BRAD GARRETT'S COMEDY CLUB

    Category: Comedy

Best known for his role on the Emmy award-winning sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, Brad Garrett returns to his Vegas roots with his comedy club at the MGM Grand. It is a good place to check out when you need a break from work.

Prices from: $56.40 and up

    Age restriction: Must be 21 years of age or older

    Show Length: 115 minutes

    MAC KING COMEDY MAGIC SHOW

    Category: Comedy, Magic

Mac King Comedy Magic Show is different every afternoon, with lots of audience participation. He is willing to make fun of himself instead of his guests in order to make everyone feel welcome and entertained. The afternoon is kid-friendly from start to finish. Still, whether you're eight or 80, you won't be able to figure out King's secrets.

    Prices from: $40.90 and up

    Age restriction: No age restriction

    Show Length: 90 minutes

    THE MENTALIST, GERRY MCCAMBRIDGE

    Category: Comedy, Magic

Using his skills as a “mentalist”, Gerry McCambridge shocks the crowds as he uses his abilities to predict just what audience members will do next. Anyone who has seen the show has walked away in disbelief, amazed by his unusual power.

    Prices from: $34.99 and up

    Age restriction: Under 13 will not be admitted into the theater

    Show Length: 75 minutes

    ROCK OF AGES

    Category: Plays & Musicals

    The cheerful Rock of Ages brings audiences back to the times of big hair and even bigger bands with 28 popular rock songs from the 80s including “Every Rose Has Its Thom,” “I Wanna Know What Love Is,” “Here I Go Again,” and more.

    Rock of Ages has been nominated for five Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Direction of a Musical. It also received a Drama League nomination for Distinguished Production for a Musical.

    Prices from: $74.00 and up

    Age restriction: Must be 15 years of age or older

    Show Length: 125 minutes

    Belgium is the land of music festivals. There are rock, pop, world, electronic music festivals and more, so you're sure to find a festival that suits your taste.

Groezrock

    Groezrock could be considered the opener of the festival season in Belgium. This festival grew from a small event to an international festival that had 33,000 visitors in 2016.

    When? April 29-30, 2017. Where? Meerhout. Music? Punk, and rock. Free? No.

Sfinks Mixed

    Sfinks is a world music festival that focuses on bringing culture together. There are also plenty of things to do besides watching the performances. Good to know for families: Sfinks is a kid-friendly festival, with workshops, storytelling and performances for children.

    When? July 27-30, 2017. Where? Boechout. Music? World. Free? Yet.

Graspop Metal Meeting

    As the name says, this festival is all about metal, rock and punk. In 2016 the festival received 140,000 visitors

    When? June 16-18, 2017. Where? Dessel. Music? Metal. Free? No.

Genk on Stage

    Genk on Stage is a pop musical with not only a lot of Belgian artists. 80,000 people attended Genk on Stage in 2016.

    When? June 23-25, 2017. Where? Genk. Music? Pop. Free? Yes.

    Ongoing conflicts across the Middle East have prevented more than 13 million children from attending school, according to a report published by UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund.

    The report states that 40% of all children across the region are currently not receiving an education, which is a result of two consequences of violence: structural damage to schools and the displacement (转移) of populations, also called “forced migration.” Both issues result from the violence that has crossed the region in recent years. The report examines nine countries where a state of war has become the ordinary state. Across these countries, violence has made 8,500 schools unusable. In certain cases, communities have relied on school buildings to function as shelters for the displaced, with up to nine families living in a single classroom in former schools across Iraq.

    The report pays particularly close attention to Syria, where a bloody civil war has displaced at least nine million people since the war began in 2011. With the crisis (危机) now in its fifth year, basic public services, including education, inside Syria have been stretched (竭尽所能) to breaking point. Within the country, the quality and availability of education depends on whether a particular region is suffering violence.

    The report concludes with an earnest request to international policymakers to offer money and other resources to help ease the regional crisis. With more than 13 million children already driven from classrooms by conflict, the educational future of a generation of children are in the balance. This is destroying the future for an entire region.

    We've all experienced that feeling that comes when your phone makes a sound to tell you that its battery level is low. It often comes at the worst times – when you're out on a trip and don't have a charger, or when you're expecting an important phone call.

    Indeed, this feeling is so common that South Korean electronics manufacturer LG has given it a name: low battery anxiety.

    According to a survey of 2,000 US adults conducted by the company last year, 90 percent of respondents said that they panic if their battery level reaches 20 percent or lower.

    And last month, UK telecommunications service provider 02 found that around 15.5 million Britons live in “constant fear” of their mobile phones running out of power, according to a survey by the company.

    “The problem is not about being unable to make calls, but is rooted in the fact that smartphones are now where we store digital memories,” noted the Daily Mail.

    However, battery worries don't just affect smartphone lovers. Many owners of electric vehicles also suffer from so-called “range anxiety”. This refers to the concern that the vehicle may not make it to its destination before the power runs out.

    Meanwhile, it isn't just low power that people worry about. A study carried out by South Korea's Sungkyunkwan University and China's City University of Hong Kong found that many of us also worry about not having constant access to our phone.

    This condition is known as nomophobia, short for “no mobile phone phobia（恐惧症）”. Symptoms include feeling uncomfortable when access to one's phone isn't possible, being unable to turn off your phone, and constantly topping up the battery to make sure it never dies.

    So, why do so many people treat their smartphone with such importance? The underlying reason may be that they keep us connected to the people around us, and if we're unable to use our phone, we feel like we're cut off from our social life.

    With products with bigger batteries being released all the time though - such as Xiaomi's Mi Max smartphone range or Tesla's Model S cars – battery anxiety may hopefully soon be a thing of the past.

D

    With the development of the television and the Internet, many people have changed their hobbies and the way that they enjoy their free time. Because of the television and the Internet, many people spend less time reading, so the aim of this article is to give reasons why people should read just for pleasure. The reasons that I give you are quite simple: to improve your knowledge, to have more fun, to make your imagination（想象）fly, to find new ways to express your ideas, and to have a better understanding of life.

    Firstly, you can improve your knowledge when you read. There are nil kinds of good books to choose from. People who read more usually have a better idea about life than those who do not read so often.

    Secondly, you can have fun and increase your imagination by reading books Children have very good imaginations, so parents need to read lots of stories that feed their imagination. Adults should try to develop their imagination by reading books that make them think amazing things.

    Finally, no matter how old you are, it can help you to have a better understanding of life and express your ideas to others in a simple and correct form.

    So I suggest that you read more. I know that many of us like to play on the Internet when we are free, but we must also not forget to read books. Try to choose good books in the beginning, and then I'm sure that you will never stop reading.

    Parallel worlds exist and interact with our world, say physicists.

    Quantum mechanics (量子力学), though firmly tested, is so weird and anti-intuitive that physicist Richard Feynman once remarked, “I think I can safely say nobody understands quantum mechanics.” Attempts to explain some of the bizarre (奇异的) consequences of quantum theory have led to some mind-bending ideas, such as the Copenhagen interpretation and the many-worlds interpretation.

    Now there's a new theory on the block, called the “many interacting worlds” hypothesis (假设) (MIW), and the idea is just as profound as it sounds. The theory suggests not only parallel worlds exist, but that they interact with our world on the quantum level and are thus detectable. Though still speculative (推测的), the theory may help to finally explain some of the bizarre consequences inherent in quantum mechanics.

    The theory is a spinoff of the many-worlds interpretation in quantum mechanics—an assumption that all possible alternative histories and futures are real, each representing an actual, though parallel, world. One problem with the many-worlds interpretation, however, has been that it is fundamentally untestable, since observations can only be made in our world. Happenings in these proposed “parallel” worlds can thus only be imagined.

    MIW, however, says otherwise. It suggests that parallel worlds can interact on the quantum level, and in fact that they do.

    “The idea of parallel universes in quantum mechanics has been around since 1957,” explained Howard Wiseman, a physicist at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, and one of the physicists to come up with MIW. “In the well-known 'Many-Worlds Interpretation', each universe branches into a bunch of new universes every time a quantum measurement is made. All possibilities are therefore realized — in some universes the dinosaur-killing asteroid (小行星) missed Earth. In others, Australia was colonized by the Portuguese.”

    “But critics question the reality of these other universes, since they do not influence our universe at all,” he added. “On this score, our 'Many Interacting Worlds' approach is completely different, as its name implies.”

    Wiseman and colleagues have proposed that there exists “a universal force of repulsion between 'nearby'(i.e. similar) worlds, which tends to make them more dissimilar.” Quantum effects can be explained by factoring in this force, they propose.

    When asked about whether their theory might imply that humans could someday interact with other worlds, Wiseman said: “It's not part of our theory. But the idea of human interactions with other universes is no longer pure fantasy.”

    What might your life look like if you made different choices? Maybe one day you'll be able to look into one of these alternative worlds and find out.