Dutch government bans phones in schools The Dutch government has announced a ban ______01 mobile phones, tablets, and smartwatches in classrooms starting ______02 January 1, 2024.

The aim is to reduce distractions ______03 lessons and promote better concentration and studying opportunities for students. ______04, devices

_______________05 if they are specifically required for digital skills lessons, for medical reasons, or students with disabilities.

Education Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf ______06 that ______07 mobile phones are a significant part of ______08 lives, they are not suitable for the classroom, and scientific research ______09 this view.

The ban is the result of an agreement between the ministry, schools, and related organizations. Schools have the flexibility to implement the ban in their way, but if the desired outcomes ______10 achieved by the summer of 2024, legal rules ______11 enforced.

Source: https://www.newsinlevels.com/products/dutch government-bans-phones-in-schools-level-3/. 

EUA vetam apelo do Conselho de Segurança por "pausa humanitária" na guerra entre Israel e Hamas

Por Caitlin Hu e Richard Roth, CNN Atualizado às 14h41 EDT, quarta-feira, 18 de outubro de 2023

Os Estados Unidos vetaram um projeto de resolução no Conselho de Segurança da ONU que pedia uma pausa humanitária na Gaza sitiada, gerando mais críticas à paralisia política no poderoso organismo global.

O breve projeto de resolução, proposto pelo Brasil, condenou os ataques terroristas de 7 de outubro em Israel pelo grupo militante palestino Hamas, que mataram mais de 1.400 pessoas, e pediu a libertação dos reféns.

O documento também apelou a todas as partes para que cumpram o direito internacional e protejam as vidas civis na Faixa de Gaza, controlada pelo Hamas, em meio a uma feroz retaliação por parte de aviões de guerra israelenses. A comunidade internacional deve planejar "pausas humanitárias" nos combates para permitir a entrega de ajuda, afirmou.

Doze dos 15 membros do conselho aprovaram o projeto na quarta-feira, com a abstenção do Reino Unido e da Rússia, e o veto dos EUA.

Falando após a votação, a embaixadora dos EUA na ONU, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, explicou que os EUA queriam mais tempo para deixar a diplomacia americana em campo "se desenrolar". Os EUA já haviam adiado a votação da resolução.

Thomas-Greenfield também criticou o texto por não mencionar o direito de Israel à autodefesa — um ponto posteriormente ecoado pela representante britânica Barbara Woodward.

Desde os ataques do Hamas, Israel vem bombardeando Gaza, controlada pelo Hamas, com ataques aéreos. Também cortou o acesso de 2 milhões de pessoas aos enclaves, incluindo alimentos, água e eletricidade.

Mais de 3.000 pessoas morreram nos ataques israelenses — incluindo mais de 1.000 crianças e dezenas de trabalhadores humanitários — e especialistas da ONU estão alertando sobre um desastre generalizado se a água e a eletricidade não forem restauradas.

Em Nova York, vários membros do Conselho de Segurança expressaram decepção e frustração pelo fracasso de uma declaração conjunta sobre a importância da ajuda e da proteção civil.

“Infelizmente, muito tristemente, o conselho mais uma vez não conseguiu adotar uma resolução sobre esses conflitos. Mais uma vez, o silêncio e a inação prevaleceram. Sem o verdadeiro interesse de longo prazo de ninguém”, disse o Embaixador da ONU no Brasil, Sergio Franca Danese, após o veto.

O Conselho de Segurança "perdeu uma oportunidade", disse o representante francês Nicolas de Rivière à imprensa após a votação. "Lamentamos profundamente que este texto tenha sido rejeitado", disse ele.

Falando ao conselho, a embaixadora dos Emirados Árabes Unidos, Lana Nusseibah, disse que a resolução não era um "texto perfeito", mas que seu país votou a favor dela "porque ela declara claramente os princípios básicos que devem ser mantidos e que este Conselho é obrigado a reforçar e defender.

Na semana passada, a Rússia propôs outra resolução pedindo um cessar-fogo humanitário em Gaza, que também não foi aprovada.

(Adaptado de edition.cnn.com) 

Text 1

Green shoppers around the world

If you want to be a responsible consumer, think about not just how much you buy, but also about what’s good for the planet. Green Shoppers United is an international non-profit organization for the promotion of responsible consumerism.

Labels

Read the labels. Some...................the ingredients that manufacturers use in products, such as cosmetics or toiletries, can damage the environment. Some ingredients are only used...................make things prettier, or more colorful, but they might also be harmful. Don’t buy things that contain substances that harm you or the world you live................... For example, research shows a potential link...................the preservatives called parabens, often found in beauty products, and some types of cancer. 

Transport

In today’s global economy, it is easier for companies to buy products and materials where they’re cheap, and transport them over enormous distances to get them to customers. If you can, buy things locally. The local food movement has grown steadily in recent years, and it’s often possible to track down locally grown, or produced, products, rather than those that have been transported long distances. If we stop buying goods that have had to fly over continents to get to us, companies may stop transporting them around unnecessarily. A bargain may cost you less personally, but the real price we pay for it in the long run may turn out to be too high, as jet fuel continues to pollute our environment. 

Environment 

Responsible consumers recycle to reduce waste, and its negative impact on our environment. A lot of the plastic packaging we use for food and drink is recyclable, but not all of it. The most common packaging materials are still non-recyclable polyethylene and PVC. Seventy million tons are used every year. Look at the recycling labels carefully. Manufacturers should use recyclable plastics, like PET, wherever possible. Some have also begun using lighter materials, for example, 30% lighter PET plastic for drinks bottles, to reduce the amount of plastic waste. Transporting lighter materials is cheaper, and uses less fuel, too – so the solution may actually benefit everyone. 

Packaging

We’ve all purchased products wrapped in foil, then sealed in a bag, and then put in a box. Why? Write to companies that you think produce wasteful packaging. Ask them to think about what’s really necessary. Make them realize they can save money by using less packaging and, at the same time, help save our planet.

Consumers

A lot of us expect products these days to be more environmentally friendly. However, research has shown that we don’t want to pay more, and we don’t want to compromise on the quality of products, either. For example, one manufacturer recently had to switch back to less environmental packaging of potato chips, just because customers didn’t like the noise their “green” bags made when they were opened! Think about the effects of your shopping choices. Buy less to save the world, and join our effort to make shopping greener!

Read the text to answer the question 

    User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) are two terms you are likely to hear a lot. In the very simplest sense, User Experience is about devising the best means of getting information from the application to the user. User Interface, on the other hand, is about devising the optimal way to present that information to the user. There is broad overlap between the two and close cooperation between them is required for both to be successful.

    As the market for digital applications becomes ever more crowded, the success of a product comes to depend more and more on the effectiveness of UI and UX. We can get a better understanding of the differences between the two and of their importance to the tech sector by looking at how they operate with a slightly less technological product.

    Let’s consider a favorite household item, the lamp. In the production of a lamp, UX and UI are combined by the role of the product designer. The UX of a lamp might include the various lighting settings available, if the light can be dimmed, if it comes on instantly or if it gets gradually brighter. UI might include things like what the switch looks like, where it is located, or how easy it is to find or to use.

    A lamp is an almost ornamental utility, and the choice of lamp we make is mostly based on aesthetic. It is also a relatively disposable item but, most importantly for UI and UX, we can also have several lamps in our house or office at once, each with a different design. The UI and UX of a lamp will inform certain core elements of the design requirements of the lamp but much of the lamp’s appearance – its colour or the materials it is made from – can vary a great deal.

    With a digital product, things are a little different. Users choose a product primarily for its utility rather than its aesthetic and, most importantly, they usually have only one instance of a product type. Even with a video game, while many people play lots of different games of a similar genre, they can only play one game at a time.

    This makes UX and UI the key factors that differentiate one digital product from another. The product that carries out these functions the best is likely to be the one a user selects, the one that gets the most praise in media and the one that gets to establish industry standards.

(https://digitalskillsglobal.com)

Read the text to answer the question. 

    With the rising complexity of modern information systems and the resulting ever increasing flow of big data, the benefits of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are now widely recognized. Specifically, Machine Learning (ML) methods are already deployed to solve diverse real-world tasks – especially with the advent of deep learning. Fascinating examples of practical achievements of ML are machine translation, travel and vacation recommendations, object detection and tracking, and even various applications in healthcare. Furthermore, ML is rightly considered to be a technology enabler, as it has shown great potential in the context of telecommunication systems or autonomous driving.

    Nevertheless, modern society is increasingly relying on Information Technology (IT) systems – including autonomous ones – which are also actively leveraged by malicious entities. Digital threats are, in fact, continuously evolving, and some researchers believe attackers will have sufficient capabilities to harm or kill humans by 2025. To prevent such incidents and mitigate the plethora of risks that can target current and future IT systems, defensive mechanisms require the capability to quickly adapt to the (i) mutating environments and (ii) dynamic threat landscape. Coping with such a twofold requirement via static and human-defined methods is clearly unfeasible, and deployment of Machine Learning in cybersecurity is inescapable.

(https://dl.acm.org. Adaptad)