sunday last month, Ford’s European boss Steven Armstrong said: If the industry can’t continue to operate competitively, we would have to think about where we continue and how we continue to invest. The firm said it was facing numerous problems, including weake...
Safest airline in the world for 2019
Extras, Featured

Safest airline in the world for 2019

    Qantas is the safest airline in the world for 2019, according to newly released rankings. The Australian flag carrier was awarded the top spot by Airlineratings.com, which looked at a range of factors when determining the safest airlines, including audits from aviation’s governing and industry bodies, crash and serious incident records, and fleet age. Airlines including British Airways, Emirates and Qatar were ranked among the world's 20 safest airlines, while Wizz and Flybe were ranked among the world's safest low-cost airlines. But 98-year-old Qantas the world’s oldest continuously operating carrier was picked out in particular for amassing a comprehensive record of firsts in operations and safety. According to Airlineratings.com, Qantas has been a leader in var...
A total solar eclipse captivated the nation
Extras, Featured

A total solar eclipse captivated the nation

    A year ago, the Great American total solar eclipse evoked awe, wonder, and bewilderment as earth dwellers briefly had the chance to bask in the shadow of the moon. Close to two hundred million Americans viewed the spectacle in some way, including roughly fifteen million lucky folks who managed to squeeze themselves within the path of totality. Whether you’re now an umbraphile someone who chases eclipses or looking to see your first one, you’re in luck! Another total solar eclipse is just around the corner, in less than a year, but you’ll have to travel to South America. For the next eclipse in the Lower 48, mark your calendar for April 8, 2024. Solar eclipses occur someplace on earth on average every 18 months. They’re not terribly unusual. But over any given plac...
Finger bone first found in Saudi Arabia more than 85,000 years ago
Extras, Featured

Finger bone first found in Saudi Arabia more than 85,000 years ago

    More than 85,000 years ago, the Arabian peninsula looked very different from the vast, sandy expanse people see today. The region was a lush grassland, seasonally greening with every rainy period, and dotted by hundreds of freshwater lakes. Researchers have found evidence in the sands of aquatic- and semi-aquatic mammals, such as hippos, which are more commonly associated with the African subcontinent. They've also found stone tools the suggest an early human presence on the peninsula, but no direct fossil evidence until now. A single human finger bone discovered in 2016 at an ancient lake site in Saudi Arabia called Al Wusta has now been dated to approximately 88,000 years ago, according to a new study in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. We have found 10,...
You should be aware 8 money scams in 2018
Extras, Featured

You should be aware 8 money scams in 2018

    8 financial scams to be aware of in 2018  Unfortunately, in this digital day and age, there is an ever increasing need to protect yourself against financial scams. Financial fraud is the most common crime in the UK and, it turns out, the methods scammers use can change very quickly, which is why NatWest has released their Digital Safety report for 2018 which details the techniques some scammers will be using this year, in particular. Joining up with research agency The Future Laboratory, the bank has analysed data from RBS Scams Monthly Index and the RBS security team over the past 18 months to predict eight fraudulent scams expected to rise this year. 1. Social Media We're often told to be mindful of just how much personal information we give out on Facebook, T...
Bitcoin falls $1,000 after South Korea promises crackdown on trading
Extras, Featured

Bitcoin falls $1,000 after South Korea promises crackdown on trading

    Bitcoin plunged by more than $1,000 on Thursday after South Korea said it was planning a crackdown on trading in the digital currency in the latest of a string of warnings for investors. In a further illustration of bitcoin’s volatility, it dropped to around $13,500 after trading at about $15,400 on Wednesday. The cryptocurrency has surged in value this year by more than 900%, becoming one of the biggest stories in finance amid a slew of warnings of a pending market crash, hitting a record high of almost $20,000 earlier this month. South Korea, which is one of the biggest markets in the world for bitcoin, said it was preparing a ban on opening anonymous cryptocurrency accounts and new legislation to enable regulators to close coin exchanges if they felt there was a ...