【推荐3】One thing that sets cycling apart from most other sports at the Olympics is technology. With the exception of a few other sports, such as sailing and rowing, most events that take place at the Summer Games usually just come down to the performances of the athletes. They try to swim and run faster, jump and climb higher, lift and hit with more strength.

In cycling, the competition is so close-often a hundredth of a second separates riders-that the difference in winning and losing can be found in the chain, the wheels, and even the helmet that they choose to wear. That is why the US team made headlines at Rio 2016 Olympics Games, when it rolled out a new bike design that moved the entire drive chain from the right side to the left. It might not catch the attention of the average bicyclists, who probably don’t even notice which side the drive chain is on their own bikes. But it caused plenty of outcry from the Olympic Committee, since Olympic rules state that any bike used in competition must be made available to the public. But the American bike-maker Felt Bicycles only sold the new bikes to the American team. The price? $25,999 per bike.

Then the British adopted a more tactful(圆滑的)strategy. It teamed up with bike maker Hope Technology to create something extremely expensive for the Tokyo Olympics Games this year. The frame alone sells for about $23,500. Another $12,000 for the wheels. Throwing in the expensive suits, oil for chains, and sunglasses and shoes, the investment needed to compete for a cycling medal can be almost unaffordable for most of the athletes.

【推荐2】Booksellers have run their trade along the banks of the River Seine for about 450 years, their time-beaten green boxes a Paris tradition as treasured as freshly baked baguettes (法棍面包).

But this piece of French history is now at the center of a storm after the city’s police ordered that the booksellers and their stalls (排位) be relocated for “safety reasons” to make way for the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games in 2024.

One plan was for booksellers’ boxes to remain in place but they must be examined by the police first and sealed off (封锁) during the Olympic event, which would attract millions of visitors to the city—including many who would potentially visit their stalls. Another plan, considered even worse by booksellers, was to move the boxes elsewhere. As booksellers pit on, many bores have been is place for 30 or 40 years. Most are mused and all their parts are not strong enough.

Although the city’s government has offered to relocate the bookstalls and cover the cost of the move as well as repairing damaged stalls, booksellers say the lack of consultation over a decision affecting a Paris landmark has left them fearful about the future.

Plus, there’s concern about what will happen when the Olympics are over. “Are they even going to offer us the same spots again after the games?” asked a bookseller. “I’m afraid that we get our boxes back either in a year, or maybe never, or with someone else’s things in them,” he said.

Booksellers worried that not only would moving the boxes be much more expensive for the capital, but a relocated book market wouldn’t work. “The stalls only make sense when they are on the banks of the Seine,” they said. The attraction and culture of the boxes is their age-worn character, their poetic shades of green.

【推荐3】A Spanish rice dish; secreto de cerdo with pisto—Ibérico Pork with tomatoes, onions, eggplant, and peppers; and chicken and mushroom paella, will be served aboard the International Space Station (ISS) throughout the next week.

That, at least, is what four of the eleven crew members aboard the ISS will be eating, after a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off on April 8,2022 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying the Crew Dragon spacecraft. The flight, sponsored by the Houston-based company Axiom Space and known as Ax-1, is commanded by Axiom vice president and former astronaut Michael López-Alegría. Also on board are three business owners and charitarians: American Larry Connor, Canadian Mark Pathy, and Israeli Eytan Stibbe—each of whom paid an estimated $55 million per seat for their 20-hour journey to the station and the eight days they will spend aboard.

Actually, they are not the first space tourists to the ISS—eleven in total over the past two decades; and all of them were adventurers who paid to fly aboard crewed by professional astronauts. AX-1 is the first fully private mission to the station—but not the last.

In a pre-launch press conference, Connor said, “We’ve spent anywhere from 750 to over 1,000 hours training. We’re going to do some 25 different experiments covering over 100 hours of research.” One such experiment will involve a brain headset that will conduct real-time electroencephalograms (EEGs) of the crew as they fly and experiments on in vitro stem cells.

There will also be time for a moving remembrance. Stibbe, the second Israeli to fly in space, once piloted military jets under the command of Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut, who died in the 2003 disintegration of the space shuttle Columbia. Several pages from Ramon’s diary survived the crash and Stibbe will carry them into the space.

Space is a hard business, a dangerous business, and an expensive business. But it’s also an emotional one. “Ramon was a good friend,” Stibbe added respectfully, “He was my commander.”