Zika virus, mosquito, Brazil

Zika fever is mainly spread via the bite of mosquitoes of the Aedestype. It can also be potentially spread by sex and blood transfusions. Infections in pregnant women may also infect the baby and have been linked to miscarriage and microcephaly. Diagnosis is by testing the blood, urine, or saliva for the presence of Zika virus RNA when the person is sick.

Prevention involves decreasing mosquitos’ bites in areas where the disease occurs. Efforts include the use of insect repellent, covering much of the body with clothing, mosquito nets, and getting rid of standing water where mosquitoes reproduce. There is no effective vaccine. Health officials recommended that women in areas affected by outbreaks consider putting off pregnancy due to the2015–16 Zika outbreak and those pregnant women not travel to areas where outbreaks were occurring. While there is no specific treatment, paracetamol (acetaminophen) may help with the symptoms. Admission to hospital is rarely necessary.

The virus that causes the disease was first isolated in 1947. The first documented outbreak among people occurred in 2007 in the Federated States of Micronesia. As of January 2016, the disease was occurring in twenty regions of the Americas. It is also known to occur in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. Due to an outbreak which started in Brazil in 2015, the World Health Organization declared it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in February 2016.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

1.      Via  (v) 通過

2.      Transfusions (v) 輸血

3.      miscarriage (v) 流產

4.      microcephaly (n) 小頭畸形

5.      Diagnosis (n) 診斷

6.      Urine (n) 尿

7.      Saliva (n) 唾液

8.      Repellent (n) 驅蚊

9.      Reproduce (v) 複製

10.  Vaccine (n) 疫苗

11.  paracetamol 撲熱息痛

12.  Acetaminophen對乙酰氨基酚

Japan Korea comfort women deal/agreement 

Japan and South Korea have reached an agreement over the long-standing issue of "comfort women," a term that describes sex slaves used by the Japanese military during World War II.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said his government will give 1 billion yen ($8.3 million) to a fund to help those who suffered.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se said that as long as Tokyo sticks to its side of the deal, Seoul will consider the issue "irreversibly" resolved.

In addition, the two governments "will refrain from criticizing and blaming each other in the international society, including the United Nations," Yun said at a joint news conference Monday.

Kishida said Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe "expresses anew his most sincere apologies and remorse to all the women who underwent immeasurable and painful experiences and suffered incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women."

Abe later stated himself: "I think we did our duty for the current generation by reaching this final and irreversible resolution before the end of the 70th year since the war."

1.      yen (n) 日元

2.      sticks to 堅持

3.      irreversibly (adv) 不可逆地

4.      refrain (v) 避免

5.      joint (a) 聯合

6.      anew (adv) 重新

7.      remorse (n) 悔恨

8.      incurable (a) 不可救藥的

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/28/asia/south-korea-japan-comfort-women/

Paris climate change conference

According to the organizing committee of the summit in Paris, the objective of the 2015 conference was to achieve, for the first time in over 20 years of UN negotiations, a binding and universal agreement on climate, from all the nations of the world. Pope Francis published an encyclical called Laudato si'intended, in part, to influence the conference. The encyclical calls for action against climate change. The International Trade Union Confederation has called for the goal to be "zero carbon, zero poverty", and its general secretary Sharan Burrow has repeated that there are "no jobs on a dead planet".

In 1992, governments met in Rio de Janeiro and forged the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. That agreement, still in force, bound governments to take action to avoid dangerous climate change, but did not specify what actions. Over the following five years, governments wrangled over what each should do, and what should be the role of developed countries versus poorer nations.

Those years of argument produced, in 1997, the Kyoto protocol. That pact required worldwide cuts in emissions of about 5%, compared with 1990 levels, by 2012, and each developed country was allotted a target on emissions reductions. But developing countries, including China, South Korea, Mexico and other rapidly emerging economies, were given no targets and allowed to increase their emissions at will.

1.      binding (a) 連結的

2.      encyclical (a) 傳閱的；通諭的

3.      wrangled (v) 爭吵

4.   protocol (n) 協議

5.      allotted (v) 分配

6.      at will (adv) 隨意地

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conference

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/02/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-paris-climate-summit-and-un-talks

Russian plane, crash, Egypt

The Airbus A321, operated by the Russian airline Kogalymavia, took off from Sharm el-Sheikh airport at 05:58 (03:58 GMT) on 31 October.

At 06:14 Egyptian time (04:14 GMT), the plane failed to make scheduled contact with air traffic control based in Larnaca, Cyprus.

The plane disappeared from radar screens six minutes later while flying over central Sinai. Egyptian authorities said no SOS calls were received by air traffic controllers.

Russia's Interfax news agency cited a source in Cairo as saying "uncharacteristic" sounds were picked up by the cockpit voice recorder before the plane disappeared from radar screens. "The recordings suggest that an emergency situation occurred on board unexpectedly and took the crew by surprise," the source said.

Data released by the flight tracking website Flightradar24 showed that just before the radar signal was lost, the aircraft reached an altitude of more than 33,000ft (10,060m), then started to descend with a vertical speed of about 6,000ft a minute. The plane's forward speed meanwhile dropped to around 170km/h (105mph), slower than the speed necessary to continue safe flight.

Egyptian military aircraft subsequently located the wreckage of the plane in the Hasana area, 95km (59 miles) south of the Mediterranean coastal town of el-Arish.

Russian officials said the wreckage was scattered across a 20 sq km (7.7-sq mile) area, meaning that the plane broke up in mid-air before falling to earth.

1.      uncharacteristic (adj) 異常

2.      subsequently (adv) 後來

3.      wreckage (n) 殘骸；廢墟

4.      coastal (adj) 沿海

5.      scattered (adj) 零落；疏散

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34687990

Paris terror attack, Abaaoud, French father and son, blindfolded Muslim, hug

France had been on high alert for terrorism since the Charlie Hebdoshooting and a series of related attacks in January by militants belonging to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and had increased security in anticipation of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, scheduled to be held in Paris at the beginning of December, as well as reinstating border checks a week before the attacks.

Throughout 2015, France witnessed smaller attacks: the February stabbing of three soldiers guarding a Jewish community centre in Nice, the June attempt to blow up a factory in Saint-Quentin Fallavier, and the August shooting and stabbing attack on a passenger train.

The Bataclan theatre had been threatened a number of times because of its public support for Israel. Two Jewish brothers, Pascal and Joël Laloux, owned the Bataclan for more than 40 years before selling it in September 2015. In 2011, a group calling itself Army of Islam told French security services they had planned an attack on the Bata clan because its owners were Jewish.

In the weeks leading up to the Paris attacks, ISIL and its branches had claimed responsibility for several other attacks: the downing of Metrojet Flight 9268 on 31 October and the suicide bombings in Beirut on 12 November.

Intelligence agencies in Turkey, Iraq and Israel had all warned of an imminent attack on France months beforehand, but were ignored by the French authorities.

1.      reinstate (v) 復職

2.      stab (v) 刺痛；刺傷

3.      theatre (n) 劇院

4.      imminent (a) 即將發生的；逼近的

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2015_Paris_attacks

曼谷爆炸案：Bangkok bomb, explosion/blast

On 17 August 2015, at 18:55 ICT(11:55 UTC), a bomb exploded inside the grounds of the Erawan Shrine, near the busy Ratchaprasong Intersection in Bangkok's city centre. The Royal Thai Police said that 3 kilograms (6.6 lb) of TNT had been stuffed in a pipe and left under a bench near the outer rim of the grounds surrounding the shrine, and that an electronic circuit suspected to have been used in the attack was found 30 metres (98 ft) from the scene.

No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. The attacks are thought to have targeted Thailand's tourism and economy, but there has been a range of inconsistencies in the statements of Thai authorities on those arrested and the reasons for the attack. The Thai government has at times suggested the bombers acted to avenge a crackdown on their human trafficking network, to take revenge for Thailand's deportation of a group of Uighurs back to China in July 2015, to strike a blow for the insurgents fighting the Thai government in the Deep South, or for reasons related to Thailand's domestic politics. The government has implicated a range of other suspects in the bombing, mostly Thai opponents of the military regime.

The site of the bombing had been cleaned, and the crater paved over with cement, by 19 August.

1.      Erawan Shrine (n) 四面佛

2.      rim (n) 輪緣

3.      shrine (n) 神社

4.      circuit (n) 電路

5.      metre (n) 公尺

6.      crackdown (v) 鎮壓

7.      deportation (v) 被驅逐出境

8.      Uighurs (n) 維吾爾人

9.      insurgents (n) 叛亂份子

10.  regime (n) 政權

11.  crater (n) 彈坑

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Bangkok_bombing

New Horizons, Pluto, Earth 2.0, Kepler 452b

The planet takes 385 Earth days to orbit its star. It is 60% bigger than Earth, and lies within the conservative habitable zone of its parent star.

It has a probable mass five times that of Earth and its surface gravity is twice Earth's, though calculations of mass for exoplanets are only rough estimates. If it is a terrestrial planet, it is most likely a super-Earth with many active volcanoes due to its higher mass and density. The clouds on the planet would be thick and misty, covering much of the surface as viewed from space. From the surface, its star Kepler-452 would look almost identical to the Sun as viewed from the Earth.

It is not known if Kepler-452b is a rocky planet or a small gas planet, but based on its small radius, Kepler-452b has a reasonable chance of being rocky. It is not clear if Kepler-452b offers habitable environments. It orbits a G2V-type star, like the Sun, with nearly the same temperature and mass and 20% more luminous. However, the star is six billion years old, making it 1.5 billion years older than the Sun. At this point in its star's evolution, Kepler-452b is receiving 10% more energy from its parent star than Earth is currently receiving from the Sun. If Kepler-452b is a rocky planet, it may be subject to a runaway greenhouse effect similar to that seen on Venus.

1.      orbit(v) 環繞

2.      habitable(a) 可居住的，適於居住的

3.      exoplanet(n) (太陽系以外的)外部行星

4.      terrestrial(a) 陸地的；人間的；地球上的

5.      misty(a) 模糊的；多霧的；朦朧不清的

6.      luminous(a) 明亮的；清楚的；有見識的；明白易懂得

7.      Venus(n) 金星

1.      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-452b