Chinese students' extremely neat handwritten compositions have aroused a heated debate among Internet users since photos of the compositions and a teacher's picky remarks were published on Daily Mail Online.

    “Can you believe this essay is handwritten? ” Daily Mail Online asked.

    The website reported on the compositions that looked like they had been machine printed and on the teacher's remarks at Hengshui High School in North China's Hebei Province, one of China's top 100 high schools. The teacher wrote, “not one stroke (笔画) more, not one stroke less” about some compositions that weren't neatly written.

    The story immediately aroused a heated debate among British Internet users and got 652 comments after it was published on Wednesday. Some British readers were amazed by the neat handwriting and attributed (归于)China's growing development to this strict teaching method. A reader named Jim said, “This is another example of why China is rising to the top”, and his comment gained 72 supports. But some readers thought the too-picky method doesn't make sense in helping students learn better English and suppresses（压制） students' creativity.

    Chinese Internet users also expressed different opinions after English newspapers, a user of China's Twitter like Sina Weibo, posted the story along with its comments on Weibo on Thursday. Since then, the post has received 1, 479 comments. Sina Weibo user wenjinzetui said, “Beautiful handwriting proves an ability”, echoing an old Chinese saying that the style is the man. However, another Weibo user, honorificabilitus, said, “It's meaningless to pursue that neat English handwriting, since learning language is for communicating, let alone English students don't write that neatly. ”

    There are also many Weibo users showing worry about this too-strict teaching method, as weibo user li-owl-stop said, “We should reflect the Chinese-style education, and it's hard to imagine what would happen if all the schools in China adopted the teaching method at Hengshui High School. ”

    In China we can see more African students in universities, which is a signal of a deeper China-Africa relationship, and the same trend is happening in Africa as well. Most Chinese students choose to study in universities in South Sudan, Egypt, Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia and South Africa.

    There are three types of Chinese students in Africa. One type is language students who major in local African languages such as Swahili in China and go to African countries to study the language. Another type is non-language students who major in law, economy, culture, education or agriculture and go to African universities for six months to a year to learn more about the culture or for research. The above two types of students are all funded by Chinese government.

    A third type has been growing in recent years. More Chinese choose to develop their career and build a life in African countries, and some of their children tend to receive higher education in African countries. Some Chinese who work in Africa also further their study in their free time. Many Chinese choose to join the MBA program, since they work in a Chinese state-owned enterprise, and an MBA degree could help advance their career.

    In addition, as China and Africa's relations and cooperation are heating up and more Chinese companies and investors come to Africa under The Belt and Road Initiative(一带一路), more talents that understand Africa are needed. Besides, the new generations have more internationalized, curious attitudes, and are more willing to see and experience Africa themselves without any stereotypes(刻板印象), rather than just reading about it in a textbook.

    Breakdancing is set to make its first debut (亮相) as an Olympic sport at Paris 2024, Tony Estanguet, head of the Paris organizing committee, said on February 21st. Skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing, which have already been added to the programme for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, have been invited to return in Paris four years later.

    Tony Estanguet said the choices responded to a need to make the Olympics "more urban" and "more artistic". We have chosen to present the International Olympic Committee (IOC) with the four sports because they are creative, appealing to youth and completely in line with our vision. They reflect perfectly Paris 2024's identity.

    Breakdancing is an example of a sport "Which can be played anywhere and anytime in urban and other environment." It appeared at the 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires in the form of head-to-head "battles". In competitive breakdancing, "breakers" face off in "battles" against each other, either as individuals or teams. Breakdancers use a mix of physical and artistic skills combining elements from gymnastics or acrobatics (杂技).

    The IOC had announced that the number of competitors at Paris 2024 would be restricted to 10, 500, which limited the opportunity to add sports. But the organizers said the inclusion of the four sports in Paris would not necessitate the construction of permanent facilities and would involve just 248 competitors, of which 32 would he in breakdancing. The surfing events are likely to be held in established surf centres such as Biarritz or Lacanau in southwest France.

    The inclusion still need to be rubberstamped by the IOC, which is expected to decide on which sports to add in Paris after next years' Tokyo Games.

    PARIS—A scaffolding(脚手架) firm that has worked on the roof of Notre Dame said some of its workers had smoked on the site, but ruled out that a cigarette butt(烟蒂) might have started the fire that destroyed the cathedral's oak－framed roof last week.

    A spokesman for family－owned Le Bras Freres, confirming a report in French weekly Le CanardEnchaine, told Reuters that some workers of its Europe Echafaudage scaffolding unit had informed police that they had "sometimes" smoked on the scaffolding, despite a smoking ban on the site.

    "We blame it. But the fire started inside the building...so for company Le Bras Frères this is not a hypothesis(假设), it was not a cigarette butt that set Notre Dame de Paris on fire, " Le Bras Frères spokesman Marc Eskenazi said. TheCanardEnchaine reported that police had found the remains of seven cigarette butts in the burnt－out cathedral."This is not wrong, " said a source close to the investigation, who declined all other comment. Eskenazi said it was impossible to set a log on fire with a cigarette butt and questioned how cigarette butts could have been found on the site."If cigarette butts have survived the fire, I do not know what material they were made of." he said.

    Europe Echaffaudage also ruled out the possibility that the fire might have been started by an electricity incident at one of the two lifts on the site."The lifts' electricity was perfectly within specifications and well maintained, " he said. He added that the two lifts were on the outside of the building, situated at 45 and 65 metres from the base of the spire(尖顶), where the first smoke and flames had been spotted and that the workers had cut the power to the lifts at 17:50 when they had left the site for the day.

    TheCanardEnchaine also reported that electrical wiring ran through the roof of the cathedral, but the church administration denied that safety norms had not been respected."Nothing was ever done without the approval of the state...There were no wires dangling, everything was properly installed," Notre Dame spokesman Andre Finot said.In 2012, electrical engines had been installed to sound the bells in the spire.

What better way to experience the history of a site than to have a hand in actually preserving it? This was the thought behind the founding of Adventures in Preservation (AIP) in 2001. The nonprofit's founders. Judith Broeker and Jamie Donahoe, were both long time preservationists and world travelers. They had seen a great many buildings in poor condition, as well as buildings that had been "restored" without the benefit of conservation expertise.

Twelve years on, they are still involved in the day-to-day management of the organization, supported by a volunteer staff located around the world, Judith's favorite projects have long been the ones in Eastern Europe, and she enjoys opportunity to travel there each year. She, along with anyone else who's joined an adventure, always quotes their fellow jammers, as they're called, as the highlight of each project. The groups are made up of people from all different ages, occupations, and cultures. Yet each time, they form a strong bond and work so well together that the work becomes fun. Which, after all, is the point of a working vacation, no?

Raising understanding of people's own heritage(遗迹) is another part of AIP projects. In many places, there is so much focus on the news that not only are heritage buildings being lost but so are the traditional building skills needed to keep them. By providing training and raising awareness of the importance of their heritage, AIP is helping keep both alive.

Next year, AIP has projects in Europe and the US. There will be even more projects the following year as projects currently under development in Ghana, Armenia, Ukraine and the US come on line. Each project is also an opportunity for travel, adventure, and personal growth, and AIP welcomes people from around the world to join a project and" "jam" with them.

The Ebola virus is an infectious disease that for years had almost no treatments, and it kill s about half the people it infects. Now a new study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases shows that a promising vaccine （疫苗）, named rVSV△G-ZEBOV-GP, doesn't just help to reduce infections, it also can cut those death numbers in half.

The vaccine is a single-dose （单剂） muscular one that causes cells to produce one of the virus's proteins. "Later, if the person is exposed to Ebola,"explains Rebecca Coulborn, a scientist with Epicentre, the medical research arm of Doctors Without Borders, "their immune system will recognize the viral protein. This recognition allows the immune system to be prepared to attack the virus and protect the person from Ebola virus disease."

Researchers showed rVSV△G-ZEBOV-GP was effective at reducing the risk of infection, but no one knew how capable it was of preventing death in someone who was vaccinated after becoming infected during an epidemic （流行病）. To figure it out, Coulborn and her colleagues focused their efforts on the second-largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded, which occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 2018 and 2020.

"Every single Ebola health facility across the entire Ebola epidemic had a standardized list of all admissions," says Coulborn. This list included 2,279 confirmed Ebola patients, and it recorded whether or not each person had been vaccinated before they got sick—and if so, when they'd received the vaccine.

Coulborn found the death rate was 56% among the unvaccinated. But for those who'd received the vaccine, that rate was cut in half. This was true no matter when someone got vaccinated before the appearance of symptoms. Additionally, those who'd been vaccinated had less virus circulating in their bodies than those who hadn't. So the vaccine played an important role.

Rebecca Coulborn says she feels buoyed by the results—since they offer clear evidence that people who're at risk of contracting Ebola should be vaccinated early. It's an opportunity to cut chains of transmission （传播） and prevent an outbreak before it gains speed.