Daily Archives: December 29, 2023

China’s Fireworks Bans Spark Fiery Debate Ahead of Lunar New Year

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BEIJING — Chinese lawmakers Friday weighed in on a fiery online debate on whether fireworks should be used to ring in the Lunar New Year in February, saying a total ban on pyrotechnics in the country credited with inventing them would be hard to implement.  In an unusually frank response, lawmakers said air pollution prevention laws and fire safety regulations have led to “differences in understanding” of the ban on fireworks, which was never absolute.  In 2017, official data showed 444 cities had banned fireworks. Since then, some cities have scaled …

US Military’s Secretive Spaceplane Launched on Possible Higher-Orbit Mission

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — The U.S. military’s secretive X-37B robot spaceplane blasted off from Florida on Thursday night on its seventh mission, the first launched atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket capable of delivering it to a higher orbit than previous missions. The Falcon Heavy, composed of three rocket cores strapped together, roared off its launch pad from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in a spectacular nighttime liftoff carried live on a SpaceX webcast. The launch followed more than two weeks of false starts and delays. Three earlier countdowns …

Chile Granny Finds Solace, Celebrity in Online Gaming

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Llay-Llay, Chile — Few players of the online video game Free Fire would know that one of their most ferocious opponents — a lithe, gun-wielding warrior in a short kimono and fang mask — is in reality an 81-year-old grandmother from rural Chile. From her professional gaming chair at home in a small village, the soft-spoken Maria Elena Arevalo becomes a merciless hunter, mowing down rivals in a game in which tens of millions of players shoot it out to survive on an imaginary remote island. Wearing an apron over a …

As Tree Species Face Decline, ‘Assisted Migration’ Gains Popularity in Pacific Northwest

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portland, oregon — As native trees in the Pacific Northwest die off due to climate change, the U.S. Forest Service, the city of Portland, Oregon, and citizen groups around Puget Sound are turning to a deceptively simple climate adaptation strategy called “assisted migration.” As the world’s climate warms, tree growing ranges in the Northern Hemisphere are predicted to move farther north and higher in elevation. Trees, of course, can’t get up and walk to their new climatic homes. This is where assisted migration is supposed to lend a hand. The idea …