thursday, August 7, 2014
n o k c e B s d r Boa Preen creators who count Clare Danes and Julia Roberts as fans rosetta catches up on comet pAGE 3
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All your GoSSIp & SHoWBIZ
support surge for faceBook legal action pAGE 4
Jobless figure to return to ’08 level THE NUMBER of people out of work is to fall below one in ten for the first time in years, the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) has said. Gross National Product – the value of everything we produce – is expected to rise more than 3.5 per cent both in 2015 and again in 2016. This will lead to a recovery that will see the numbers unemployed dipping below ten per cent by next year, the researchers said. Latest figures show 11.5 per cent of the workforce are unemployed, with more than 400,000 people on the dole. The last time fewer than ten per cent were out of work was at the end of 2008. While the Institute paints a glowing picture for the economy in its latest report on the state
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by Brian hutton of the nation, it is warning of a number of threats that need to be addressed. ‘While the outlook is positive, the weak growth prospects for the eurozone are a concern. Domestically the particularly low rate of investment, the high rate of unemployment and the weak levels of credit being extended remain to be addressed,’ it said. The think tank also dismissed claims by some observers of a property bubble. House prices are still undervalued and will continue to rise until a significant number of new homes are built, the ESRI said, adding that the cost of living, including house prices, needed to be kept in check if the economy is to continue growing.
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NOT NOW, MUM: Zuri, an Asian lioness at Dublin Zoo, cleans her new-born cub, yet to be named. The birth is significant for the zoo given there are less than 350 Asian lions left in the wild. Dublin Zoo is inviting name suggestions for the new arrival based on his Asian origin via its Facebook page
Hackers steal 1.2bn passwords RUSSIAN hackers have stolen 1.2billion user names and passwords in what could be the biggest ever data theft, say security chiefs. The CyberVors gang stole the information from 420,000 websites, says Hold Security, a US firm which specialises in exposing security breaches. But the gang has so far refused to name the sites involved. ‘They didn’t just target large companies – they targeted every site victims visited,’ Hold Security said. The firm said sites affected include ‘leaders in virtually all industries across
the world.’ It also claimed the stolen data came from 500million email addresses acquired by other hackers and that the gang used a botnet – a network of infected computers controlled by a hacker – to identify weaknesses in websites. But experts are sceptical about the scale of the data theft. ‘They haven’t released much concrete information,’ David Emm from Kaspersky Lab said. ‘Normally when there’s a breach, websites advise users to change their passwords. We’ve seen nothing like that in this case’.