Practice story

Meeting a New Neighbor

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Suda welcomes the new person who moves next door.

Practice story

Laundry Before the Rain

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Anan brings his clean clothes inside before rain arrives.

Practice story

Asking About a Restaurant Order

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Jane politely checks an order when one dish does not arrive.

Practice story

Calling About a Water Leak

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Lek reports a leak clearly and helps the landlord arrange a repair.

Easy news

What's behind the push to get more men on testosterone?

Testosterone is getting a lot of attention lately. The military just announced it will screen service members for low testosterone. Meanwhile, the Trump administration wants to expand access.

Easy news

Court ruling freezes Paramount-Warner Bros. merger for now

Paramount's owners were hoping they'd be firmly in control of rival Warner Bros. Discovery by the end of this week. Monday's temporary restraining order puts that plan on hold.

Real news

Why Iran is risking so much over the Strait of Hormuz

None of the choices facing Iran’s leaders offer a clear path to victory, as the conflict with the US continues.

Real news

Meet the women breaking world records in lumberjack sports

The BBC finds out what is driving the sports' increasing popularity with women and what it takes to be the best.

Advanced real news

Selective State-Space Adaptation and Retrieval for Language Model Reasoning

Low-rank adaptation introduces a static learned update applied identically to every input. The update provides task-level adaptation but does not explicitly represent token-level or instance-level state variation. A family of adapters is proposed that introduces selective state-space recurrence at two complementary granularities. At the token level, \textbf{MaLoRA} (Mamba-modulated low-rank adaptation) makes the adapter's scaling factor a dynamic input-dependent function with recurrent state across tokens, in contrast to the stateless modulators of prior work. At the context level, \textbf{MaRA} (Mamba Retrieval Adapter) tracks cross-segment state and selects the segments most relevant to the query, before the modulated language model generates its answer. Across three frozen backbones (Qwen-2.5-7B, Llama-3.1-8B, Gemma-2-9B) and two reasoning benchmarks (MuSiQue, 2WikiMultihopQA), the family improves reasoning accuracy on every cell of the $3{\times}2$ grid, by $+6.8$ F1 ($+10.5\%$ relative) on average and up to $+9.3$ F1 ($+18.2\%$ relative) on the hardest cell over the LoRA baseline, and the token-level gains carry to RULER QA-2 under length stress.

Advanced real news

India's 'cockroach' protesters vow to remain in New Delhi after police use tear gas, batons

Supporters of India's youth-led "cockroach" movement faced police batons and tear gas as they tried to march to parliament to demand the education minister's resignation.

Practice story

Returning a Library Book

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Dao returns a library book on her way home.

Practice story

A Low Phone Battery

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Kiet charges his phone before an important call.

Practice story

A Meeting with the Teacher

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Kanda prepares questions before meeting her daughter's teacher.

Practice story

Checking a Bank Transfer

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Som checks the account details before sending rent money.

Easy news

India's 'cockroach' protest continues a day after police crackdown

Delhi witnessed overwhelming violence on Monday, with at least 60 protesters wounded. Police said 118 of their men were also injured.

Easy news

Court ruling freezes Paramount-Warner Bros. merger for now

Paramount's owners were hoping they'd be firmly in control of rival Warner Bros. Discovery by the end of this week. Monday's temporary restraining order puts that plan on hold.

Real news

Thousands of websites taken down for illegal World Cup streams

More than 1,000 illegal streaming sites were shut down in the US during the tournament, with a similar amount blocked in Colombia.

Real news

How the outbreak of an intestinal parasite in the U.S. unfolded

More than 30 American states have reported illnesses related to Cyclospora, an intestinal parasite that contaminates food that has come into contact with human feces. Here's how the investigation into the outbreak of cyclosporiasis unfolded.

Advanced real news

Meet Jimothy, the unusually round Seattle raccoon capturing hearts worldwide

A Seattle raccoon with an unusually short body nicknamed Jimothy has become an internet sensation after a video of the critter scampering across a field went viral.

Advanced real news

Former Toronto police officer Derek McCormick pleads guilty in Project South investigation

One of the Toronto police officers charged in the sweeping police corruption and organized crime investigation dubbed Project South pleaded guilty to two charges on Tuesday morning.

Practice story

The Lunch Box

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Pim finds the lunch box that she left at home.

Practice story

The Raincoat at Work

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Ton remembers his raincoat before he leaves the office.

Practice story

Missing the Last Bus

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Ploy finds another safe way home after missing her bus.

Practice story

Returning the Wrong Shirt

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Niran returns a shirt after discovering that the size is wrong.

Easy news

The hidden cost of the night shift and how to sleep it off

More than three million people in the UK work night shifts, which can greatly impact their health. What can be done to help them?

Easy news

Special Weather Statement issued July 20 at 2:22PM EDT by NWS Newport/Morehead City NC

At 222 PM EDT, Doppler radar was tracking a strong thunderstorm over Warsaw, moving east at 15 mph. HAZARD...Wind gusts up to 40 mph. SOURCE...Radar indicated. IMPACT...Gusty winds could knock down tree limbs and blow around unsecured objects. Locations impacted include... Warsaw, Bowdens, Kenansville, and Sarecta.

Real news

Cuban dissident Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara goes into exile in US

He was arrested in 2021 during Cuba's largest anti-government protests in decades and spent five years ⁠in prison.

Real news

‘All I think about is her’: Families demand answers as Nigeria's boat disasters keep happening

Hundreds of lives are lost each year in Nigeria as a result of boat accidents yet nothing seems to change.

Advanced real news

Notorious drug cartel leader Ismael Zambada sentenced to life in US prison

Known as "El Mayo", the co-founder the Sinaloa Cartel was also ordered to pay $15bn after he admitted to sending vast amounts of drugs to the US.

Advanced real news

What did Vancouver get from the World Cup?

For five weeks, the FIFA Men's World Cup brought big crowds, busy transit and new energy to downtown Vancouver. Now that the crowds have left, the city is weighing the tournament’s legacy, with questions about public costs, Granville Street and whether soccer momentum can be sustained in B.C.

Practice story

A Short Shopping List

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Mali uses a short list to buy food for dinner.

Practice story

The Bus Card

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Nok learns how to add money to her bus card before work.

Practice story

Changing a Work Shift

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Fah asks a coworker to exchange shifts so she can attend a family event.

Practice story

Making a Clinic Appointment

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Arun calls a clinic and chooses an appointment that fits his work schedule.

Easy news

An Israeli paraglider tries to save migrating swifts that nest in the Western Wall

Swifts have nested in Jerusalem's Western Wall since biblical times. Now one Israeli paraglider is trying to save them.

Easy news

The hidden cost of the night shift and how to sleep it off

More than three million people in the UK work night shifts, which can greatly impact their health. What can be done to help them?

Real news

Is this the most controversial World Cup yet?

After more than 100 matches across Canada, Mexico and the United States, the FIFA World Cup 2026 is about to come to an end, cementing its legacy with highs, lows — and seemingly endless controversies. So, is this the most controversial World Cup? We talk to experts to get a sense of how this year's decisions have affected the tournament.

Real news

Why is it so hard for the U.S. to win wars?

U.S. presidents have promised short, decisive wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. All have proved much more difficult than advertised and fallen far short of the political goals set at the beginning.

Advanced real news

China signals possible return of U.S. trade privileges for Hong Kong

The decision comes two months after President Donald Trump met with Xi Jinping, potentially warming ties ahead of Xi's expected U.S. visit.

Advanced real news

How modern warfare is reshaping Ukraine’s natural environment

From Chornobyl's endangered wild horses to bird nests made of drone cables, modern warfare is reshaping fragile ecosystems along Ukraine’s front lines.

Practice story

Waiting at the School Gate

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Nina waits in the right place to meet her son after school.

Practice story

A Walk in the Park

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Wit takes a short walk after dinner.

Practice story

Completing a School Form

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Beam asks the school office about a section of a form she does not understand.

Practice story

A Card Left in the Machine

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Noi contacts the bank quickly after an ATM keeps her card.

Easy news

Severe Thunderstorm Warning issued July 18 at 1:14PM EDT until July 18 at 1:45PM EDT by NWS Buffalo NY

At 114 PM EDT, severe thunderstorms were located along a line extending from Phelps to Bloomfield, moving east at 30 mph. HAZARD...60 mph wind gusts and penny size hail. SOURCE...Radar indicated. IMPACT...Expect damage to roofs, siding, and trees. Locations impacted include... Geneva, Canandaigua, Newark, Lyons, Victor, Bristol, Clifton Springs, Clyde, Phelps, and Bloomfield. This includes Interstate 90 between exits 42 and 44.

Easy news

Tornado Warning issued July 18 at 1:16PM EDT until July 18 at 1:45PM EDT by NWS Buffalo NY

At 115 PM EDT, a severe thunderstorm capable of producing a tornado was located near Canandaigua, moving east at 35 mph. HAZARD...Tornado. SOURCE...Radar indicated rotation. IMPACT...Flying debris will be dangerous to those caught without shelter. Mobile homes will be damaged or destroyed. Damage to roofs, windows, and vehicles will occur. Tree damage is likely. Locations impacted include... Geneva, Canandaigua, Clifton Springs, Phelps, Gorham, Manchester, Shortsville, Seneca Castle, Seneca Lake State Park, and Hall.

Real news

Second half of summer to bring chances for rain but heatwave threat persists

Forecasts suggest the weather could turn more changeable during late July and August but the risk of heatwaves remains.

Real news

Bodycam footage shows airlift of girl stranded by Texas floods

Footage shows a rescuer reaching a family of three stranded by floods that destroyed their house in Uvalde county.

Advanced real news

SceneBind: Binding What and Where Across Vision, Audio and Language

We present SceneBind, an omni-modal representation of realistic scenes with joint semantic and 3D spatial understanding across vision, audio and language. Existing omni-modal encoders excel at instance-level semantics (i.e., what is present), but often lack explicit spatial structure (i.e., where it is). SceneBind addresses this gap by representing each scene as a semantic-spatial entity, combining a global semantic embedding with object-centric semantic-spatial slots. This representation explicitly captures object-level semantics, spatial attributes, and uncertainty. We further propose SceneBind Matching, a semantic-spatial matching scheme that integrates global scene similarity with object alignment, supporting cross-modal scene retrieval and object grounding. To train and evaluate SceneBind, we curate a novel real-world binaural audio-visual dataset with structured semantic and spatial annotations, and propose a training protocol for aligning semantic and spatial signals across modalities. SceneBind is compatible with large-scale pretrained semantic encoders, adds lightweight spatial modeling with only a few additional tokens. It achieves state-of-the-art scene and spatial retrieval while enabling strong zero-shot transfer to downstream tasks such as audio-visual localization.

Advanced real news

Beyond the Leaderboard: Design Lessons for Trustworthy Multimodal VQA

Healthcare multimodal AI must combine visual and textual evidence while remaining reliable and interpretable. Using MediaEval Medico 2025 as a retrospective GI endoscopy case study, we analyze design choices across nine documented systems for question answering and explanation quality. Parameter-efficient adaptation of pretrained backbones provides strong challenge performance, but answer-level gains do not consistently translate into faithful and complete clinical reasoning. Methods enforcing structured reasoning and explicit grounding show more reliable behavior across heterogeneous question types, although the evidence is correlational rather than ablation-based. These results motivate evaluation beyond lexical overlap, standardized evidence-linked explanations, leakage-aware data governance, and lightweight robustness and calibration checks. The findings support trustworthy multimodal healthcare AI based on data fusion, explainability, and resilient evaluation.

Practice story

A Broken Cup

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Lina cleans the kitchen safely after a cup breaks.

Practice story

The Early Bus

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Joe leaves home early and reaches work before the meeting.

Practice story

Leaving a Phone for Repair

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Golf explains a phone problem and asks about the repair cost.

Practice story

Checking In at a Hotel

Fictional learning story - not real newsเรื่องอ่านฝึกภาษา แต่งขึ้นเพื่อการเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่ใช่ข่าวจริง

Fern checks her booking details and asks about breakfast at a hotel.

Easy news

Special Weather Statement issued July 17 at 1:29PM EDT by NWS Jacksonville FL

At 128 PM EDT, Doppler radar was tracking a strong thunderstorm near World Golf Village, or near Fruit Cove. A strong thunderstorm was nearly stationary. HAZARD...Wind gusts around 40 mph and minor flooding due to heavy rainfall. SOURCE...Radar indicated. IMPACT...Gusty winds could knock down tree limbs and blow around unsecured objects. Minor flooding due to heavy rainfall is possible. Locations impacted include... Fruit Cove and World Golf Village.

Easy news

Special Weather Statement issued July 17 at 1:27PM EDT by NWS Melbourne FL

At 127 PM EDT, Doppler radar was tracking a strong thunderstorm over Lake Apopka, moving west at 5 mph. HAZARD...Wind gusts up to 50 mph and pea size hail. SOURCE...Radar indicated. IMPACT...Gusty winds could knock down tree limbs and blow around unsecured objects. Minor hail damage to vegetation is possible. Locations impacted include... Apopka, Ocoee, Winter Garden, Windermere, and Zellwood.

Real news

China's Moonshot AI claims Kimi K3 can rival OpenAI and Anthropic

The company has unveiled a massive new artificial intelligence model it says can take on top American firms.

Real news

Bodycam footage shows airlift of girl stranded by Texas floods

Footage shows a rescuer reaching a family of three stranded by floods that destroyed their house in Uvalde county.

Advanced real news

Police in India allege suspect in high-profile murder case fled to Canada

The brutal murder of a young Punjabi singer has set off an urgent search for her killer, with police in India alleging the chief suspect has fled to Canada.

Advanced real news

Beyond the Leaderboard: Design Lessons for Trustworthy Multimodal VQA

Healthcare multimodal AI must combine visual and textual evidence while remaining reliable and interpretable. Using MediaEval Medico 2025 as a retrospective GI endoscopy case study, we analyze design choices across nine documented systems for question answering and explanation quality. Parameter-efficient adaptation of pretrained backbones provides strong challenge performance, but answer-level gains do not consistently translate into faithful and complete clinical reasoning. Methods enforcing structured reasoning and explicit grounding show more reliable behavior across heterogeneous question types, although the evidence is correlational rather than ablation-based. These results motivate evaluation beyond lexical overlap, standardized evidence-linked explanations, leakage-aware data governance, and lightweight robustness and calibration checks. The findings support trustworthy multimodal healthcare AI based on data fusion, explainability, and resilient evaluation.