3 . A http:/www.literacynet.org/cnnsf/

Fantastic site from CNN. Over 50 news stories categorized under headings such as crime, environment and adventure. Each story has a range of activities focusing on comprehension and vocabulary, mostly of the multiple-choice variety.

B http:/www.npr.org/

NPR is an American radio network with an extensive audio archive—an excellent source of authentic English.

C http:/www.humorlinks.com/

Hilarious site bringing together over 7,000 links to humor of every kind, from American comedy to Australian cartoons. Here you will see the funniest jokes and pictures from around the world.

D http:/www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/

Hundreds of fascinating interviews with famous people from every walk of life: actors, cartoonists, musicians, painters, philosophers, political activists, scientists and writers.

E http:/www.bbc.co.uk/music/listen

Lots of online music from classical to jazz, from blues to rap. You can listen to radio programs or select a range of special features.

F http: /www.onestopenglish.com

Here you will find listening activities—updated each month--from the online magazine from Macmillan.

6 . No visit to the beautiful city of Paris, France is complete without a visit to the Notre Dame de Paris. The cathedral, built from 1163 to 1345, is one of the world's best examples of ancient architecture. It lies in the center of Paris, along the Seine River. French writer Victor Hugo used it as the setting of his famous story The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Unfortunately, on April 15, 2019. the old cathedral was covered in a big flame.

The initial fire alert sounded at 6:20 pm local time. Church officials quickly evacuated the tourists inside. As it turned out, they made the right decision when the second alarm went off twenty-three minutes later at 6:43 pm, the flames were visible. Thousands of passers-by watched in horror as the fire began destroying Notre Dame's rooftop. It took hundreds of firefighters, who worked through the night, over 12 hours to put out the fire. By the time the fire was fully contained in the early hours of Tuesday, April 16. 2019, most of the cathedral's ceiling, as well as its wooden spire — which had proudly stood 93 meters above the root for centuries — had collapsed.

Fortunately, thanks to quick action by Paris firefighters, the cathedral's most sacred relic — the Crown of Thorns — was safely transported after the fire broke out. Church officials and firefighters formed a human chain to remove other priceless treasures, such as artworks and furnishings, and load them onto waiting police cars. The cathedral's famous 18th-century organ, which boasts more than 8.000 pipes, also survived the disaster.

The tire is believed to be caused by the cathedral's ongoing repair work. Meanwhile donations to help restore the structure are pouring in worldwide at an unprecedented rate, reaching almost$ 1 billion within just two days after the fire. French President Emmanuel Macron described the fire as a “terrible tragedy”, but added, “the worst had been avoided”. Macron has promised that the French people will “rebuild the cathedral together”. “Notre Dame is ours, it's our literature, and it's our imagery. We will rebuild it. This is probably part of the French destiny, and we will finish it in the next five years.” Macron said, “Paris without Notre Dame? Madness.” While Macron is optimistic that the cathedral will be ready to welcome visitors by the Paris 2024. Summer Olympics, experts believe it will take a lot longer to restore the old structure.

7 . Gottfried Wilhelm von Liebniz was a philosopher and mathematician in search of a model. In the late 1600s Leibniz decided there was a need for a new, purer arithmetic than our common decimal（十进制）system. He got his inspiration from the 5000-year-old book that is at the heart of Chinese philosophy：the I-Ching, or Book of Changes.

This ancient text was such an influence on Liebniz that he titled his article on the new arithmetic “Explanation of a new arithmetic and the ancient Chinese figure of Fu X”. Fu Xi was the legendary first author of the I-Ching. The arithmetic that Liebniz described was binary（二进制）code, which is used in almost every modern computer, from iPhones to China’s own Tihane-2 supercomputer.

To figure out what Liebniz learned in the I-Ching, we need to understand something that most of us have taken for granted. When we listen to an MP3, look at a digital photo or watch the latest TV drama, we are experiencing a digital representation of reality. That representation is basically just a string of binary signals that are commonly known as 1s and 0s. What Liebniz’s gained from the book was that even the most complex reality could be represented in the binary form as 1s and 0s.

In the philosophy of the I-Ching, reality is not entirely real. It is something more like a dream. This dream of reality arises from the binaries of Yin and Yang, as they play out countless combinations, practically everything in the universe. It’s not surprising then, from the l-Ching’s perspective, that anything in the dream of reality can be represented in a string of 1s and 0s, processed by a computer.

The I-Ching was far more ambitious than the current practical applications of binary code. It is claimed that the I-Ching represents nothing less than the basic situation of human life itself. As a system for predicting the future, the I-Ching might disappoint, but as a way of questioning your own unconscious mind, it can be remarkably useful.

The I-Ching’s teachings also contain warnings about our digital revolution. Binary code, powered by modern computers, has an amazing capacity to represent reality. However, the ancient authors of the I-Ching might have understood its potential-and its dangers-even better than we now do.

So when scientific thinkers ask whether computers can create “virtual realities” or “artificial intelligence”, they are missing the point. Of course, we can create ever deeper and more complex layers of the dream of reality. The real question is, can we wake up from the dream we’ re in already?

8 . A seismic（地震的；重大的）shift in climate science might be heating up.

New research shows that sound waves, produced by earthquakes can be used to measure temperatures in the ocean which traps 90% of the heat Earth absorbs from the sun，making long-term changes in ocean warmth, a major factor in how the world might respond to global warming.

For years the main approach of measuring ocean temperature has been Argo, an array（阵列）of 4000 automatic floats, which drifts the globe, sampling ocean water and measuring its temperature. Yet Argo measurements stop at 2000 meters.

The new technique called “Seismic Ocean Thermometry”, would be especially useful in detecting long-term changes in ocean temperatures deeper than Argo’s reach.

“Ocean Acoustic Tomography”, the basis for the current research, was first tested nearly 30 years ago. The initial studies created sound waves artificially, basically increasing the volume on giant underwater speakers. Scientists measured the sound’s travel time from the speakers to receivers thousands of kilometers away. Because ocean temperatures affect the speed of the waves, the researchers could calculate average temperatures along their paths. But some believed the noise was a threat to ocean life and the technique never took off.

The new study instead uses a natural sound source for investigation：earthquakes making a low, continuous noise beneath the seafloor off the coast of Sumatra that drum up sound waves in the ocean. On the shores of the Chagos Islands in the East Indian Ocean, between 2005 and 2016 Seismic Station Diego Garcia recorded seismic waves produced by those earthquakes. Some of those waves created physical changes in land and sea as they traveled. Others were sound waves or T waves that moved through the deep ocean, delivering valuable data about ocean temperature.

12 years of data coupled with mathematical models pointed to a temperature change of roughly 0.044 degrees per decade, a trend larger than those predicted by Argo. The findings suggest that Seismic Ocean Thermometry is a feasible method to measure changes in ocean temperature. Further data from other regions of the globe and other timeframes would help improve the warning models and predictions.

And in future studies the researchers plan to listen directly for sound waves, using a network of hydrophones, microphones which detect sound waves under water. Sound waves set the tone for a deep dive into our warming oceans even if they fail to reach 60000 miles under the sea?

9 .

Who we need

We are looking for talented and passionate people to work for health. WHO is committed to achieving workforce variety, aiming to achieve a broad representation of nationals of our member countries. Particular attention is paid to candidates from developing countries and gender balance. Selection of staff is made on a competitive basis. All posts are filled in accordance with WHOs ability model.

There are two key categories of staff at WHO：professionals(P) or directors(D) who are internationally recruited(招募) and general(G) or national professional(NPO) staff who are recruited locally for both fixed or short-term positions. We also run internship(实习) and opportunities for junior professional officers(JPOs).

10 . As the COVID-19 pandemic hit hard, fishermen watched their markets dry up. Restaurants-normally major fish buyers-closed or cut back orders significantly. Fishermen weren’t sure if they were going to get paid for what they fished.

Meanwhile as people lost jobs, food banks started to see a great demand for services. Things were getting desperate, with long lines for food assistance in many states.

Out of these dual crises, a new idea was born. Food assistance programs across the country have started connecting with local fishermen to stock up on local seafood, many for the first time. And the arrangement seems to be helping the fishermen, the economy and those in need of healthy food.

According to Catherine D’ Amato, CEO of the Greater Boston Food Bank, the network usually keeps four or five weeks of food on hand in case of emergencies. The pandemic hit, and “we found ourselves below one week of stock and going down rapidly,” she says. That’s because the food bank normally distributes about 1 million pounds of food a week, and that became 2.5 million pounds of food a week, D’ Amato says. While Congress and the states have increased funding and donations for food banks during the pandemic, it hasn’t been enough.

“For many years, we have been wanting to be able to work with organizations in the fishing industry,” D’ Amato says. But it’s complicated. Fishermen catch a lot of big fish, and food banks who might take it need the products to be cut small and easy to use for customers. It also has to be fish they know and recognize. The barriers have been too high in many places to make it work. But this spring, the state department of agriculture connected the food bank with some grant makers. They talked to some local fishermen about developing a traditional New England fish soup.

The grants paid fishermen for their catch and provided money for a local manufacturer to process, freeze and deliver the soup to food banks in family-size servings. The soup is helping to feed families and keep fishermen fishing. The fishermen hope to sell it in stores soon, and Damato hopes to purchase more soup and expand into new seafood products for her customers.