A Norwegian woman and her Nepali Sherpa guide have completed the fastest climb of the world’s 14 highest mountains. Kristin Harila, aged 37, and her guide Tenjen Sherpa, aged 35, reached the top of the final mountain, K2, last Thursday.
All the tops the two reached are above 8,000 meters, said Karrar Haidri, the secretary at the Pakistan Alpine Club. They did it in 92 days. The former record-holder, Nirmal Purja, a Nepali-born British citizen, climbed the 14 peaks (顶峰) in 189 days in 2019. Most mountain climbers spend years trying to climb the world’s greatest peaks.
Both climbers topped Shishapangma in the Tibet area of China on April 26. They have since climbed Everest, Kanchenjunga, Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu, Dhaulagiri, Manaslu, and Annapurna in Nepal before going to Pakistan, where they climbed Nanga Parbat, Gasherbrum I, Gasherbrum II and the Broad Peak before topping K2. The company Seven Summit Treks(SST)provided support for the climbers’ efforts.
Garrett Madison of the U. S.-based Madison Mountaineering company is also on K2, leading a different group. He said the climbers used a window of good weather to go to the top of the mountain. “They have done it a short while ago,” Madison told the media, adding that the Norwegian woman was “extremely strong mentally and physically.”
Harila first planned to break the record and climb all 14 top peaks in 2022. However, China confined foreign climbers because of the safety requirement, so Harila was unable to climb two of the 14 peaks.
K2 has one of the most dangerous records for mountaineers, with most deaths happening on the return down. Any wrong move can cause a snowslide (雪崩), and kill. Only a few hundred climbers have successfully reached its top.
And one more climber made that list and set another record on Thursday, reported SST director Tashi Lakpa Sherpa. Seventeen-year-old Nima became the youngest person to climb K2, Tashi said.
【小题1】Which is the key to setting the mountain climbing record for Harila and Sherpa?| A．The way they chose to climb mountains. | B．The number of mountains they climbed. |
| C．The time they spent in climbing mountains. | D．The heights of the mountains they climbed. |
| A．Stopped. | B．Encouraged. | C．Guided. | D．Preferred. |
| A．It may cause life-risks to its climbers. | B．It is locked down for some months a year. |
| C．It is the highest among the 14 mountains. | D．It is the most popular among climbers. |
| A．They climbed the mountains together. | B．They are the new world record makers. |
| C．They climbed fourteen high mountains. | D．They used good weather to climb K2 successfully. |
Billionaire Elon Musk on Wednesday announced that he has formed a new artificial intelligence(AI) company, xAI, which has employed researchers from Google, OpenAI and other top technology companies. The goal, Musk tweeted, is “to understand reality.”
xAI is a separate company from Musk’s other businesses, such as Tesla and Twitter, but will work closely with them, according to the new company’s website.
Musk isn’t a novice to AI since Tesla uses the technology in its cars. While xAI didn’t mention what projects it will be working on, the company noted that its team of 11 researchers are drawn from top tech companies such as Microsoft Research, OpenAI and Google.
Musk suggested that the reason he picked July 12, 2023, to announce the start of xAI is connected with a science fiction (科幻小说) classic, Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” In his tweet, he noted that adding the date 7-12-23 equals 42, which the work of the fiction famously assumes is the answer to life.
“The goal of xAI is to understand the true nature of the universe,” the xAI website states.
The company said it will be advised by Dan Hendrycks, director of the Center for AI Safety. Hendrycks pointed out where AI could cause problems. “AIs could be used by bad people to make new deadly bioweapons (生物武器),” Hendrycks said in May. “Or people could make AI that tries to hurt people on purpose. If this AI was really smart, it could be a big danger to all of us.”
The first time xAI was shown to the public was after Musk talked about it in April to the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Musk told Carlson that OpenAI’s ChatGPT was a bit biased (有偏见的) and that he wanted to create a different tool that would be a super honest AI that tries to learn how everything in the world works.
The new company reflected (反映) Musk’s long-voiced concerns about a future in which AI systems could present a risk to human existence. The idea, Musk said, is that an AI that wants to understand humanity is less likely to destroy it.
【小题1】What does the underlined word “novice” in paragraph 3 mean?| A．Boss. | B．Coach. | C．Partner. | D．Beginner. |
| A．He chose the date to remember a friend. |
| B．He was influenced by a number in a book. |
| C．It was suggested by a writer at his invitation. |
| D．It was the decision of all the 11 researchers of xAI. |
| A．It is quite worrying. | B．It is money-making. |
| C．It will not be smarter than humans. | D．It can be used to punish bad people. |
| A．It will take time to create a new AI. | B．OpenAI’s ChatGPT has its advantages. |
| C．Creating an honest AI is his dream. | D．It is hard to change people’s ideas of Al. |
Scotland’s experiment of allowing more than 109,000 Scottish teenagers aged 16 to 17 took part in the Scottish independence referendum (公民投票), in which Scotland finally decided not to become independent.
The age group only made up a small part of the 4.29 million total voters, but they have “demonstrated how the youngest voters can be some of the most enthusiastic in a mature democracy”, commented The Associated Press. Casting their ballots, they were “proud and passionate” to help their nation decide whether to break away from the UK after 307 years in union.
At age 16, Scottish residents are allowed to join the military, get married, and work. Eighteen is the legal drinking age, as well as the UK’s voting age. But in 2013, Scottish law was changed to allow 16- and 17-year-olds in Scotland to vote in the referendum. The government pushed for the change because “younger voters are more likely to vote with their hearts, not their heads—and embrace fundamental change by voting for the pro-independence Yes Scotland campaign”, NBC News said.
But when the decision was handed down, some worried that high school students might not be as informed as adult voters. However, many experts said that assumption was wrong.
Professor Jan Eichhorn of the University of Edinburgh insisted that Scottish teenagers were as likely to read newspaper articles and campaign materials as their parents. They would simply get these resources through social media.
“There’s no evidence to suggest that they’re less capable than adults of voting, from a research point of view,” Eichhorn told NPR.
Scotland’s move to let younger teenagers vote in the referendum has led to a discussion about whether the voting age ought to be lowered to 16, both in the UK and the US.
“By 16, most people have about as stable an ideology (思想意识) as they are going to get,” Professor Jason Brennan of Georgetown University wrote for CNN, arguing that the US should also think about allowing younger US citizens to vote.
【小题1】The Scottish independence referendum was held on Sept. 18 ______.
| A．to encourage youngsters to be concerned with politics |
| B．to lower the minimum voting age to 16 for the referendum |
| C．to decide whether Scotland would become independent from the UK |
| D．to elect who would be the new leader of Scotland |
| A．Scotland gained its independence from the UK eventually. |
| B．It is possible for the USA to lower the voting age to 16 in the future. |
| C．All the people in Scotland thought highly of the government’s decision to lower the voting age to 16. |
| D．Scottish teenagers aged 16 are allowed to join the military, get married, work and drink alcohol now. |
| A．Admit to | B．Object to |
| C．Know about | D．Approve of |
| A．They are as informed and capable as adults of voting. |
| B．They make no difference to the voting result. |
| C．They are too enthusiastic to make informed decisions. |
| D．They are unwilling to be involved in the decision of the country’s future. |
High employment, falling inflation (通货膨胀), and economic growth. On the surface, the US economy currently seems to be doing great. But as it turns out, things are not so rosy for the average American.
According to a March 6 survey conducted by the Savings website, 47 percent of US parents provide financial support to their adult children to help deal with the cost of living struggles.
Gen Zers (aged 18 — 27) were found to be the most likely generation to get financial help from their parents, receiving on average 1,515 dollars per month. Still, many older parents were found to support their Millennial (aged 28 — 43) or Generation X (aged 44 — 59) adult children, accounting for 21 percent of parents providing support. The most common expenses mentioned were groceries and health insurance.
But why are so many US adults, both young and old, struggling to “leave the nest”? One major reason is food prices. According to a survey, food prices are expected to increase by nearly 2.5 percent in 2024. Meanwhile, stable housing remains an elusive dream for many. The average rate for a 30-year mortgage (抵押贷款) was almost 8 percent in 2023, which means many Americans are priced out of affording their own home.
The final piece of the puzzle is falling salaries. Previous generations were able to count on graduating from college as the key to landing a job that paid well. But now, young graduates have found they earn less than their parents. College graduate salaries have decreased more than 10 percent in four decades after adjusting for inflation. In other words, steadily declining salaries make it even harder for young Americans to cope with rising costs.
As Gen Zers in the US struggle under financial pressures, so do the older generations supporting them, as their sharing puts their retirement at risk. The Savings website discovered that working parents were found to contribute “2.4 times more to support adult children than they contribute to their retirement accounts each month”.
Essentially, while the US economy remains afloat, we will witness multiple generations of Americans sinking in their own lifeboats in the years ahead.
【小题1】What did the March 6 survey find out about adult children in the US?| A．Nearly half of them are financially dependent. |
| B．Over half of Gen Zers are financially struggling. |
| C．21 percent of Generation X receive parental help. |
| D．A majority of them rely on their parents for education. |
| A．Readily accessible. | B．Difficult to achieve. |
| C．Often misunderstood. | D．Commonly sought after. |
| A．Graduates’ financial struggles are temporary. |
| B．Government policies favor older generations. |
| C．Salaries for graduates tend to keep up with inflation. |
| D．Financial pressures affect both the young and the old. |
| A．Negative. | B．Optimistic. | C．Ambiguous. | D．Indifferent. |
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