1 . Israel was accused of using white phosphorus bombs (白磷弹), a banned bomb, in the Palestine-Israel conflict in October. However, the Israeli military later claimed in a statement that it didn’t use such a weapon, reported Reuters.

White phosphorus is a highly free burning chemical that can create intense heat, light and smoke, reaching over 1,000°C when burned. The flame it produces is difficult to put out, leading to deadly burns on the human body.

The chemical is also poisonous. Those coming into contact with it may suffer heart, kidney or bone damage. And bomb-hit areas are likely to be polluted by white phosphorus, resulting in long-term environmental damage.

This news sparked public concern about destructive weapons. International humanitarian law (IHL) bans any weapon “of a nature to cause overmuch injury or unnecessary suffering”. Such a weapon can cause indiscriminate harm, injuring or killing soldiers as well as civilians.

The Geneva Conventions (《日内瓦公约》) and their Additional Protocols, which form the core of international humanitarian law, have set requirements for all countries to follow about how wars are carried out. For example, the use, production, stockpiling (储备) or selling of biological and chemical weapons are forbidden.

Chemical weapons, such as mustard gas, are poisonous. They can cause temporary or permanent damage to people and have various effects, such as severe eye pain, breathing difficulty, and blistering (起水泡) of the skin. Biological weapons, usually developed from viruses or bacteria, attack the human immune system, often with deadly consequences.

Other international conventions also have made related rules, which apply to the countries that have agreed to them. For example, according to the IHL database, any actions expected to result in widespread, long-lasting destruction of the environment are prohibited.

“During the Vietnam War, the US military employed a highly effective defoliant (落叶剂) called Agent Orange,” Zhang Gaosheng, are searcher at China Institute of International Studies, told CCTV News. “This resulted in the destruction of about 20 percent of Vietnam’s forests, leading to significant damage to the ecosystem.” The usage of the chemical was subsequently banned, he added.

2 . The contestant Jane Marczewski, whose stage name is Nightbirde, recently entered the TV reality show America’s Got Talent. Looking small on stage, but with an attractive smile that filled the auditorium, the 30-year-old woman introduced herself to the judges.

It was when she planned on devoting herself to music that the singer from Ohio found out she had cancer. On stage she said that she was battling cancer. Pretty casually she said that at her last check-up she had some cancer in her lungs and liver. While she professed (自称) to be okay, she explained that she wanted people to see her as being “so much more than the bad things that happen to me”. Getting out there on stage with her own song It’s OK, she was able to pass on this message.

The name “Nightbirde” itself is significant. She chose it after many night s dreaming of birds singing in the darkness. She woke one night to hear birds singing by her window as if it were the morning. For her this represents hope and her life at the moment. “I want to be that way, even when I am in the middle of a dark time and there are no signs that it will end. I want to be the bird that sings in anticipation of the good things that I trust are coming,” she shared with Liberty Journal.

Finally, her actual performance was quite triumphant. It wasn’t surprising that everybody was visibly amazed by it. And it didn’t take long for Simon Cowell, one of the judges to send Nightbirde directly through to the final. Nightbirde’s song has already stormed up the charts and is now number one on US iTunes.

3 . The idea behind the Internet of Things (IoT) is that the world would be a better place if all sorts of electronics would be computerized. Billions of tiny computers could monitor air quality and traffic patterns. It is estimated that there could be a trillion connected devices in the world by 2035 — more than 100 for every person..

With continued growth in the IoT, regularly replacing a trillion batteries would be inconvenient. Researchers have built chips that get energy from light or heat. But such sources producing only a small amount of power can’t be used to replace a battery, the maintenance of which can be difficult and costly, especially in places where a battery is hard to reach.

Aline Eid and her colleagues proposed a better idea. Using a piece of equipment called a Rotman lens, they have designed a small, flexible antenna (天线) to harvest electrical power from signals of 5G mobile phone towers. Rotman lenses, which were invented in 1963, focus and redirect electromagnetic (电磁的) radiation. “Most people use Rotman lenses in the transmission (发送) mode,” says Dr. Eid. “We decided to change that concept, and use them in the opposite mode.”

Her lens is able to collect electromagnetic radiation from all directions. Letting it work in urban environments in which waves spread unpredictably improves the amount of harvest able power greatly. And 5G also offers more power in the first place. The standard on which it is based covers communications on a wide range of frequencies. Furthermore, 5G’s frequencies ranging between 24GHz and 100 GHz are rarely used, so 5G networks are unlikely to suffer from the disturbance from a huge number of devices.

According to the team, their antenna can harvest useful quantities of power even at a long distance, Feeding their work into computer models suggests it should be able to harvest around six microwatts of power at a distance of 180 meters from a tower. That is enough to let the sort of simple, low-power chips that will make up the IoT do useful work. If more power is needed, a bigger antenna can be used.

4 . Ideally located in the heart of New York Times Square, Yotel New York, a five-star hotel, has comfortable accommodation in a modern design.

The hotel has convenient transportation with an 18-minute walk from Fifth Avenue and Grand Central Station. John F Kennedy Airport can be reached directly from Times Square Underground Station.

All rooms include cozy beds, 54-inch HD TVs with free Sports and Movie channels, and free Wi-Fi. Each room also has luggage storage, and hanging space for clothing. Yotel New York also offers wheelchair accessible rooms and free accommodation for kids under 13.

American breakfast is served in Yotel New York every morning, including fresh juice, corn flakes, buttered toast and scrambled eggs. A selection of salads, sandwiches and hot dishes are offered throughout the day.

Yotel New York is our guests’ favorite part of New York, according to independent reviews. This area is also great for shopping, with popular brands nearby: Apple, H&M, Zara, Burberry and Channel.

Yotel New York is rated for the best value in America! Guests are getting more for their money when compared to other hotels in this city. Come and stay with us!

Prices:

5 . Two Georgian twins, separated at birth when they were sold to different adoptive families, have been reunited and have TikTok to thank for bringing them back together.

The astonishing story began 10 years ago when one of the twins, Amy Khvitia, sat watching Georgia’s Got Talent in her godmother’s house near the Black Sea. A young girl, who looked exactly like her, climbed up on stage and began to dance in front of the reality show’s judges. Another seven years went by when Ano Sartania, the young girl that had danced on television, was sent a TikTok video of a young woman with blue hair getting her eyebrow pierced. Determined, Ano took to a WhatsApp university group with her plea. asking for help finding the woman with the blue hair. Against all odds, someone in the group knew Amy and the pair was connected through Facebook. Amy and Ano agreed to meet in-person at a local train station.

“It was awkward, it was awesome, it was everything,” Ano told The Sun of that first meeting, adding, “It was weird for me like I was looking in a mirror.” As they grew to know each other more, the two women began to list the similarities they shared and admit to being a bit unsettled by it all. Both were born in the same hospital, but their birth certificates said they were born a couple of weeks apart. Wanting answers, they turned to their families to ask some hard questions and soon had an explanation — both families admitted to adopting the girls as newborns.

It turns out both of their mothers had been unable to have children and were told they could pay to adopt unwanted babies at the hospital. DNA tests ‘eventually confirmed that that Amy and Ano were twins. However, they wanted to know why their biological parents have given them up and if they had been sold for profit. The twins have since been reunited with their birth mother, Aza, who claimed she fell into a coma after delivering her identical daughters and when she woke up hospital staff told her that her babies were dead.

“While Ano and Amy’s story contains a lot of coincidence on their path to reunion, their adoption circumstances aren’t that unique in Georgia — as many as 100,000 Georgian babies have been put up for illegal adoption since the 1950s on the black baby market,” says Georgian journalist Tamuna Museridze, who has been working to reunite families.

8 . Theatre Camps & Classes in Vancouver

Beach House Theatre

We have a group of creative and talented theatre industry members whose productions offer the campers a cultural, artistic experience at Crescent Beach. The purpose of setting the production in the area is to inspire the artistically minded youth and to expose theatre-goers to the special beauty of the beach.

Place des Arts

Classes and private lessons run from September to June or during fall (Sep-Dec), winter (Jan-Mar) and spring(Apr-Jun) sessions for all ages and skill levels. Experience music, visualarts, literary arts and theatre arts with us. We also offer art camps for children during the spring break and over the summer. All classes and lessons are taught by highly skilled working professionals. Class sizes are based on the needs of the content.

CFA

Our goal is to raise joyful children through performing arts. We believe that an actual professional theatre production is the best platform for the children to best experience performing arts. Every year, we produce a grand children’s musical production and we do not charge the children while there’s a huge production cost behind (professional tech, lighting, sound, sets, costumes, make-up, production meetings etc).

H. R. MacMillan Space Centre

We bring the wonders of space to Earth. Through creative programming, exhibits and activities, our goal is to inspire interest in the fields of Earth science and space science. Lean back in your seat and you’ll experience planets, meteor showers, black holes, galaxies and various other wonders. With its shows and content being updated all the time, there is something for everyone in the centre.

9 . Bullet comments—comments which fly across the screen on certain video platforms—represent a ·modern approach to communication that young people use in cyberspace to express their ideas, emotions and feelings. When looking back, however, they are a good reminder of what was hot or trending in the past year.

On Dec 15,2023, Bilibili, a Chinese video-sharing platform, picked “Ah?” as the Bullet Comment of the Year. In 2023, “Ah?” appeared more than 13.2 million times on Bilibili as a bullet comment, according to Dazhong Daily.

Today, young people in China use “Ah?” to express their surprise and amazement. User Mo Xin filmed himself writing down the ancient Chinese text Hard Is the Road to Shu (《蜀道难》) in one stroke (一笔) and subsequently uploaded the video to Bilibili. This feat (壮举) resulted in the video winning the most “Ah?”bullet comments on the platform.

China’s huge technological advancements have also generated “Ah?” comments from Bilibili users. In August, China made a breakthrough in controllable nuclear fusion (可控核聚变) technology. Its new-generation “artificial sun” Huanliu-3 looks to open new doors in the world of nuclear fusion. Videos announcing this news were inundated (淹没) in “Ah?” comments.

Though simple and easily understandable, “Ah?” provides insights into young people’s interests. Their focus extends beyond mere entertainment, however. They also, use “Ah?” to engage with. commentaries, and scientific discoveries, indicating a deeper, more serious layer of interest. These “Ah?” comments reveal that young people are attentive to the world around them. “Ah?” has become their unique way of responding to contemporary events, using it as a tool to document today’s history.

Every year brings a new bullet comment of the year, but what never changes is how young people want their voices to be heard. Do you still remember which video got you to send an “Ah?” in 2023?

10 . As a young woman, Pei Aimin, now 49, hid her natural gift for writing, hoping nobody in her farming village would notice and accuse her of neglecting (忽视) work and family.

That was the way of things when Pei was young in her village. In the past, girls often dropped out of school at an early age to get married and settle into the regular routines of rural life.

A few, like Pei, however, yearned for a wider world and looked for ways to express themselves. Pei began to write in middle school and mailed her stories to publishers. Two of them were published, one in a newspaper, another in a magazine.

After her marriage, she had to create secret opportunities. Sometimes she would water useless land just so she could read or write outdoors without being observed. Sometimes she sat under a tree, expressing her feelings on paper until somebody came, and she would hurriedly hide the papers and pen.

“Few women in my village could read or write, “Pei said. “All my family members thought it was a waste of time.”

After reading and writing like that for years, Pei took everyone by surprise when she published a book, Diary of Aunt Vole. It is a collection of 365 short diary entries that describe the natural scenery of the northwestern countryside, the daily routine of the local people, and interesting things that happened in the village.

Pei said she hoped the book would help readers understand that farm work consists of both hardship and fun.

Now Pei’s family no longer objects to her hobby. “Although women in the village still don’t read, many have changed their minds about it,” Pei said. “Learning, after all, is useful.”