The 4-year-old boy was mentally disabled, unable to speak in complete sentences and unable to play with other children because of his violent fits(发作) of hitting and biting.
The decision facing one Brooklyn jury（陪审团）was how much a landlord should pay in damages to the boy — named “G.M.M.” in court documents — after an investigation showed he had been living in an apartment illegally coated with lead paint.
Attorneys（律师） representing G.M.M. said $3.4 million was the right number, arguing that the boy would have had a bright career ahead of him; both of his parents had graduated from college and his mother received a master's degree. But the landlord's defense put the figure at less than half that — $1.5 million. Attorney Roger Archibald noted that because the boy was Hispanic, G.M.M. was unlikely to attain the advanced education that would provide to such a large income.
The 4-year-old's case is a rare public look at one corner of the American legal system that explicitly uses race and gender to determine how much victims or their families should receive in compensation（赔偿） when they are seriously injured or killed.
As a result, white and male victims often receive larger awards than people of color and women in similar cases. These differences largely derive from projections of how much more money individuals would have earned over their lifetimes had they not been injured — projections that take into account average earnings and employment levels by race and gender.
Foreign drivers will have a pay on-the-spot fines of up to ￡900 for breaking the traffic law to be carried out next month.
If they do not have enough cash or a working credit card, their vehicles will clamped(扣留) until they pay—and they will face an additional fee of ￡80 for getting back their vehicles.
The law will also apply to British citizens. The fines will be described officially as “deposits” when the traffic law takes effect, because the money would be returned if the driver went to court and was found not guilty. In practice, very few foreign drivers are likely to return to Britain to deal with their cases.
Foreign drivers are rarely charged because police cannot take action against them if they fail to appear in court. Instead, officers often merely give warnings.
Three million foreign-registered vehicles enter Britain each year. Polish vehicles make up 36 percent, French vehicles 10 percent and German vehicles 9 percent.
Foreign vehicles are 30 percent more likely to be in a crash than British-registered vehicles. The number of crashes caused by foreign vehicles rose by 47 percent between 2003 and 2008. There were almost 400 deaths and serious injuries and 3,000 slight injuries from accidents caused by foreign vehicles in 2008.
The new law is partly intended to settle the problem of foreign lorry drivers ignoring limits on weight and hours at the wheel. Foreign lorries are three times more likely to be in a crash than British lorries. Recent spot checks found that three quarters of lorries that failed safety tests were registered overseas.
The standard deposit for a careless driving offence —such as driving too close to the vehicle in front or reading a map at the wheel—will be ￡300. Deposits for speeding offences and using mobile phones will be ￡60. Foreign drivers will not get points as punishment added to their licenses, while British drivers will.
Computer programmer David Jones earns $35.000 a year designing new computer games, yet he cannot find a bank ready to let him have a credit card. Instead he has been told to wait another two years until he is 18. The 16-year-old works for a small firm in Liverpool where the problem of most young people of his age is finding a job. David's firm releases two new games for the fast growing computer market each month.
But David's biggest headache is what to do with his money. Even though he earns a lot he cannot drive a car, take out a mortgage（抵押贷款）, or get credit cards. David got his job with the Liverpool-based company four months ago, a year after leaving school with six O-levels and working for a time in a computer shop. “I got the job because the people who run the firm knew I had already written some programs”, he said. David spends some of his money on records and clothes and gives his mother 50 pounds a week. But most of his spare time is spent working.
“Unfortunately, computing was not part of our studies at school”, he said “But I had been studying it in books and magazines for four years in my spare time. I knew what I wanted to do and never considered staying on at school. Most people in this business are fairly young, anyway.” David added, “I would like to earn a million and I suppose early retirement is a possibility. You never know when the market might disappear.”
A private sixth grade is set to start its lessons at 1.30 pm every day because the school's teacher thinks his students will study better after a morning lie-in (懒觉).
Instead of rising early for a 9 am start, students at the ￡15,000-a-year Hampton Court House, in East Molesey, Surrey, will get to enjoy a lie-in and work from 1.30 pm until 7pm. Head teacher Guy Holloway says the move for all sixth grade students, set to begin from September, has been made according to research by scientists. He predicts (预测) that not only will his students aged 16 and upwards get great night's sleep, but their productivity (效率) will also be improved.
The co-educational school will have the latest start time in the UK, and will be the only one to begin lessons in the afternoon.
Experts say young people are programmed to get up later, and that rather than laziness it is simply a shift (转变) in their body clocks.
There are 168 hours in a week and how productive they are depends on how they choose to use those hours,' said Mr Holloway. 'At Hampton Court House we don't think we have the answer for everybody; it's about what works in our school. We want to get them into a condition where they can get great sleep and study well.' He said students would also benefit from reduced journey times as they travel to and from school after rush hour (上下班高峰时间).
Year 10 student Gabriel Purcell-Davis will be one of the first of 30 A-level students to start at the later time. 'I want to wake up in my bed, not in my maths lesson,' said the 15-year-old. Lessons for all other students at the school will still begin at 9 am as usual.
At least five wolves, including one female, have returned to Denmark for the first time in two centuries, a zoologist who has obtained DNA evidence said on Thursday.
The wolves came from Germany to settle in western Denmark's agricultural region, the least densely populated in the Scandinavian country. Peter Sunde, a scientist at the University of Aarhus, told AFP the wolves must have walked more than 500km. "We think these are young wolves rejected by their families who are looking for new hunting grounds," the researcher added. Scientists have established a genetic profile from the faeces(f粪便) of five wolves - four males and one female - but there could be more. Sunde said researchers had suspected since 2012 that wolves had entered Denmark. "Now we have evidence [including] that there's one female," signalling the possibility of giving birth this spring, he said.
Proof was also established through the wolves' fingerprints and video surveillance(监视,监督) showed their location, which scientists refuse to reveal out of fear that it will attract hunters."We're following that. The wolf is an animal we're not allowed to hunt so we must protect it," said Henrik Hagen Olesen, spokesperson at the Danish Environmental Protection Agency.Exterminated by hunters, wolves had been completely extinct in Denmark since the beginning of the nineteenth century.
In other Nordic countries with a higher wolf population, culling(选择性宰杀) the species, protected by the Bern Convention, is under a fierce debate between inhabitants, farmers, hunters, the government, the European Union and wildlife activists.
When an Indiana woman got an emergency call that her mother was in hospital, she knew she had no time to waste getting to her mom's side in Montgomery, Alabama. As she pulled over to get gas about 170 miles from her destination, the woman reached for her purse. It wasn't there. In the flurry to get to her mother's side, she'd left her handbag at home, along with her wallet and phone.
The woman felt totally at a loss. Desperate for help, she asked for help in a truck stop. Someone sent her up the road to Jim Oliver's Smoke House, a restaurant known for its generosity. In fact, it's even been nominated (提名) as one of the Nicest Places in America.
In the parking lot of the restaurant, the woman broke down telling her story to the owner, James Oliver. He listened patiently, checking her car for an Indiana license plate and deciding whether he should believe her. To her astonishment, he handed her $200 in cash. In hopes of calming her down, Oliver offered her a meal, which she took to go so she could get back on the road.
Handing hundreds of dollars over to a stranger might seem crazy to some people, but to Oliver, it's common sense. He figured a tank of gas alone would cost $75 or so, and she'd need more money for a motel room and food before she could work things out with her credit card. “I instinctively (本能地) went for $200,” he says. “I didn't think of getting it back.”
The Smoke House has had a reputation for kindness ever since Oliver's dad, the original owner, was in charge. In addition to helping travelers in need, Oliver's father was involved in the community by helping to establish a state park, daycare, medical center, and more. “Growing up, he instilled (灌输) in us to help other people,” says Oliver.
The Smoke House might look like a business, but it's a charity at heart. “When you've got food, you can't turn people away that need help,” says Oliver.
You must have heard of Mr. No Ears. This earless, one-eyed cat from Albufeira, Portugal, is a Facebook phenomenon and has his own book: Saudades Mr. No Ears. But for those of you who don't know him, here is his story.
Often referred to as the “Lion King of Albufeira”, this adorable cat was the head of a eat colony in the region. Viewed from a distance, he appeared to be a king, sitting on a wall. On most days, this was usually where you would find Mr. No Ears, with the members of his colony scattered around on the walkway. At other times, he was jumping cliffs and running on the beach. No one knew on which day he was born, so his caretakers decided to celebrate his birthday on World Animal Day on October 4th.
Although there were no ears, his hearing functioned well. One of his eyes was open and purulent (有脓的), with no sign of an eyeball…...Despite all of his problems, he was a strong-minded and happy cat. Some hotel owners found him annoying, ordering his caretakers to send him away so he wouldn't “upset tourists.” But there were just as many people who loved him to pieces, and once he got his own Facebook page, the entire world was at his paws.
On the evening of 11 September 2015, Mr. No Ears was taken away against his will. Less than an hour later a request was made via a Facebook page asking for money, making false claims that he was “in pain” and “had bone cancer.” It was said that in an attempt to prove cancer which he did not have, Mr. No Ears suffered a heart attack. He then suffered organ damage, including his kidneys and liver. The taking-away of this much-loved cat from his home and family and the circumstances of his death were very emotive subjects, causing shockwaves throughout the animal-loving world.
Thanks to Mr. No Ears, the Albufeirafs Peneco beach Colony became a household name and a “must see” on cat lovers, holiday choices. You will recognize Mr. No Ears' favorite seat under a palm tree because Mr. No Ears' love-lock is attached to it.
A new app aims to help parents interpret what their baby wants based on the sound of their cry. The free app Chatter Baby, which was released last month, analyzes the acoustic (声学的) features of a baby's cry, to help parents understand whether their child might be hungry, fussy or in pain. While critics say caregivers should not rely too much on their smartphone, others say it's a helpful tool for new or tired parents.
Ariana Anderson, a mother of four, developed the app. She originally designed the technology to help deaf parents better understand why their baby was upset, but soon realized it could be a helpful tool for all new parents.
To build a database, Anderson and her team uploaded 2,000 audio samples of infant(婴儿) cries. She used cries recorded during ear piercings and vaccinations to distinguish pain cries. And to create a baseline for the other two categories, a group of moms had to agree on whether the cry was either hungry or fussy.
Anderson's team continues to collect data and hopes to make the app more accurate by asking parents to get specific about what certain sounds mean.
Pediatrician Eric Ball pointed out that evaluating cries can never be an exact science. “I think that all of the apps and technology that new parents are using now can be helpful but need to be taken seriously,” Ball said ,“ I do worry that some parents will get stuck in big data and turn their parenting into basically a spreadsheet(电子表格) which I think will take away the love and caring that parents are supposed to be providing for the children. ”
But Anderson said the aim of the app is to have parents interpret the results, not to provide a yes or no answer. The Bells, a couple using this app, say it's a win-win. They believe they are not only helping their baby now but potentially others in the future.
Procter & Gamble (P&G), one of the world's biggest marketers, has announced a change in the way it buys advertising on Facebook. It has started cutting its spend on highly targeted ads and increasing its spend on ads that address much larger numbers of the potential audiences for its brands, which include Tide, Pampers and Gillette. Explaining this change of emphasis, P&G's global brand building officer, Marc Pritchard, said, "We targeted too much, and went too narrow."
Facebook's astonishing income growth comes, in part, from its ability to deliver micro-targeted audiences (推送精准目标受众) to advertisers, and P&G in fact admits that it has wasted millions of dollars in the misguided pursuit of effectiveness.
Facebook used to be irresistible to advertisers. It presents advertisers this question: Instead of sending your message to millions in a television ad, why not use data to reach only those you need to reach? But as many people may have noticed, making perfectly targeted ads appears to be much harder than it sounds. Most digital ads are easily ignored. Information about consumers is not the same as insight into human beings.
The more fundamental problem with micro-targeting is that for big brands, advertising has never really been about messages—even brand owners have never quite realized it. It is about the creation of shared memories, triggered at the point of purchase. Think about some of the great brands: Nike, Apple, and yes, Pampers. If you buy them, it is because you know millions of others do, and because they seem to stand for something that, far from being unique to you, is common to all of us: achievement, creativity, and nurturing. The broader these brands go, the better they do.
When a consumer reaches for something on the shelf, they usually reach for the familiar. To achieve that status, a brand needs to have done something that lots of people regularly see, notice and enjoy. What seemed to be the wastefulness of TV was in fact its secret sauce. By reaching large numbers of people at the same time, TV ads had the power to turn brands into cultural icons, which took up consumers' minds.
In its conversations with advertisers, Facebook now talks less about targeting, preferring to emphasize the large number of consumers that it can help brands to reach. It is investing in video functions and is encouraging its clients to make short films. After years of telling clients TV is wasteful, it is now doing a good job of imitating it.
Frederick Phiri is the junk⁃art king of Zambia: at just 22, he started to earn an international reputation for being able to make complex and elegant sculptures from scrap metal(金属废料) found in his community.
Phiri's father died when he was starting primary school. Then his mother abandoned him and he had to stay with his grandfather. His grandfather paid for his schooling through primary school but when he entered secondary school, he had to get various jobs to pay for his fees. Yet even in school, he was always drawing and making things in class.
After graduating, he did what he could to support himself by making animal sculptures from wires and sold them to tourists. His work was so popular that it caught the eye of Karen Beattie, director of Project Luangwa, a nonprofit dedicated to education and economic development in central Africa.
"I introduced him to a local welder(焊工),"Beattie told Newsweek.
In 2017, Phiri worked with welder Moses Mbewe during the rainy season, helping to make a complex set of doors for Project Luangwa. The piece sparked an idea in Beattie's mind:" I handed him a bunch of scrap metal and said, 'Make something with this.' And he did. It was wonderful."
Today, Phiri continues his art, using pieces of junk people bring him — keys, broken bike chains, old metal plugs and whatever scrap metal is lying around. He then turns the junk into abstract animals — elephants, cranes, giraffes, chameleons — and sells them at Project Luangwa headquarters. The community has recognized his talents.
"My dream is to earn enough to study art at the Evelyn Hone College in Lusaka and be able to make a living from it," Phiri said". And then to make very large sculptures."
The rescue of an Austrian skier who was found alive after being buried by an avalanche is being called a "miracle". Police in Upper Styria — the mountainous and forested region in southern Austria — said they were alerted on Christmas Day that a 26-year-old skier had not returned from the slopes. The man who alerted police said he had managed to get through to the skier's mobile phone but heard only "cracking noises" on the line, the BBC reported.
A rescue team was able to trace the skier beneath more than 3 feet of snow using an electric avalanche victim's transceiver (无线电收发两用机), which skiers are required to wear in avalanche-prone areas. They found the man was on a slope of Mount Pleschnitzzinken, in the northwestern area of Upper Styria. "You can't move under a blanket of snow like this," Stefan Schrock of the Styria mountain rescue service told Austrian public broadcaster ORF. "The man was extremely lucky that he had a big enough air pocket under the blanket of snow, so he had oxygen too and was able to breathe."
The man was found about two hours after authorities were first alerted. However, the avalanche hit the region three hours before that when the man was buried in the snow. A rescue team and local police dogs dug the man out of the snow and he was taken down the valley suffering from hypothermia (体温过低). He was otherwise unharmed.
An avalanche also swept across a marked ski trail near the Swiss town of Andermatt on Thursday, injuring two people. Four others were either rescued themselves from the snow unhurt. Police and rescuers searched the snowslide after witnesses said more people might be buried, but the operation ended with police saying there were no more victims. The avalanche occurred mid-morning while many holiday skiers enjoyed mountain sunshine the day after Christmas.
Japanese businessman Katsuo Inoue chose Italy for his summer vacation this year. He enjoyed the views of Florence and Rome-without ever leaving Japan.
Inoue and his wife "flew" to Italy on First Airlines, a company known for entertainment (娱乐) ,not transportation. The Tokyo-based new company entered the fast growing online tourism early this year as many countries have stopped accepting foreign tourists.
"I often go to other countries on business, but I haven't been to Italy," Inoue said. "My impression was really good because I got a sense of actually seeing things there. First Airlines even gave us life jackets and oxygen masks(氧气罩) !"
The "passengers" on First Airlines sit in the first — or business-class areas of an airplane model. Workers serve meals and drinks as large screens show passing clouds and other views outside the airplane. The "travelers" then receive glasses that provide virtual reality(虚拟现实 的) tours of places like Paris, New York, Hawaii and Rome.
The country's biggest airline, ANA Holdings, said that the numbers of passengers flying to foreign countries fell by 96 percent since June when Japan has stopped most travel in and out of the country. The International Air Transport Association (lAIA ) and The International Tourism Association (ITA) said last month that international travels wouldn't be able to recover until 2024. But they said the online travels have been growing very fast.
The president, Hiroaki Abe, said, "Since we started our online tour this year, our business has been increasing by 50 percent each month. Most of our customers usually travel to other countries every year and they can now experience some of that here when they are unable to go to the real attractions."
A storm hit Houston, Texas, on Tuesday. It brought heavy rains and rising flood-waters. By Tuesday night, some parts of the city had received 10 inches of rain. Police and firefighters helped people move to safe places. They also saved people from cars and buses that were stuck on roads.
Certain areas around Houston were hit really hard. In just four hours, more than seven inches of rain fell in Sugar Land in the southwest of Houston. Cars could not pass through any of the areas main roadways. On Twitter, Sugar Land city officials asked people to get to high ground.
Tuesday's rain hit parts of Texas that Hurricane Harvey had already damaged almost two years ago. Hurricane Harvey in August, 2017 was the second most costly hurricane in US history. It caused $125 billion worth of damage in Texas. In the Houston area, 36 people died and about 150, 000 homes were flooded.
A spokesman for the Harris County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management spoke with the Houston Chronicle. The spokesman said that this week's rain is "not in any way a Harvey-level event."
But the worst may not be over yet. People will have a break from the heavy rain on Wednesday. According to the National Weather Service, the Texas Gulf Coast will continue to experience heavy rain later in the week. "Today should be our quietest over the next few days for rainfall," said Don Oettinger, a National Weather Service meteorologist (气象学家).
Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peia warned, "As there is too much water on the ground, these are perfect conditions for flash floods, so we hope people are careful of what they're doing and encourage them to stay home. There's no sense in putting yourself, firefighters or anybody in danger needlessly."
Fear, anxiety, panic — those are the words Elaine Peng used to describe the state of her service's recipients (接受者) who are fighting mental health problems through lectures and support groups on WeChat. President Donald Trump's transaction (交易) ban on the social networking app has worsened their emotional state.
Since Peng founded the organization in 2013 with the mission of raising mental health awareness within the Chinese community, she has gradually built up her network. Now she has two WeChat groups of more than 500 people, including service recipients and volunteers.
Peng said, "WeChat is the organization's primary communications tool because it is much friendlier than other US-developed apps. We also respond to emergency situations through WeChat. For instance, we recently rescued a patient from a parking lot, using the app's real-time location feature, where his condition suddenly worsened and he didn't know where he was, " she said.
Seeing that her group's mission and operation will be affected in a significant way, Peng joined a legal challenge filed by the nonprofit US WeChat Users Alliance, seeking to block the ban. The presidential executive order does not define the word "transaction", and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross has not defined which particular transactions would be illegal. Ross may issue the definitions by Sunday, or he may not say anything for a long time, but the situation is already harming people who depend on WeChat. If the judge does not prevent the order from taking effect, then the law goes into effect Sunday, and no one knows exactly what it means.
We Chat has roughly 19 million daily active users in the US, most of them of Chinese descent, according to the complaint filed by the plaintiffs (原告) last month. The lawsuit argues that the order is illegal because it violates (侵犯) users' free speech rights. It also argues that the ban targeted Chinese Americans, who rely on the app for work, worship and staying in touch with relatives in China.
The desert locust (蝗虫) is the most dangerous migratory pest with a huge appetite unmatched in the insect world. In just one day, a swarm of locusts the size of Paris could consume the same amount of food as half the population of France. They annually reproduce, concentrate and then form swarms that can move up to 150 kilometers per day.
To control these swarms, some experts think drone (无人机) technology could provide survey and control teams with an inexpensive and efficient method of searching for these destructive insects.
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) — also known as drones — could be used to automatically collect high-resolution imagery of green, vegetated areas potentially affected by locusts.
Controlled by a hand-held tablet, the UAV would follow a pre-programmed flight path, covering a 100 kilometer survey radius to collect data. Then the survey teams use the data to identify areas that seem most likely to harbor locusts and travel directly to suspicious locations. Once the team reaches such an area, the UAV could be launched to fly overhead and identify other nearby areas affected by locusts that may require treatment. A separately controlled UAV could then be used to administer pesticides directly onto the locust concentrations. UAVs could also be used to check for locusts in areas that are insecure or cannot be accessed by ground teams.
Pest control operations would become safer, as human operators would no longer be exposed to potentially dangerous pesticides while getting rid of the insects. They would also become more effective, since drones would be able to spray pesticides precisely.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations is currently working with university researchers and private sector partners in Europe to address challenges of drone technology concerning design, endurance, power, and detection of green vegetation and locusts. The FAO remains hopeful that within five years, UAVs will play an essential role in protecting food supplies and livelihoods from the desert locust, as part of the fight against global hunger and poverty.
At 5:12 am on April 18, 1906, people living in San Francisco were awakened by a 40-second earthquake. After a 10-second stop, an even stronger earthquake struck, lasting 25 seconds. Survivors saw the ground move in waves as high as three feet. The earthquake damaged streets, and streetcar rails.
Fires broke out soon after the earthquake, caused primarily by overturned stoves (炉子) or damaged electrical wiring. Because the city's water mains had suffered more than 300 breaks, no water was available (可用的) to fight the fires, which rapidly burned beyond control. To control the fire, firefighters began to dynamite (炸毁) buildings in its path. Unfortunately, this method sometimes spread the fire. By the evening of April 18, 1, 700 soldiers had arrived in San Francisco to help both local people and the firefighters.
After burning uncontrolled for three days, the fire finally burned itself out by the morning of April 21. More than 28, 000 buildings had been destroyed, resulting in about $500 million in damage.
Although the official number of deaths was 311, it is now believed that about 3, 000 people were killed. About 250, 000 people (two-thirds of the city's population) were left homeless. They were forced to live in tents (帐篷) in public parks.
Among the earthquake's survivors was the famous Italian opera singer Enrico Caruso. On the night of April 17, he had performed (表演) the role of José in Georges Bizet' s 1875 opera, "Carmen," and had been scheduled for another performance on April 18. Caruso was so shocked by the earthquake that he made up his mind never to return to San Francisco again.
Ansel Adams, age 4, survived the earthquake along with his family, though their house and many things were damaged. An aftershock threw young Adams face-first into a garden wall, giving him what his friend Cedric Wright would call an "earthquake nose. " Describing his broken nose, which was never repaired, Adams would later joke," My beauty was damaged forever. But he felt the power of the quake, which he called his "closest experience with terrible human suffering. "
The loss of natural land isn't just a problem for the Amazon or the rainforests of Southeast Asia. The United States is losing its forests, grasslands, wetlands, and deserts at a truly startling pace.
Between 2001 and 2017, some 97, 124 square kilometers of natural land-around the size of Indiana- were destroyed in the US to make way for roads, industry, farms, and other signs of human civilization. That's equal to a football field-sized piece of land being lost every 30 seconds. Some of the most serious losses have been experienced in the South and Midwest, where human development took over 47 percent and 59 percent of all land area, respectively, in the 16 years studied.
These findings come from a report published by The Center for American Progress.
Using available satellite data and open- source databases, they calculated the rate of loss of natural lands and its relationship to oil and gas extraction(开采), road construction, urban development, agriculture, and other human- related activities. If national trends continue, a South Dakota- sized expanse of forests, wetlands, and wild places in the continental United States will disappear by 2050.
Now only 12 percent of the country's land area has been conserved as national parks, wilderness areas, national monuments, or other protected areas, while 26 percent of ocean are a is safeguarded from oil and gas extraction. According to this report, it's now time to extend this level of protection even further.
Keeping in line with present scientific recommendations, they conclude that the US should aim to protect at least 30 percent of lands and oceans in a natural state by 2030.
However, it isn't all about desperation. The authors conclude on a remarkably optimistic note (well, relatively optimistic for an environmental report, at least)."The United States is entering new times when it will rely more than ever on the integrity (完整) and stability of the natural world to provide economic boom, safeguard the health of communities, and weather (平安渡过) the effects of a changing climate," they write.
Thinking of ways to reduce the impact of pollution is on everyone's minds. This is how 14-year-old Vinisha Umashankar, a student of SKP Vanitha International School in Tamil Nadu, is doing her part to save the planet.
In October 2018, Vinisha saw an ironing worker throw a few pieces of hot charcoal on the pathway and then pour water on it. When asked why he was doing that, he explained that he was cooling the hot charcoal before he could throw it into the dustbin.
On reaching home, she did a little quick research on the Internet and learnt that to make 1kg of charcoal, 12 fully-grown trees need to be cut down. Apart from that, burning of coal emits harmful gases like carbon monoxide. That is when she started to think of alternative sources of heat to iron clothes, and the first idea that popped into her mind was solar energy. While Vinisha knew that solar energy can be harnessed (利用)to generate power, she did not know how. So she referred to college-level Physics books.
By September 2019, Vinisha had finished working on the technical paper. Impressed with her work, her father submitted her paper to different competitions and soon it was picked up by a group of engineers at the National Innovation Foundation, Ahmedabad, who helped make the prototype (雏形).The ironing cart has solar panels as the roof, which is connected to 100ah battery. Once the battery is fully charged it will power the steam iron box for six hours. Apart from that, the cart has USB ports which can be used to charge mobile phones, too.
The approximate cost of this ironing cart is yet to be determined, and for the future, Vinisha hopes to use her prize money to deploy (配置)a few ironing carts in her hometown and get feedback from the ironing workers.
Hollywood is getting more confident in the recovery of the US film market after Warner Bros' monster mash Godzilla vs. Kong scored huge box office returns in early April. Meanwhile, Hollywood is also eyeing the Chinese market, with offerings including Universal's action film Fast and Furious 9. However, they should realize that after the deadly pandemic, Chinese audiences have more interest in movies that tell a good Chinese story.
James Cameron's documentary The Six and Marvel's superhero film Black Widow are scheduled to be released on April 16 and July 9 respectively, and DC comics has produced a new superhero, Monkey Prince, based on the Chinese legendary Money King. Obviously, Hollywood is hoping to earn big in the world's largest film market.
But looking back to the Hollywood blockbusters in 2020, their box office performance in China was a big disappointment. According to China's ticketing platform Maoyan, Disney's Mulan, DC's Wonder Woman 1984 and Warner Bros' Tenet earned 278 million yuan ($42 million), 167 million yuan and 456 million yuan, respectively.
Meanwhile, homegrown Chinese films are getting more popular, which can be seen from the box office during China's Lunar New Year holiday in 2021 and the Qingming Festival. Chinese feature film Sister, which deals with sister-brother relationships, quickly defeated Godzilla vs. Kong during China's Qingming Festival holiday.
Many observers said that Chinese audiences want to watch films that tell a good Chinese story, and the tear-jerking comedy Hi, Mom is a perfect example. The film tells a warm story of a mother-daughter relationship and has grossed 5.397 million yuan as of Thursday, according to Maoyan.
Maybe it is because of the COVID-19 epidemic that Chinese people are turning their eyes more toward their own stories. If Hollywood still cannot really understand and respect Chinese culture and just randomly mixes some Chinese elements into their films, it will lose a large amount of its fans in China.
Giant pandas (大熊猫) are no longer endangered, Chinese officials have said, decades of work to save the creatures helped drive their population in the wild up to 1, 800. The species will be listed as vulnerable (易危物种),Cui Shuhong, director of the Department of Natural Ecological Protection of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, said at a press conference on Wednesday.
China has spent half a century attempting to boost the population of its famous animals, creating panda reserves across several mountain ranges in an effort to save them from extinction. They were taken off the endangered list by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 2016.
Since the 1970s, Chinese officials have worked on a campaign to drive up their numbers. To prevent habitat loss, officials created specially designed nature reserves in areas where their main food source, bamboo, is plentiful. In 2017, China announced plans for a 10，476-square-mile reserve, which is three times the size of Yellowstone National Park.
"China has established a relatively complete nature reserves system," Cui said on Wednesday as he announced the move. "Large areas of natural ecosystems have been systematically and completely protected, and wildlife habitats have been effectively improved."
Pandas are known in China as an umbrella species, which means experts believe measures to protect them would help protect other species, as well as the larger ecosystem. Cui added that the populations of some other rare and endangered species are gradually recovering as well. "The number of species such as Siberian tigers, Amur leopards, and Asian elephants has increased significantly." he said.
