1 . Shenyang—The remains of 117 Chinese People’s Volunteers soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War returned to China on Sunday before the Commemorative Day of Martyrs.

This is the seventh annual repatriation (遣送), following a handover agreement signed between China and the Republic of Korea. and also the largest since the initial (最初的) return of 437 soldiers in 2014. Between 2014 and 2019, the remains of 599 soldiers were returned.

Earlier on Sunday, the ROK handed over the remains at a ceremony at Incheon airport outside Seoul. A Chinese military transport plane, escorted (护卫) by two Chinese fighter jets, carried the remains and belongings of the fallen soldiers back and landed at Taoxian International Airport at 11:18 am in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang near the border of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Y-20 aircraft. the largest and most advanced domestically developed transport aircraft. carried out the task for the first time. It was labeled (贴标签于……) with the serial number 01. as a mark of high respect for the martyrs.

Vice Premier Sun Chunlan attended the ceremony along with CPV soldiers and citizens. China has never forgotten its fallen heroes and the contribution they made, Sun said in a speech.

Chinese people always remember the fighting spirit of defending the motherland, and China will remember the past and cherish peaceful international environment, Sun said.

Wang Guobin, a 92 year old CPV veteran, said. “I’m both happy and sad. I’m glad that after 70 years, they finally come home. And I am sad that they died in the 1950-53 Korean war and couldn’t come back until 70 years later.”

Many local residents lined the roads to welcome the martyrs home and show their respect.

The remains will be buried in a martyrs’ park in Shenyang on Monday. It is the resting place of all soldiers’ remains returned by the ROK since 2014.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the CPV’S participation in the 1950-53 Korean War. A total of 2.9 million CPV soldiers entered the battlefield, and 197,653 of them were killed in the war.

2 . Record-breaking. Abnormal. Dangerous. That’s how the National Weather Service described the heat wave hitting much of North America.

The heat wave has already broken all-time high temperature records in places unaccustomed to such extreme heat. For example, Oregon’s capital city, Salem, recorded the highest temperature in its history on Sunday: 130F, breaking the old mark by 4 degrees. The temperature hit 104F in Seattle. It was an all-time record for the city better known for rain than heat and was the first time the area reached such a high temperature since records began being kept in 1894.

Weather forecasters said the heat wave was caused by an extended “heat dome”which allowed hot air from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic to stream northward over much of North America.

This current heat wave was yet more evidence of the impact of human-caused climate change. “When it comes to record-breaking heat events, the study has been run for event after event in region after region in year after year. And the answer is almost always the same,” said Kristie Ebi, a professor at the University of Washington “The days-long heat wave is a taste of the future as climate change reshapes global weather patterns.”

“Another aspect that we see connected to climate change but that we don’t hear about as much is the fact that there is also a lot more water in the atmosphere now. As we warm the oceans and warm the air, there is more evaporation（蒸发）and that wetter air makes us feel hotter,” added weather forecaster, Jennifer Francis. “A combination of high temperature and moisture（湿度）in the air means dangerous conditions for the young, elderly or others who are not healthy. Please drink plenty of water; stay out of the sun and in air-conditioned rooms.”

3 . The lines to enter South Gate’s South East High School and South East Middle School at 9 a.m. Monday were each about 200 students deep.

Kony Aguillon sat in the shade while her son, an eighth-grader, waited for his health check in. She had done everything right Sunday night, pre-checking the district’s Daily Pass website so that it would be smooth going the next morning. But on Monday, the system wouldn’t load. They arrived at school early, around 7:50 a.m., to check in, and an hour later, there they stood. “I imagined it was going to be crazy,” she added, but not as bad as it was.

Opening day at the nation’s second-largest school district unfolded with a mix of emotions: frustration over long waits, anxiety over health protocols and concern for how things would go for children who have been learning online for a year and a half. But for many, the sense of joy and relief at being together again eased the worries.

In the early morning at John Marshall High, lines of students waiting to enter extended two blocks. By 9 a.m., some students were still waiting, having missed part of the first class.

In anticipation of delays, Gary Garcia had already extended the first period of classes by about 18 minutes in hopes that all students could meet their teachers.

Teachers and parents also expressed optimism.

“It’s exciting,” said Nohemi Sanchez-Heredia, who teaches first grade. Henriette Jeter was at the school with her daughters, who are starting kindergarten, second and fifth grades. Even though the Delta variant (德尔塔变异株) worries her, she felt her kids needed to be back in a classroom.

The most common emotions were in the largest type: “nervous” and “excited” mixed with somewhat “stressed”, “happy”, “tired” and “scared”.

4 . Under the background of the slow growth of its total population to 1.44 billion, China has seen a sharp rise in older adults over the past decade, solidifying the country’s rapidly aging pattern, the latest national census (人口普查) data shows. The population on the Chinese mainland increased by an average of 0.53 percent annually during the past 10 years to 1.41 billion, compared with an annual growth rate of 0.57 percent from 2000 to 2010, according to the 7th national census published by the National Bureau of Statistics.

“The growth of the total population has slowed down but remains at a steady pace,” Ning Jizhe, head of the bureau, said at a news conference. “Based on trends in recent years, China’s population will grow at an increasingly slow rate in the future while remaining above 1.4 billion.” The increasing elderly population has become a defining feature of the past decade.

Ning said an aging society will set the tone for China's population structure for a long time, presenting challenges and opportunities. “A graying population will pile pressure on supply of labor force and social services, as well as adding to families’ elderly care burden. But more elderly people could also motivate consumption of products and services targeting this age group, and advance the development of some technologies,” he said.

Ning added that those between the ages of 60 and 69, who are equipped with knowledge, experience and skills and are generally in good health, make up nearly 56 percent of all older adults. “Their potential to continue making contributions to society and playing a constructive role is big,” he responded to a question on the outlook for raising the retirement age and carrying out other potential measures aimed at addressing the aging trend. Some population economists also said the latest number and proportion (比例) of elderly are largely within predictions, and the aging trend will continue for a long time.

6 . China on Monday issued strict new measures aimed at addressing what authorities describe as youth videogame addiction, which they blame for a variety of societal ills, including distracting young people from school and family responsibilities.

The new regulation, announced by the National Press and Publication Administration, will ban minors from playing videogames entirely between Monday and Thursday. On the other three days of the week, and on public holidays, they will be only permitted to play" between 8 p. m. and 9 p. m.

The announcement didn't offer a specific age for minors, but previous regulations targeting younger videogamers have drawn the line at 18 years old. Enforcement measures weren't detailed, but in response to previous moves by the government to limit videogame playing by young people, Tencent Holdings Ltd. , the world's largest videogame company, has used a combination of technologies, automatically kicking off players after a certain period of time and using real-name registration and facial-recognition technology to limit game play for minors.

In restricting videogame play for younger people, the government is seeking to "effectively protect the physical and mental health of minors," China's state-run Xinhua News Agency said Monday.

Monday's new rule is likely to be felt through China's online gaming industry, one of the world's largest. The measure comes as the Chinese government seeks to restrict China's technology industry, a campaign that has caused a trillion-dollar selloff in Chinese stock market and hit a range of businesses, including for-profit education providers, ride-hailing (打车) services and e-commerce platforms.

Videogames have become a particular object of anger as Beijing seeks to reshape an industry it has described as motivated by profit at the expense of public morals. A state-media remarks this month triggered a selloff in shares of Tencent after it published an article that described online games as "opium (鸦片) for the mind. "

After the regulations were published on Monday, following the close of stock-market trading, Tencent said it had introduced a variety of new functions to better protect minors. It promised to continue to do so as it "strictly follows and actively implements the latest requirements from Chinese authorities. "

7 . China is investigating how to build an ultra-large spacecraft that is up to 0. 6 mile （1 kilometer) long. But how practical is the idea?

The project is part of a wider call for research proposals from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, a funding agency managed by the country's Ministry of Science and Technology. A research outline posted on the foundation's website described such enormous spaceships as “major strategic aerospace equipment for the future use of space resources, exploration of the mysteries of the universe, and long- term living in orbit”。

The foundation wants scientists to conduct research into new, lightweight design methods that could limit the amount of construction material that has to be thrown into orbit, and new techniques for safely assembling such massive structures in space. If funded, the practicability study would run for five years and have a budget of 15 million yuan ($2.3 million).

The project might sound like science fiction, but former NASA chief technologist Mason Peck said the idea isn't entirely off the wall, and the challenge is more a question of engineering than fundamental science. “I think it's entirely practical,” Peck, now a professor of aerospace engineering at Cornell University, told Live Science. “I would describe the problems here not as unconquerable obstacles, but rather problems of scale. ” By far the biggest challenge would be the price tag, noted Peck, due to the huge cost of launching objects and materials into space. The International Space Station （ISS), which is only 361 feet (110 meters) wide at its widest point according to NASA, cost roughly $ 100 billion to build, Peck said, so constructing something 10 times larger would strain even the most generous national space budget.

Much depends on what kind of structure the Chinese plan to build, though. The ISS is packed with equipment and is designed to accommodate humans, which significantly increases its mass. “If we're talking about something that is simply long and not also heavy then it's a different story,” Peck said.

8 . China's space program took a major leap recently when it successfully landed the Zhurong rover(登防车) on Mars marking the country's first landing on another planet. Teams then rolled the rove onto the Martian ground and begin a mission to search for evidence of water and signs of past life.

The touchdown makes China the second county in history to land a rover on the surface of Mars. After months in orbit around the red planet, the Tianywen-l Spacecraft released the Zhurong rover for a landing in Utopia Planitia, a vast plain that may once have been covered by an ancient Martian ocean.

“Landing safely on Mars is a huge challenge, especially for China's first soft landing attempt," said Long Xiao, a scientist at the China University of Geosciences, "But it is a necessary step for Mars and deep-space exploration."

Mars is significantly harder to land on than the moon, says Michel Blanc at the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology in France. But China has had a series of successful lunar missions that prepared it for a Mars landing.

China will openly share the data from Tianwen-1 and Zhurong the same way it has shared data from its lunar exploration missions, Long says, benefiting scientists around the world.

The mission will also set the stage for China’s next planned voyage to Mars---a sample---return attempt scheduled to launch around 2028.Beyond Mars, the country has plans to launch a Jupiter probe(探测仪), including a possible landing on the moon Callisto, to collect samples from a near-Earth asteroid(小行星), and to send a pair of spacecraft toward the edges of the solar system.

“In the age of ocean exploration, China has a history of Zheng He's voyages to Southeast Asia and Africa," says Zhang Xiaoping at the Macau University of Science and Technology, referring to early 15th-century explorations. Zhang views China's Mars mission as a continuation of these Ming Dynasty journeys.