To mark the 77th founding anniversary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy, the service opened its military barracks and active-duty naval vessels to members of the general public in Shanghai on Tuesday, April 21, 2026. The public open day event, reported by China’s official news agency Xinhua in an update published April 22, offered ordinary citizens a rare, up-close opportunity to tour operating naval platforms, including the PLA Navy frigate Fuyang. Photographs from the event captured members of the public exploring the vessel, as the Navy sought to bridge the gap between military personnel and civilian communities and build public understanding of its mission. This anniversary event forms part of a broader regular initiative by the PLA to increase transparency around its work and foster national pride among the Chinese public by opening military facilities to civilian visitors. The 77th anniversary commemoration comes as the PLA Navy continues to evolve as a modern, blue-water naval force, and the open house event creates an accessible space for citizens to connect with the service’s 77-year history and contemporary operations.
作者： admin
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US retail sales surge as higher gas prices rise amid Iran war
A month-long ongoing conflict in Iran has sent shockwaves through global energy markets, and the ripple effects have pushed U.S. retail sales to a surprisingly sharp gain in March — a jump that economists warn hides serious pain for American consumers, according to fresh data from the U.S. Department of Commerce released Tuesday.
The official data shows that overall national retail sales climbed 1.7% month-over-month in March, with the entire gain driven by an unprecedented surge in gas station sales. Fuel sales skyrocketed 15.5% last month, marking the steepest single-month increase since the federal government began tracking this retail category in 1992.
While solid retail sales growth is typically interpreted as a sign of a strong, expanding economy, this particular spike is tied entirely to inflated energy costs triggered by the Iran conflict, which broke out on February 28. The fighting has severely disrupted commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the critical global chokepoint through which approximately 20% of the world’s daily oil supplies pass. The supply disruption has sent global crude prices soaring, passing through directly to pump prices for U.S. consumers.
For most American households, which rely heavily on personal passenger vehicles for daily commuting and everyday travel, sustained high energy prices are eroding disposable incomes that would otherwise go toward non-energy spending. Economists warn that if the conflict drags on, further energy price hikes could drag overall consumer spending into contraction, a major headwind for the world’s largest economy.
“If the situation with Iran is not resolved quickly, oil and gas prices will rise further,” Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told Xinhua News Agency. “This will seriously dampen consumer spending, if not actually push it into negative territory.”
Top U.S. energy officials have already signaled that elevated prices could persist for months. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNN’s *State of the Union* on Sunday that average U.S. gasoline prices may not drop back below $3 per gallon until 2027, as the conflict continues to roil global energy markets. “I don’t know, that could happen later this year, that might not happen until next year, but prices have likely peaked,” Wright said, adding that energy prices would almost certainly decline if a diplomatic resolution to the conflict is reached.
Parallel to the energy market volatility, diplomatic efforts to end the conflict hit a snag this week. On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced he would extend a temporary two-week ceasefire with the Islamic Republic of Iran, claiming the Iranian government remains “seriously fractured” internally. The ceasefire was originally set to expire Wednesday, and Trump said the pause in hostilities will remain in place until Tehran presents a “unified proposal” to end full-scale fighting.
The president’s announcement comes on the heels of multiple setbacks for peace talks. A scheduled second round of peace negotiations that was to be led by U.S. Vice President JD Vance in Pakistan has been postponed. Separately, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News Agency reported this week that Iranian negotiators have informed the U.S. government via an intermediary that they will not participate in any further talks at this time. The United Nations has nonetheless publicly voiced hope that talks will resume in the near future.
As of Tuesday, data from the American Automobile Association puts the national average U.S. gas price at roughly $4 per gallon — a full dollar higher than the average price recorded at the same time in 2025. Global benchmark crude prices have also surged, hovering above $90 per barrel on Tuesday, up sharply from the pre-conflict average of around $65 per barrel recorded before fighting began in late February.
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Watch: Black bear caught in net after falling from tree
A unexpected urban wildlife encounter unfolded this week in a quiet residential neighborhood of Albany, New York, when a wild black bear wandered into the populated area and climbed a tall tree in the community. The sighting of the large wild animal in a populated neighborhood quickly prompted local residents to alert authorities, who assembled a joint response team made up of state wildlife officials and local law enforcement officers to manage the situation.
To ensure the safety of both nearby residents and the animal itself, the response team made the decision to use a tranquillizer dart to sedate the black bear. Crews stretched a large safety net beneath the tree to catch the bear once it became unconscious, avoiding a dangerous fall that could have seriously injured the animal or damaged surrounding property. After the sedative took effect, the bear lost its grip and dropped safely into the waiting net, with no injuries reported to either the bear or any members of the public or response team.
Wildlife officials noted that encounters like this have become more common in recent years as black bear habitats overlap increasingly with expanding residential development. They reminded local residents to secure food sources such as garbage cans and bird feeders that can attract wild bears into urban and suburban areas, and to contact authorities immediately rather than approach the animal if a bear is spotted nearby.
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No cartels involved – but Mexico’s pyramid attack prompts new concerns
On a seemingly ordinary Monday morning at Teotihuacán, Mexico’s most iconic pre-Hispanic archaeological site and top international tourist destination, a routine day of exploration collapsed into sudden, horrifying gun violence that authorities are still working to fully unpack.
Disturbing eyewitness footage captured the attacker, 27-year-old Mexico City native Julio César Jasso Ramírez, opening fire on unsuspecting visitors from the upper terrace of the site’s famous Pyramid of the Moon. Panicked tourists scrambled for shelter behind ancient stone structures as shots rang out, beginning the attack around 11:00 a.m. local time.
When the violence ended, a 32-year-old Canadian woman was dead, and the gunman had taken his own life via a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Multiple injured tourists from countries including Russia, Colombia, and Brazil were admitted to local hospitals for treatment of their wounds. Security forces, including the National Guard, were rapidly deployed to secure the historic site.
Initial investigations have drawn a clear line between this attack and the cartel-linked violence that has plagued Mexico for decades. Just two months prior, the killing of Jalisco New Generation Cartel leader “El Mencho” sparked a wave of coordinated violence across the country that left widespread fear in its wake. But Mexican officials confirm Jasso Ramírez acted entirely alone, with no connections to organized criminal groups.
Searching the attacker’s belongings, investigators recovered a handgun, a supply of ammunition, and a tactical knife. They also found written materials, images, and manuscripts referencing a notorious 1999 mass shooting in the United States: the Columbine High School attack that left 13 dead. One witness told Reuters the gunman explicitly referenced Columbine, which took place 27 years to the day before the Teotihuacán attack.
Mexico State Attorney-General José Luis Cervantes Martínez confirmed that no evidence of co-conspirators has emerged, noting, “The aggressor planned and carried out the attack on his own and there is absolutely no indication at this point that he had any external help or that any other individuals were involved in this incident.” He described the attacker as fitting a psychopathic profile driven by copycat behavior, saying “the evidence collected so far pointed to a tendency to imitate situations that occurred in other places, at other times, and involving other individuals.”
The attack marks the second high-profile lone mass shooting in Mexico in less than a month, following a school shooting in Michoacán where a teen killed two teachers with an assault rifle. Both incidents mark a disturbing shift for Mexico, where nearly all large-scale violence has historically been tied to cartel turf wars. Mexican family therapist Valeria Villa, who has worked in mental health for decades, called the trend “a moment of transition, a very unfortunate, lamentable and worrying one, towards imitation of the phenomenon of mass killings we see every day in the United States.”
Experts note the trend does not stem solely from the importation of U.S. societal violence, however. Long-standing cartel violence in Mexico has desensitized segments of the population, particularly young people, to bloodshed. While Mexico does not have the same widespread legal access to guns as the United States, illegal firearms are easily obtainable on the black market, with most smuggled across the border from the U.S.
The shooting comes at a politically and socially sensitive moment for the Mexican government, just three weeks before Mexico co-hosts the 2026 men’s FIFA World Cup, set to kick off in Mexico City on June 11. President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has recently touted her administration’s security progress, claiming the daily homicide rate in February 2026 was 44% lower than at the end of her predecessor’s term in September 2024, was quick to offer condolences and solidarity to the victims’ families.
Sheinbaum’s critics argue that falling homicide rates mask ongoing security crises, most notably the tens of thousands of unresolved missing person cases that disproportionately affect young Mexicans. The administration has moved quickly to reassure visiting football fans that security will be guaranteed during the tournament, but viral footage of a gunman opening fire on foreign tourists at one of the country’s most famous landmarks has done little to ease pre-tournament anxiety.
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Yutu’s space adventure: China’s 70-year journey beyond the stars
In 2026, the global space community marks a historic milestone: the 70th anniversary of China’s ambitious space program, a decades-long venture that has transformed the country from a latecomer in space exploration to a leading global player in the final frontier.
Across these 70 years, China has steadfastly pursued a trajectory of development rooted in independent innovation, turning early limitations in infrastructure and technical knowledge into world-leading expertise through consistent investment, domestic research, and a long-term vision for cosmic discovery. Unlike many space-faring nations that relied on international collaboration in their formative stages, China chose to build its space ecosystem from the ground up, nurturing homegrown talent, developing proprietary launch and exploration technologies, and setting incremental, achievable goals that built a strong foundation for more ambitious missions later.
The journey began in 1970 with the breakthrough launch of Dongfanghong 1, China’s first indigenously developed and built satellite. That successful orbital insertion marked China’s formal entry into the space age, proving that the country could design, build, and launch a functional satellite entirely on its own. In the decades that followed, each new achievement built on the last: the nation mastered human spaceflight, becoming only the third country in the world to independently launch crewed missions to orbit, and established a permanent space station that now hosts regular scientific research from international partners. More recently, landmark lunar exploration missions, including the Yutu rover that gave the anniversary celebration its namesake, have delivered unprecedented data about the far side of the Moon, a region of the lunar surface that had remained unstudied for the entire history of space exploration before China’s Chang’e 4 mission.
Today, as the nation reflects on 70 years of progress, China’s space program stands as a testament to the power of sustained commitment to scientific innovation, opening new avenues for international collaboration while continuing to push the boundaries of human knowledge about our solar system and beyond.
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Los Angeles becomes first major US school district to limit classroom screen time
In a landmark move that sets a new precedent for K-12 education across the United States, the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education has voted to enact sweeping limits on student screen time in classrooms, making it the first large-scale U.S. school system to adopt such comprehensive, developmentally aligned restrictions.
The newly approved resolution mandates that district educators draft grade-specific screen time policies, with an absolute ban on personal and classroom device use for all first-grade students and younger children. District leaders framed the policy as a long-overdue correction to the rapid, pandemic-driven expansion of digital learning tools that became ubiquitous across campuses after 2020. Serving roughly 500,000 students across the nation’s second-largest school district, the system began re-evaluating its heavy reliance on tablets and laptops in recent years, as growing research raised red flags about excessive digital exposure for young learners.
Nick Melvoin, the board member who sponsored the resolution, noted that student devices functioned as a critical lifeline for disconnected learners when Covid-19 forced campuses to close in 2020. But years into the return to in-person learning, Melvoin argued that a systemic reset is long overdue. “We have the opportunity to lead the nation, to establish comprehensive, developmentally grounded screen-time limits that puts students before screens,” Melvoin told attendees at Tuesday’s board meeting. “This is not about going backwards. This is about rethinking screen time in schools to make sure we are doing what actually helps students learn best.”
Slated to take effect at the start of the next academic year, the new restrictions include a ban on YouTube and other video-streaming services on all district-issued student devices. The policy also grants parents the right to opt their children out of using specific digital learning tools for classroom instruction, giving families greater autonomy over their children’s digital exposure.
The resolution draws on a growing body of public health research linking excessive screen time to negative developmental and health outcomes for children. The policy cites peer-reviewed data showing that children aged 8 to 11 who exceed national screen time guidelines face higher rates of obesity, increased risk of depressive symptoms, and lower performance on cognitive skills assessments than peers with limited screen exposure. The vote builds on a 2024 district measure that banned personal cell phone use and social media access during instructional hours, part of a broader district push to reduce unnecessary digital distraction in classrooms.
Board member Kelly Gonez emphasized that the new limits are not a rejection of educational technology, but a targeted effort to center student well-being alongside digital innovation. “Technology can be a powerful tool, but too much screen time has real harmful effects on our students,” Gonez said. “This resolution will ensure we are prioritising important skills and learning experiences for students, while protecting their childhoods and well-being by setting research-based screen time limits.”
Advocacy groups that have pushed for campus screen time reform hailed the vote as a turning point for educational culture across the country. Anya Meksin, deputy director of parent advocacy organization Schools Beyond Screens, called the board’s decision a historic shift in how U.S. schools approach educational technology. “This move marks a big cultural shift into how schools approach technology,” Meksin told NBC News. “This is an historic reform that we hope will trickle down to the rest of the country very, very quickly.”
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Japanese police arrest a South Korean for allegedly obstructing Yasukuni Shrine festival
Diplomatic friction over Japan’s remembrance of its wartime past has flared again, following the arrest of a South Korean national at Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine during the site’s annual spring festival this Wednesday. Japanese law enforcement officials confirmed the suspect was taken into custody on accusations of disrupting public event proceedings at the shrine.
Yasukuni Shrine holds a deeply divisive place in modern East Asian politics. The Shinto site honors 2.5 million Japanese individuals who died in conflicts over the past centuries, including 14 Class-A convicted World War II war criminals. For countries that suffered brutal Japanese imperial aggression before and during WWII — most notably China and the two Korean states — official and high-profile political visits to the shrine are widely interpreted as a deliberate refusal to acknowledge and apologize for Japan’s wartime atrocities.
According to details released by Japan’s Kyodo News agency, the 64-year-old South Korean suspect positioned himself at the shrine’s main entrance gate, directly in the path of vehicles transporting imperial messengers. The shrine confirmed on its official website that the messengers were tasked with bringing ritual offerings from Japan’s emperor to the shrine for the annual spring festival. The suspect unfurled a banner bearing two provocative political messages: one calling for the removal of convicted war criminals from the shrine’s roll of honor and an end to commemorative prayers for them at the site, and another asserting South Korea’s territorial claim to the island contested by Seoul and Tokyo, known as Dokdo in South Korea and Takeshima in Japan.
The arrest comes one day after a separate development that reignited regional criticism. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who has a long history of regular personal visits to Yasukuni Shrine, opted to send a ritual ornament to the shrine for the second consecutive term as prime minister, rather than visiting in person. The move still drew sharp condemnation from both China and South Korea.
Hours after the arrest, a group of more than 100 Japanese right-wing lawmakers — including one sitting cabinet minister — carried out a planned group visit to pray at the shrine, a move that will likely escalate regional discontent over Japan’s approach to its wartime history further.
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UK passes bill that will eventually ban cigarette purchases
LONDON — After decades of advocacy from public health groups, UK lawmakers have approved one of the world’s most ambitious anti-tobacco laws, a historic piece of legislation that blocks future generations from ever legally purchasing cigarettes, bringing a long-sought victory to global public health advocates.
Hazel Cheeseman, chief executive of leading anti-smoking organization Action on Smoking and Health, framed the vote as a turning point for public welfare. Following the bill’s approval on Tuesday, she noted that the end of smoking and its devastating, life-shortening harm is no longer a distant uncertain goal — it is now an inevitable outcome of the policy.
The Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which only requires a formal royal assent from King Charles III — a procedural step that is all but guaranteed before the legislation takes effect — enshrines a radical new age restriction framework. Anyone born after December 31, 2008 will face a lifelong ban on buying cigarettes, with the legal minimum age for cigarette purchases increasing annually to lock in this restriction permanently.
Currently, the sale of cigarettes, traditional tobacco products, and vapes to anyone under 18 is illegal across the UK. The new law expands this protection to lock out an entire upcoming generation from access to deadly tobacco products. Beyond the age restriction, the legislation also grants the UK government broad new authority to regulate tobacco, vaping, and nicotine products, covering everything from product flavoring to retail packaging standards.
The policy puts the United Kingdom at the forefront of global anti-smoking regulation, matching a similar pioneering law passed by New Zealand lawmakers in 2022 — a policy that was ultimately repealed by that country’s new ruling government shortly after it took office. Even as other nations have walked back ambitious anti-tobacco measures, UK officials have pushed forward to address the ongoing public health crisis tied to smoking.
Official public health data shows that smoking prevalence in Britain has dropped by two-thirds since the 1970s, yet the habit remains a major contributor to preventable death and illness. Roughly 6.4 million people, around 13% of the UK’s total population, still smoke regularly. Government health authorities estimate smoking causes approximately 80,000 premature deaths in the country each year, and it retains the unenviable title of the leading preventable cause of death, long-term disability, and poor health across the nation.
UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting emphasized the transformative impact of the new law, saying that children growing up in the UK will be the first generation to grow up entirely protected from the risk of lifelong nicotine addiction and the irreversible harm caused by smoking.
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New figures revealing Aussie bosses are offering the fastest pay rises in years but wage acceleration unlikely to help most workers
Australia’s labor market is facing a stark new divide: employers are ramping up advertised salaries at the fastest pace in nearly a year, but the benefits of this pay growth are out of reach for most of the country’s workforce. Fresh data from leading employment platform Seek reveals that advertised salary growth re-accelerated to 0.4% month-on-month in March, bringing annual growth in advertised pay to 4.1% — the highest annual increase recorded since July 2022.
Despite this seemingly positive trend, Seek’s chief economist Blair Chapman notes that the wage bump will do little to ease cost-of-living pressures for the vast majority of Australian households. Most workers are unable to immediately switch jobs to capitalize on the higher advertised salaries, leaving them stuck with stagnant wages even as they grapple with soaring fuel costs, rising mortgage repayments, a cooling national economy, and growing anxiety over job stability.
The latest employment figures also signal a softening overall labor market: the total volume of job advertisements fell by an additional 0.4% in March compared to February, marking a 2.9% decline year-on-year. Applications per new job posting also dipped 0.5% during the month, even though the share of active workers seeking new roles remains far above pre-pandemic levels.
Alongside rising pay offers, a clear shift in hiring requirements is emerging across all industries: employers are increasingly prioritizing candidates with artificial intelligence skills. Seek’s data shows that job advertisements referencing AI skills have surged 75.2% over the past 12 months. The trend is most pronounced in information and communications technology, where AI mentions in ads have jumped 11.4%, followed by marketing and communications (5.5% growth) and science and technology (4.7% growth). Even industries with historically low AI integration have seen a 1.3% rise in demand for AI skills this year.
Chapman points out that AI-referencing jobs still make up less than 2% of all Australian job advertisements, and recent global economic uncertainty around AI development has led to a slight slowdown in growth. “We can expect this increased uncertainty to have employers feeling a little more cautious in the near term until a clearer view of the situation emerges,” he explained.
But new analysis from Australia’s national science agency CSIRO eases fears of mass AI-driven job displacement, even amid recent high-profile layoffs at major Australian tech and telecom firms including Atlassian, WiseTech, and Telstra. The agency’s multi-year study of hiring patterns across thousands of Australian companies found that firms that have adopted AI are actually advertising more new roles than companies without an AI strategy, with these positions requiring a broader mix of skills rather than fewer.
Dr Claire Mason, lead of the CSIRO’s workforce and productivity research team, said the data reshapes common narratives around AI and work. “AI isn’t replacing workers,” she explained. “Australians need to be working with and harnessing AI, and learning how to use technology to augment their human intelligence. The big shift is not that jobs are disappearing — it is that jobs are changing.”
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French-Algerian author Kamel Daoud says Algeria sentenced him to 3 years for award-winning novel
In a high-profile ruling that has reignited debates over free expression in Algeria, exiled French-Algerian writer Kamel Daoud announced Wednesday that an Algerian court has sentenced him to three years in prison and imposed a $38,000 fine over his 2024 Goncourt Prize-winning novel *Houris*. Daoud, who resides permanently in France, shared the news of Tuesday’s conviction via the social platform X, revealing the legal penalty handed down by a court in the coastal Algerian city of Oran.
Daoud’s acclaimed work centers on the forgotten victims of Algeria’s brutal 1990s internal conflict, widely known as the “Black Decade.” The decade-long violence erupted in 1991, when the military-backed Algerian government canceled the second round of national legislative elections after an Islamist party won a clear majority in the first round. The ensuing insurgency and government crackdown killed an estimated 200,000 people over 10 years of conflict.
The conviction was rooted in the 2005 Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, a national policy approved via public referendum that granted blanket amnesty to both Islamist insurgents and state security forces involved in the civil war. Daoud sharply criticized the law and its application in his case, noting that the charter effectively criminalizes any open public discussion of the civil war and its legacy. “Ten years of war, nearly 200,000 dead according to estimates, thousands of terrorists granted amnesty … and only one guilty party: a writer,” Daoud said in his statement.
This is not the only legal pressure facing Daoud. Since May 2025, Algerian authorities have issued two international arrest warrants for the author, and they are also moving to revoke his Algerian citizenship. The case is not an isolated incident: another prominent French-Algerian critic of the Algerian government, author Boualem Sansal, faced similar legal repercussions in recent years. Sansal, whose work critiques political Islam, French colonialism, and current Algerian leadership, was convicted of undermining national unity and insulting public institutions, receiving a five-year prison sentence under Algeria’s anti-terrorism legislation. After serving one year in prison, he was granted a humanitarian pardon following a diplomatic appeal from Germany’s president, and returned to his residence in France in 2024.
The conviction has drawn new attention to longstanding concerns about restrictions on free speech and historical memory in Algeria, as writers and activists continue to push for open discussion of the legacy of the Black Decade decades after the conflict ended.