The Hunger Games are back.

The trailer for the prequel to the saga has been released, subtitled The Ballad of Snakes and Songbirds (based on the 2020 book). The plot will unfold 60 years before the main series and will tell about the early life of President Coriolanus Snow of Panem and the birth of the Hunger Games. The film itself comes out in November.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria found in clouds.

Canadian and French scientists have taken samples from the clouds at the top of the 1,465-meter Puy de Dome and found antibiotic-resistant bacteria in them at a concentration in which they are also present on the Earth's surface. The clouds contained between 330 and 30,000 bacteria per milliliter of water, with an average of about 8,000. And they found 20,800 copies of resistance genes. Now scientists want to limit the spread of bacterial resistance genes. To do this, they will have to figure out exactly how and where the microorganisms get into the clouds.

Xiaomi has released the smartest mop in the world.

Mijia Floor Scrubber will give advice on how to clean better. In addition, she herself sterilizes the water, determines the level of surface contamination and will indicate to you with a voice “wipe here again.” The brush is motorized and rotates, and one charge is enough to clean an area of 30 square meters. The cost starts from 2990 yuan.

The balloon telescope took its first photo of space.

The story of SuperBIT is like a joke that came true. NASA decided to reduce the cost of launching space telescopes by mounting them on balloons. To do this, built a huge ball the size of a football field. And it really works - the telescope successfully took the first photo. This is the Tarantula Nebula, and not much worse than the more expensive Hubble Space Telescope.

Global warming could release toxic substances from the permafrost.

The permafrost stores pollutants from the petrochemical industry - gasoline, diesel, as well as lead, mercury and arsenic. There you can also find radioactive waste from nuclear tests. This is not an exhaustive list, because many data about the infrastructure in permafrost regions are classified or inaccessible to scientists. According to rough estimates, 13-20 thousand points can be noted on the map of the Arctic, where military-industrial waste is buried. They were not disposed of in an environmentally friendly way, because it was believed that in the permafrost, garbage would be safely stored for centuries.

Astronomers have recorded unusual bursts of radiation in space.

The extraordinarily bright flashes of light are so powerful that radio telescopes can detect them over four billion light-years away. Perhaps they come from black holes or neutron stars. The researchers reanalyzed all previously known repetitive bursts of energy. They hope this will help lead to a definitive answer to where they come from.

Mattel has introduced a Barbie doll with Down syndrome.

So the company wants to give children with special needs a toy they can identify with. The doll has entered the inclusive line of Fashionistas, which already has dolls with prostheses, hearing aids, vitiligo and moving in a wheelchair.

The right to drink at work.

In Spain, an electrician defended his right to drink at work through the courts - it turned out that this did not prevent him from fulfilling his duties. The man worked for the company for 27 years and drank from a can to several liters of beer every day, sometimes "distracted" by wine and brandy. Once the management could not stand it and the hero of the news was fired for constant alcoholism. True, the court found the reason for dismissal unreasonable, since it did not violate labor laws and did not interfere with his work in any way. Now the electrician will be reinstated, and the company owes him 47,000 euros in compensation.

A new species of super-poisonous jellyfish has been found in China.

They swim in a pond in Hong Kong's Mai Po Nature Reserve. A creature with 24 eyes is tiny - the body length is only 2.5 centimeters, the tentacles are about ten. But it releases a toxin that can cause paralysis and death within minutes of being bitten.

ChatGPT named the 10 most promising professions.

Professions are quite unusual: • Artificial intelligence specialist • Developer of quantum computers • Genetic engineer • Cyber security expert • Alternative Energy Specialist • Robotics Specialist • Space engineer • Autonomous vehicle specialist • Biotechnologist • Data Science and big data analytics

Scientists have taught parrots to call each other via video link.

The study found that pet parrots who were allowed to make video calls to other birds felt less lonely. They behaved more socially, preening more often, singing and playing.

The editor-in-chief of the German magazine Die Aktuelle has lost her position.

This happened after the magazine published a chatbot-generated interview with Michael Schumacher. Back in 2013, the world legend was fatally injured while skiing, his relatives recently stated that he cannot move independently and fully communicate with others. And now in Germany there is a magazine with a photo of an idol on the cover and a caption, "the first interview." And already inside the magazine it is explained that the interview was written by artificial intelligence, as if Schumacher himself answered the journalist's questions. In particular, the magazine cited the idol's "quotes" that his life was "completely changed after the accident, it was a terrible time for the whole family." The rider's family was outraged, they said they were preparing a lawsuit. The owners of the publication quickly issued a statement that the article was tasteless, misleading and should never have appeared. Anna Hoffman, who had headed the magazine since 2009, was put out on the street.

A huge blue hole has been found off the coast of Mexico - an underwater vertical cave.

In depth, it is second only to the 300-meter hole found in Sansha Yongle in China. The Yucatán blue hole was named Tam Ha (Taam ja ') - "deep water" in the Mayan language. Its surface area is 13.690 square meters. The cave has very steep 80-degree slopes. Scientists have yet to study the microbes and other organisms that inhabit it, as well as study the geology of the cave. Blue holes appeared during the last ice age. Then the sea was a hundred meters lower than it is now.

A resort town in Italy has imposed fines on tourists who take selfies for too long.

The Portofino resort will fine tourists 275 euros for taking selfies too long. Two picturesque places of the town fell under the restrictions. So in the season they expect to deal with pedestrian traffic jams. About 500 people live in the resort, but in the summer thousands of tourists come there, including celebrities.

Smartphone replacement.

Humane from former Apple employees introduced a gadget that is designed to replace smartphones. The device is mounted on the chest, projects a display on the palm, and is controlled by voice and gestures. The device can answer calls, as well as translate and extract from what the interlocutor said using neural networks. The built-in camera can recognize objects and provide information about them. The price and date of the start of sales are not yet known.

In Pennsylvania, children will be given weed right at school.

In the state of Pennsylvania, they have prepared a law that will allow nurses and parents to give marijuana to children on the territory of an educational institution, that is, they can smoke right in the classroom. The weed will be medical, and the child will need a certificate from a doctor.

"Baby Silencers"

A start-up that produces "baby silencers" has gone viral on the network - so that you can safely watch a movie or not be distracted by children's screams on a trip. But only the “founder” of the startup turned out to be humorist Brad Goss, who laughs at the hype around the device on his Instagram. But many parents have already run to buy.

In Israel, for the first time created an analogue of fish meat using 3D printing.

Steakholder Foods manufactures non-slaughtered meat products in a laboratory environment. Even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried the company's products and promised new permits for the production of "laboratory" meat.

Australian scientists create artificial intelligence based on human neurons.

Scientists use clusters of lab-grown neurons from human stem cells to form an artificial brain and connect it to an operating system. Experts believe that such technology is a possible future of AI, because human neurons work much better than any digital model, as they are self-programming and require much less energy consumption. Prototypes managed to teach how to play an analogue of the game Pong. In the future, it will also help in the development of drugs, the study of diseases and other technologies.

In the US, lightning struck a tree and created a new mineral.

It is something between terrestrial and space rocks. Inside the fulgurite, they found crystalline phosphorus of an unusual shape. These are rare fragments of the phosphorus material CaHPO3 - it is not a phosphate, but it is not a phosphide either. It turned out that the new mineral contains calcium phosphite. It is likely that with prolonged heating, the discovered material will turn into a mineral that is present in meteorites.