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en:ecrit:articles-en [2025/10/20 11:19] – [US electric grids under pressure from energy-hungry data centers are changing strategy] natashaen:ecrit:articles-en [2026/01/27 15:51] (current) – [English articles] natasha
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 It's useful to read articles in English, even if you don't understand every word - it will help you increase your vocabulary and keep up to date with things happening in English-speaking countries! It's useful to read articles in English, even if you don't understand every word - it will help you increase your vocabulary and keep up to date with things happening in English-speaking countries!
  
-//This page will be updated on **Mondays**. The first article is aimed at a B1 and upwards level and the second article is aimed at a B2 and upwards level //+//This page will ** not longer be updated**. We are working onf inding a solution. In the meantime time, you can use the archive to access older articles. The first article is aimed at a B1 and upwards level and the second article is aimed at a B2 and upwards level //
      
  
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-===== Thieves hit the Louvre again. Here's a look at other famous heists in museums worldwide =====+===== King Charles III leads Britain's Remembrance Sunday ceremony for war dead =====
  
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-{{:en:ecrit:ap25292522837332.jpg?300 |}}+{{:en:ecrit:ap25313404365653.jpg?300 |}}
  
-PARIS (AP) — Thieves reportedly stole nine pieces from the jewelry collection of Napoleon and the Empress in the Louvre, using a basket lift to reach the museum on Sunday morning.+By JILL LAWLESS Associated Press
  
-The daring heist at the world's most visited museum occurred as tourists were inside the Galerie d'Apollon, where part of the French Crown Jewels are displayed.+LONDON (AP) — King Charles III led Britain's annual ceremony of remembrance for the country's war dead on Sunday, under November sunshine and the shadow cast across Europe by the almost 4-year-old war in Ukraine.
  
-The museum closed for the day as police sealed gates and ushered visitors out.+As Parliament's Big Ben bell tolled 11 a.m., thousands of military personnel, veterans and members of the public gathered in central London fell still for two minutes of silence, broken by a single artillery blast and Royal Marines buglers sounding "The Last Post."
  
-Here's a look at some other famous heists worldwide:+The 76-year-old king, dressed in the uniform of an army field marshal, laid a wreath of red paper poppies on a black background at the base of the Cenotaph war memorial. Erected over a century ago to honor the British and allied troops killed in World War I, it has become the focus of annual ceremonies for members of military and civilian services killed in that war and subsequent conflicts.
  
-**The Louvre's missing Mona Lisa helped cement the portrait's fame**+The national ceremony of remembrance is held every year on the nearest Sunday to the anniversary of the end of World War I on Nov. 11, 1918, at 11 a.m. Similar memorial services are held in dozens of towns and cities across Britain and at U.K. military bases overseas.
  
-The Louvre has a long history of thefts and attempted robberies. The most famous came in 1911, when the Mona Lisa vanished from its frame, stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia, a former worker who hid inside the museum and walked out with the painting under his coat.+A military band played as heir to the throne Prince William followed his father in laying a wreath on the simple Portland stone monument inscribed with the words "the glorious dead."
  
-It was recovered two years later in Florence — an episode that helped make Leonardo da Vinci's portrait the world's best-known artwork.+Wreaths were also laid by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, other political leaders and diplomats from across the Commonwealth of Britain's former colonies.
  
-**Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist remains unsolved**+Queen Camilla, the Princess of Wales and other members of the royal family watched from their traditional place on a balcony of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
  
-It's been called the biggest art heist in U.S. history, but 35 years later, the theft of 13 works from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum remains unsolved.+Many of the wreaths were made of poppies, and most people in attendance wore paper poppies on their lapels. The scarlet flowers that bloomed on the muddy battlefields and makeshift graveyards of northern France and Belgium during World War I — made famous by the poem "In Flanders Fields" — have become a symbol of remembrance in Britain and other countries.
  
-In the early hours of March 18, 1990, two men disguised as Boston police officers talked their way into the museum by saying they were responding to a call. They overpowered two security guards, bound them with duct tape and spent 81 minutes pilfering 13 works of art, including masterpieces by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas and Manet.+Like many other NATO members, Britain has increased its defense spending since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Britain says it will spend 3.5% of GDP on defense by 2035.
  
-Authorities say the artwork is worth perhaps as much as a half-billion dollars. Museum officials say it's priceless because it cannot be replaced.+After the wreath-laying, some 10,000 military veterans with gleaming medals marched past the Cenotaph, accompanied by jaunty military music and applauded by well-wishers lining the sidewalks. Among them, in wheelchairs, were about 20 of the dwindling band of WWII veterans, the youngest of them 98 years old.
  
-Some of the works, including Rembrandt's "Storm on the Sea of Galilee," were cut from their frames. Those frames hang empty in the museum to this day.+Donald Poole, 101, who served in as a Royal Army Ordnance Corps explosives handler in the conflict that ended 80 years ago, said it was "a great honor to be able to pay tribute to the poor souls who have died in all conflicts.
  
-**2 German museum burglaries netted a solid-gold coin and royal jewels**+"I know how lucky I am to still be here thanks to all those who have fought and served, past and present," he said. "I also want to pay tribute to the civilian services who suffered during the Second World War, particularly the fire service, who saved so many lives during the Blitz — many of whom lost their own." 
 +===== With pharaoh-like fanfare, Egypt unveils a huge new museum dedicated to its ancient civilization =====
  
-In 2017, burglars at Berlin's Bode Museum stole a 100-kilogram (220-pound) Canadian solid-gold coin known as the "Big Maple Leaf."+----
  
-The suspects are believed to have smashed a protective case and then managed to lift the coin out of a museum window before fleeing along a rail track with their haul in a wheelbarrow. After getting away with it, authorities believe they later cut up the coin, valued at about 3.75 million euros ($4.33 million), and sold the pieces. +{{:en:ecrit:ap25302660101503.jpg?300 |}}
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-Three men, including a museum security guard, were later convicted. +
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-Two years later, thieves smashed vitrines in Dresden's Green Vault, one of the world's oldest museums, and carried off diamond-studded royal jewels worth hundreds of millions of euros. Officials said they made off with three "priceless" sets of 18th century jewelry that would be impossible to sell on the open market. +
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-Part of the haul was later recovered. Five men were convicted and a sixth was acquitted. +
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-**An English palace's golden toilet was pried off its plumbing** +
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-A thief who swiped a golden toilet from an English palace was convicted earlier this year along with an accomplice who helped cash in on the spoils of the 18-carat work of art insured for nearly 5 million pounds (more than $6 million). +
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-Michael Jones had used the fully functioning one-of-a-kind latrine as he did reconnaissance at Blenheim Palace — the country mansion where British wartime leader Winston Churchill was born — the day before the theft, prosecutors said. He described the experience as "splendid." +
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-He returned before dawn on Sept. 14, 2019, with at least two other men armed with sledgehammers and crowbars. They smashed a window and pried the toilet from its plumbing within five minutes, leaving a damaging flood in their wake as they escaped in stolen vehicles. +
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-The satirical work, titled "America" by Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan, poked fun at excessive wealth. It weighed just over 215 pounds (98 kilograms). The value of the gold at the time was 2.8 million ($3.6 million). The purloined potty has never been recovered but is believed to have been cut up and sold. +
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-The piece had previously been on display at The Guggenheim Museum in New York. The museum had offered the work to U.S. President Donald Trump during his first term in office after he had asked to borrow a Van Gogh painting. +
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-===== Music could help ease pain from surgery or illness. Scientists are listening ===== +
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-{{:en:ecrit:ap25282804904771.jpg?300 |}}+By SAMY MAGDY Associated Press
  
-By CHRISTINA LARSON AP Science Writer+CAIRO (AP) — In an extravaganza of pharaonic imagery with a drone light show depicting ancient gods and pyramids in the sky, Egypt on Saturday inaugurated its long-delayed Grand Egyptian Museum, a megaproject aiming to give the country's millennia-old heritage a rich, modern display.
  
-Nurse Rod Salaysay works with all kinds of instruments in the hospital: a thermometer, a stethoscope and sometimes his guitar and ukulele.+Two decades in the making, the museum located near the Giza Pyramids and the Sphinx is the centerpiece of the government's bid to boost Egypt's tourism industry and bring cash into the troubled economy.
  
-In the recovery unit of UC San Diego Health, Salaysay helps patients manage pain after surgery. Along with medications, he offers tunes on request and sometimes sings. His repertoire ranges from folk songs in English and Spanish to Minuet in G Major and movie favorites like "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."+At the elaborate grand opening ceremony, attended by a number of European and Arab royals and other presidents and prime ministers, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi sought to give the event an international scale.
  
-Patients often smile or nod along. Salaysay even sees changes in their vital signs like lower heart rate and blood pressure, and some may request fewer painkillers.+He called on attendees to "make this museum a platform for dialogue, a destination for knowledge, a forum for humanity, and a beacon for all who love life and believe in the value of humankind."
  
-"There's often a cycle of worry, pain, anxiety in a hospital," he said, "but you can help break that cycle with music." +**A bid to join the ranks of the world's top museums**
-Salaysay is a one-man band, but he's not alone. Over the past two decades, live performances and recorded music have flowed into hospitals and doctors' offices as research grows on how songs can help ease pain.+
  
-**Scientists explore how music affects pain perception**+The museum, known as GEM, is one of several megaprojects championed by el-Sissi since he took office in 2014, embarking on massive investments in infrastructure with the aim of reviving an economy weakened by decades of stagnation and battered by the unrest that followed the 2011 Arab Spring uprising.
  
-The healing power of song may sound intuitive given music's deep roots in human culture. But the science of whether and how music dulls acute and chronic pain — technically called music-induced analgesia — is just catching up.+Egypt's pharaonic history has long made it a tourist magnet. But it has also long struggled to organize and display the sheer huge amount of artifacts — everything from tiny pieces of jewelry and colorful tomb murals to towering statues of pharaohs and animal-headed gods, with more as discoveries are constantly being made across the country.
  
-No one suggests that a catchy song can fully eliminate serious pain. But several recent studies, including in the journals Pain and Scientific Reports, have suggested that listening to music can either reduce the perception of pain or enhance a person's ability to tolerate it.+Touted as the world's biggest museum dedicated to a single ancient civilization, the new building, in contemporary style is a stark contrast. Its large, open halls give space for some 50,000 artifacts on display, along with virtual reality exhibits. It displays the entire collection of treasures from the tomb of the famed King Tutankhamun for the first time since its discovery in 1922.
  
-What seems to matter most is that patients — or their families — choose the music selections themselves and listen intently, not just as background noise.+The museum replaces the Egyptian Museum, housed in building more than a century old in downtown Cairo that — while elegant in its Neo-Classical style — had become antiquated and was often compared to a warehouse, overpacked with artifacts with little explanation.
  
-**How music can affect pain levels**+Construction on the $1 billion project began in 2005 under then-President Hosni Mubarak. But work was interrupted by turmoil surrounding the 2011 uprising that brought down the Egyptian strongman. Further delays ensued, and a planned grand opening over the summer had to be put off after the 12-day-long war between Israel and Iran erupted in June.
  
-"Pain is a really complex experience," said Adam Hanley, a psychologist at Florida State University. "It's created by a physical sensation, and by our thoughts about that sensation and emotional reaction to it."+GEM is expected to attract 5 million visitors annually, said Egypt's tourism and antiquities minister, Sherif Fathy. That would put it in the realm of the most popular museums in the world. In 2024, by comparison, Paris's Louvre brought in 8.7 million, the British Museum 6.5 million and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York 5.7 million.
  
-Two people with the same condition or injury may feel vastly different levels of acute or chronic pain. Or the same person might experience pain differently from one day to the next.+**An elaborate opening ceremony**
  
-Acute pain is felt when pain receptors in a specific part of the body — like a hand touching a hot stove — send signals to the brain, which processes the short-term pain. Chronic pain usually involves long-term structural or other changes to the brain, which heighten overall sensitivity to pain signals. Researchers are still investigating how this occurs.+Saturday night's grand opening stoked the pharaoh-mania.
  
-"Pain is interpreted and translated by the brain," which may ratchet the signal up or down, said Dr. Gilbert Chandler, a specialist in chronic spinal pain at the Tallahassee Orthopedic Clinic.+As an orchestra played fanfares, lines of actors dressed in ancient Egyptian garb arrayed around the museum, the pyramids and the Sphinx. Hundreds of drones created a light show in the sky, depicting well-known Egyptian gods like Isis and Osiris and the pyramids.
  
-Researchers know music can draw attention away from pain, lessening the sensation. But studies also suggest that listening to preferred music helps dull pain more than listening to podcasts.+El-Sissi posed with delegates from more than 70 countries, including members of the royal families from Belgium, Spain, Denmark, Jordan, Gulf Arab nations and Japan, and a number of European and regional presidents and prime ministers. It was a throwback to the grand opening of another megaproject in Egypt, the 1869 inauguration of the Suez Canal, when Egypt's rulers gathered a host of European royal families.
  
-"Music is a distractor. It draws your focus away from the pain. But it's doing more than that," said Caroline Palmer, a psychologist at McGill University who studies music and pain.+**Ramses the Great and King Tut**
  
-Scientists are still tracing the various neural pathways at work, said Palmer.+The museum boasts a towering, triangular glass façade imitating the nearby pyramids, with 24,000 square meters (258,000 square feet) of permanent exhibition space.
  
-"We know that almost all of the brain becomes active when we engage in music," said Kate Richards Geller, a registered music therapist in Los Angeles. "That changes the perception and experience of pain — and the isolation and anxiety of pain."+It opens to a granite colossus of Ramses the Great, one of ancient Egypt's most powerful pharaohs who reigned for around 60 years, from 1279-1213 B.C., and is credited with expanding ancient Egypt's reach as far as modern Syria to the east and present-day Sudan to the south. The statue greets visitors once they step inside the museum's angular atrium.
  
-**Music genres and active listening**+The museum's 12 main galleries, which opened last year, exhibit antiquities spanning from prehistoric times to the Roman era, organized by eras and by themes.
  
-The idea of using recorded music to lessen pain associated with dental surgery began in the late 19th century before local anesthetics were available. Today researchers are studying what conditions make music most effective.+Two halls that will be opened for the first time after Saturday are dedicated to the 5,000 artifacts from the collection of King Tutankhamun — a boy pharaoh who ruled from 1361-1352 B.C. The tomb was discovered by British archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922 in the southern city of Luxor. The old Egyptian Museum did not have enough room to display the whole collection.
  
-Researchers at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands conducted a study on 548 participants to see how listening to five genres of music — classical, rock, pop, urban and electronic — extended their ability to withstand acute pain, as measured by exposure to very cold temperatures.+The collection includes the boy pharaoh's three funeral beds and six chariots, his golden throne, his gold-covered sarcophagus and his burial mask, made of gold, quartzite, lapis lazuli and colored glass.
  
-**All music helped, but there was no single winning genre.**+Zahi Hawass, Egypt's most renowned archaeologist and former minister of antiquities, said the Tutankhamun collection is the museum's masterpiece.
  
-"The more people listened to a favorite genre, the more they could endure pain," said co-author Dr. Emy van der Valk Bouman. "A lot of people thought that classical music would help them more. Actually, we are finding more evidence that what's best is just the music you like."+"Why this museum is so important, and everyone is waiting for the opening?" he told The Associated Press. "Because of Tutankhamun."
  
-The exact reasons are still unclear, but it may be because familiar songs activate more memories and emotions, she said. +**Boost to tourism and economy**
-The simple act of choosing is itself powerful, said Claire Howlin, director of the Music and Health Psychology Lab at Trinity College Dublin, who co-authored a study that suggested allowing patients to select songs improved their pain tolerance.+
  
-"It's one thing that people can have control over if they have a chronic condition — it gives them agency," she said. +Officials hope the museum will draw more tourists who will stay for longer periods and provide the foreign currency needed to shore up Egypt's battered economy.
-Active, focused listening also seems to matter.+
  
-Hanley, the Florida State psychologist, co-authored a preliminary study suggesting daily attentive listening might reduce chronic pain.+The government has also revamped the area around the museum and the nearby pyramids and the Sphinx. New highways were built, and a metro station is being constructed nearby. An airport, Sphinx International Airport, has also opened west of Cairo — 40 minutes from the museum.
  
-"Music has a way of lighting up different parts of the brain," he said, "so you're giving people this positive emotional bump that takes their mind away from the pain."+The tourism sector has suffered during years of political turmoil and violence following the 2011 uprising. In recent years, the sector has started to recover after the coronavirus pandemic and amid Russia's war on Ukraine — both countries are major sources of tourists visiting Egypt.
  
-**It's a simple prescription with no side effects, some doctors now say.**+A record number of about 15.7 million tourists visited Egypt in 2024, contributing about 8% of the country's GDP, according to official figures. Fathy, the tourism minister, said about 18 million tourists are expected this year, with authorities hoping for 30 million visitors annually by 2032.
  
-Cecily Gardner, a jazz singer in Culver City, California, said she used music to help get through a serious illness and has sung to friends battling pain.+This will translate into more jobs and pump foreign currency into the economy, said Walid el-Batouty, a tour guide.
  
-"Music reduces stress, fosters community," she said, "and just transports you to a better place." +"It will be boost the economy of Egypt tremendously not just the hotels and the museum itself," he said. Whenever a tourist rides a cab or even just buys a bottle of water, "that is pumping money" into Egypt's coffers, he added.
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-The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.+
  
 +Associated Press journalist Ahmed Hatem in Cairo contributed to this report.
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