Fluentide · Chinese Listening — HSK 5-6

Top Chefs Cook Fine Food and Reach for Taco Bell After Work

Must You Walk 10,000 Steps? Research Finds Benefits Around 7,000

A Hubei Man Copies Tomb-Robbing Novels and Gets Twelve Years in Prison

A Runner Trains on a Gym Treadmill and Wins His First Marathon

A Senator Pays a Bakery Bill After Six Years and a Viral Post

Hospital Booking Bots Lead to Convictions

Walmart Robots Struggle With Everyday Goods

Former NFL Player Proves a Maths Conjecture

Coffee Shops Turn Tote Bags Into Branding

Fast Plane Wi-Fi Brings Noisy Work Calls

2026 Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards finalists revealed 1 Oct 2026: a record 10,000+ entries from 112 countries; 56 finalists (40 single images, 3 under-16, 4 portfolios, 9 videos). Highlights: 'Are You Kidding Me?' (Kevin Lohman, USA) a squirrel launching itself at a great horned owl in Santa Cruz, California; 'Little Godzilla' (Udo Harms, Germany) a reddish squirrel with a mouthful of grass in Hanover; 'Sneeze' (Alexander Hormann, Canada) a moose's runny nose, sneeze and grin at Maligne Lake, Alberta; 'Lessons' (Heather Cudworth, Kenya) an adult elephant giving a younger one a forceful dust bath in Amboseli National Park; under-16 finalist Phiané Oosthuizen (South Africa) a sunbird with a petal stuck to its beak. Conservation partner: Born Free Foundation. Co-founder Tom Sullam: the competition 'has grown into something far bigger than we ever imagined.' Winners announced 8 Dec 2026; two London exhibitions.

2026 Nobel Prize in Physics (announced 6 Oct 2026) to Francis Halzen, sole laureate (first sole physics winner since Georges Charpak in 1992), 'for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin.' Halzen, born 1944 in Tienen, Belgium; PhD KU Leuven 1969; at University of Wisconsin-Madison since 1972. Proposed using Antarctic ice as a neutrino detector in 1988. IceCube: 5,160 optical sensors on 86 strings in hot-water-drilled holes, ~1,450-2,450 m deep near Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, one cubic kilometre of ice; completed December 2010; cost $279 million; 450+ researchers, 58 institutions, 14 countries. Neutrinos ('ghost particles') barely interact: over a billion pass through your hand in the time it takes to read a sentence. Detection via faint blue Cherenkov light from secondary particles. 2013: 28 high-energy neutrinos from beyond the solar system; 2018: a neutrino traced to blazar TXS 0506+056 (~4 billion light-years);…

France lycée (high-school) protests, late Sept-Oct 2026. Began at Lycée Saint-Exupéry in Créteil (Paris south-east suburb) over teacher shortages: ~10% of teaching hours went untaught in public secondary schools in 2024-25 (worst in maths and English); 35 students per class, not enough chairs; crumbling buildings, cafeteria too small, 35°C classrooms; Parcoursup stress. 30 Sept: 250,000+ marched nationwide, 56,000 in Paris. 1 Oct: Interior Ministry said ~1,949 arrested in one day; 5,000-6,000 arrests overall, mostly minors; 1,800+ prosecuted. Injuries among students, school staff and 600+ police; 24 schools burned/ransacked; damage tens of millions of euros; a fire truck burned in Marseille. A 15-year-old lost a hand in a grenade explosion during clashes with riot police in Lens (north). 5 Oct: 589 of France's 3,700 high schools fully or partially closed. PM Sébastien Lecornu; Education Minister Édouard Geffray: 'partial, progressive return to lessons', five measures, funding plan by month's end. Context:…

Russia plague scare (Oct 2026). Darya (Daria) Shipilova, 28, researcher at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute (Siberia). Regional media, citing security-service sources, reported she broke a test tube containing the pneumonic plague pathogen on 25 Sept; admitted to Shelekhov District Hospital 29 Sept with severe pneumonia; died overnight 1-2 Oct. Rospotrebnadzor says she died of 'pneumonia of unknown aetiology' unrelated to her work and found no work-related microorganisms. Yet nearly 200 contacts were placed under medical observation, 60+ colleagues confined inside the institute, access restricted at several Irkutsk hospitals incl. a maternity ward. Contacts: two COVID-19 and two rhinovirus cases, no plague symptoms. White House monitoring (Axios, 4 Oct); US formally requested information; Trump expects to talk to Putin; WHO wants an explanation. Plague (Yersinia pestis, a bacterium): Black Death killed ~1/3 of Europe in the 14th century; pneumonic form spreads person to person by coughing;…

Should you use a tongue scraper? (The Economist, 1 October 2026, 'Should you be using a tongue-scraper?'.) Tongue scraping — an old Ayurvedic practice now trending on social media and a growing consumer market — removes the white tongue coating (舌苔) of food debris, dead cells and bacteria. Bad breath mostly comes from volatile sulfur compounds made by bacteria at the back of the tongue. Pedrazzi et al. 2004 (University of São Paulo, J Periodontol): crossover trial, 10 subjects; toothbrush cut VSCs 45%, tongue scraper 75%. Cochrane review (Outhouse et al. 2006): only 2 small trials qualified; scrapers/cleaners slightly better than toothbrushes, short-term effect, weak evidence. Twist: tongue bacteria (e.g. Neisseria, Rothia) reduce dietary nitrate (spinach, beetroot) to nitrite, which becomes nitric oxide, relaxing blood vessels and lowering blood pressure. Tribble et al. 2019 (Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology), 26 healthy volunteers: twice-daily chlorhexidine mouthwash for one week raised…

Shanghai-born physicist Jun Ye (b. Nov 1967; Shanghai Jiao Tong University applied physics 1989; PhD University of Colorado 1997; JILA/NIST/CU Boulder; NAS 2011; 2022 Breakthrough Prize shared with Hidetoshi Katori) shares the 2026 Wolf Prize in Physics with Immanuel Bloch (Max Planck), announced 1 October 2026, 'for transformative, widely applicable advances in the control of ultracold atomic systems.' Ye's optical lattice clocks (~100,000 strontium atoms laser-cooled near absolute zero, held in an optical lattice, counting ~429 THz light vs caesium's ~9.19 GHz microwaves; enabled by optical frequency combs) would, per NIST, neither gain nor lose a second in 15 billion years. In 2022 (Nature) his team measured gravitational time dilation across a 1 mm height difference within one atom cloud — the smallest scale ever — which Ye said could connect quantum physics with gravity. Uses: GPS/navigation, geodesy, dark-matter searches, a future redefinition of the SI second. He is the second Chinese-born Wolf…

FlyDubai flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv, Wednesday 30 September 2026, 174 people on board, mostly Israeli. About two hours in, at ~34,000 ft, the co-pilot, Omani national Hamam al-Hammami, attacked Indian captain Smit Machchhar (17 years' experience) with the cockpit's emergency crash axe. The plane dropped more than 17,000 ft (~5,180 m) in about two minutes; part of the rudder was torn away. The badly wounded captain, on the cockpit floor, made 'one last push' to unlock the reinforced cockpit door (post-9/11 design, opens only from inside). Passengers, led by an Israeli plumber, rushed in, pulled the co-pilot out and pinned him; two off-duty pilots travelling as passengers took the controls and levelled the jet at about 15,000 ft roughly 12 minutes later. A dentist travelling from China stanched the captain's bleeding. The flight diverted to Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, landing about 85 minutes later. No passengers seriously injured; captain seriously hurt but stable. Oman Air had grounded al-Hammami over…

Psychiatrist Awais Aftab argues (NYT, first edition of the series Therapeutic Window) that 'attention deficit' may be the wrong framing for ADHD. A major study in Cell last year found stimulants act on brain networks for salience, reward and arousal, with no detectable change in attention networks whether or not children had ADHD. Aftab distinguishes lab 'attention' (selectively amplifying relevant information) from 'sustained engagement' (keeping the spotlight on a task over time), which depends on whether the task registers as worth doing; stimulants make mundane tasks like homework and laundry seem more worthwhile, which also explains why they calm restless children. Earlier work: Edmund Sonuga-Barke's 1992 experiment showed hyperactive children chose small immediate rewards mainly when it ended the experiment sooner (delay aversion); Russell Barkley's 'time blindness' and emotional self-regulation. The name may leave people who struggle with lateness, boredom and emotional volatility undiagnosed.…

A surprise inspection on 23 September 2026 by Indonesia's Ombudsman at Cibinong prison, a medium-security prison near Jakarta, found inmates living in at least 10 staff housing units outside the prison with flat-screen TVs and a gym, expensive cars parked in the complex, a golf simulator under construction and an unguarded exit to an adjoining forest. Guards first barred the inspectors; an inmate admitted living in one unit. Five officials including the warden were suspended, the Ministry of Immigration and Corrections' inspector general Rudi Setiawan announced; the director general of corrections told legislators 13 unregistered staff residences were found. Authorities are investigating whether inmates paid staff. Ombudsman member Syafrida Rachmawati Rasahan called it 'the tip of the iceberg'. Indonesian prisons are overcrowded and understaffed, with low-paid guards long accused of taking bribes; precedents include the 2017 Kerobokan tunnel escape in Bali and a 2018 finding that corruption convicts paid for…

Greenland Security Deal Signed: Two New US Bases, Sovereignty Stays