Hello everybody, and welcome to a new episode of News Bites!

I'm Paz Bueno…

And I'm Nancy Sun.

In today's news:

Puppets made of sand, the Sun affects our radios, and eating lab-grown meat is healthy for you!

All that and more, coming up next.

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沙子做的布袋戲。

Glove Puppetry Made From Sand

What do Taiwanese glove puppetry and sand have in common?

They will both be features (特點) in the 2022 Fulong International Sand Sculpture Arts Festival in New Taipei City!

The feature for the event will be sculptures made out of sand.

A total of 36 sand sculptures (沙雕) will be displayed on weekends from May 26th to October 10th.

They are made by mixing water and sand, then piled into wooden forms to make the shape.

Then, it is pressed together to make the base so that the artist can continue making their sculpture.

The main highlight (主要亮點) will be an eight-meter-tall sand statue of Su Huan-jen, the main character of Pili.

Pili is one of Taiwan's best known glove puppetry shows (布袋戲)。

The TV series debuted in 1984, and it still continues today.

It is one of the most popular TV shows in Taiwan.

Unlike traditional puppet shows, Pili uses computers to make the action sequences (動作場景)。

There will also be sculptures of Su in different disguises (裝扮), and many other Pili characters, too.

During the event, visitors will also have a chance to meet with the actors behind these fictional characters (虛構人物) and take part in other activities.

Visitors can enjoy concerts (演唱會), eat food and buy souvenirs (伴手禮) at a market, and experience workshops (工作坊) to try their hand at making sand sculptures.

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太陽干擾了我們的無線電信號

The Sun Disrupts Our Radio Signals

A sunspot (太陽黑子) threw off a double solar flare on April 25th, causing some radios to stop working in Asia and Australia.

Sunspots are areas that appear dark on the surface of the Sun.

They appear dark because they are cooler than other parts of the Sun's surface.

Solar flares are a sudden explosion of energy caused by magnetic field lines near sunspots.

(太陽耀斑是由太陽黑子附近的磁場線引起的能量突然爆炸。

Scientists called the Sunspot AR2993.

The sunspot AR2993 erupted (爆發) with two flares very quickly.

And the magnetic wave (磁波) was strong enough to stop radios on Earth.

They say it's "medium-sized", but it is actually hundreds of millions of kilometers big.

Earth would sit in the active region as comfortably as an egg in a nest.

Solar flares not only cause disruption (中斷) on our radio signals, but they also light up the night sky in the North and South Pole, making beautiful auroras (極光) that we can see.

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吃實驗室裡種植的肉對地球和你的健康都有好處！

Eating Meat Grown in a Lab is Good for the Planet… and Your Health!

Eating meat grown in labs or ground up insects (磨碎的昆蟲) could help the environment, reduce carbon emissions, and use less water.

Researchers say these kinds of foods could cut pollution (污染) on the planet by 80%.

But it's not clear if people want to eat bugs or meat grown in labs.

Scientists are trying to figure out another way to grow food so that it has more protein (蛋白質) while using less land and water.

The researchers looked at the nutrition of some of those products and three types of environmental pressure: water use, land use, and carbon emissions (碳排放量).

Alternative foods can reduce these impacts by 80-percent while providing more nutrients (營養素) than a vegan or a vegetarian diet.

New foods include ground up flies and crickets, eggs made in the lab from chicken cells(細胞), and seaweed and mushrooms.

A professor from Cambridge thinks it may be better, but changing people's diets will be hard.

Many studies have shown that eating a plant-based diet (植物性飲食) is good for you and the environment.

So make sure to eat more vegetables every day!

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So, in today's News Bites:

36 sand sculptures will be made for the Fulong International Sand Sculpture Arts Festival in New Taipei City!

The main highlight will be an eight-meter-tall sand statue of Su Huan-jen, the main character of Pili.

Visitors will also have a chance to meet with the actors behind these fictional characters and take part in other activities.

________________________________

And,

A sunspot threw off a double solar flare on April 25th, causing some radios to stop working in Asia and Australia.

The sunspot AR2993 erupted with two flares very quickly,

And the magnetic wave was strong enough to stop radios on Earth.

________________________________

And,

Eating meat grown in labs or ground up insects could help the environment.

Alternative foods can also provide more nutrients than a vegan or a vegetarian diet.

But it's not clear if people will switch to this kind of diet.

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And that's today's episode of News Bites!