Generation Smile is a generation unlike any other. It isn’t defined by the year you were born. It unites people of every age, background and culture around one shared purpose: making oral health a priority because it is essential to health and well-being – for everyone, everywhere.

– Picture is available at AP –

PRAGUE, Sept. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Today, at the FDI World Dental Congress in Prague, FDI World Dental Federation (FDI) officially unveiled Generation Smile – the oral health movement for all, a new platform for World Oral Health Day (WOHD). Under its first-year theme, Join Generation Smile, the campaign invites people around the world to come together to champion oral health as an essential part of overall health and well-being.

Generation Smile is built on the powerful idea that lasting change begins with each of us. Whether it is brushing twice a day, adopting healthier habits, visiting a dentist regularly, encouraging others to care for their teeth and gums, or advocating for the right to oral health for all – everyone has a role to play, and every action counts. Because together, millions of individual actions can become a global movement for change.

Generation Smile redefines oral health as something bigger than just the mouth, while remaining unmistakably connected to it.

“The smile is not the outcome. It is the symbol of everything a healthy mouth makes possible – from health to confidence, comfort, connection and well-being. By helping people protect their oral health throughout life, Generation Smile aims to create healthier communities and brighter futures around the world,” said Dr Anna Lella, WOHD Working Group Chair.

At the heart of this is an important reality: the health of our mouths is integral to general health, with oral diseases linked to a range of systemic conditions.

Inspired by the universal language of street art, Generation Smile introduces a bold new visual identity designed to transcend borders and cultures. Throughout the campaign, people around the world will be invited to add their voice to a global digital mural – turning individual support into a collective work of art.

“With Generation Smile, we want to give people a shared space to say: my oral health matters, and caring for it matters too. We want to create a movement for lifelong oral health – because oral health has the power to change lives, and everyone can be part of that change,” said Assist. Prof. Dr Nikolai Sharkov, President of FDI. “With nearly 3.7 billion people affected by oral diseases worldwide, we cannot accept that so many continue to live without the oral healthcare they need. Every healthy choice we make, every conversation we start and every person we inspire brings us one step closer to FDI’s vision of a world with optimal oral health. Generation Smile is an invitation to people everywhere to join a movement that will leave a lasting legacy for future generations.”

Over the years, World Oral Health Day has united thousands of people behind a common cause: individuals, oral health professionals, National Dental Associations, schools, partners and policymakers from every corner of the world. Generation Smile builds on that momentum by bringing these voices together under one global movement – creating an even stronger force for oral health.

On 20 March 2027, as World Oral Health Day returns, people everywhere will be invited to Join Generation Smile and help shape a future where everyone can realize their right to oral health and enjoy the lifelong benefits of a healthy mouth.

Media contact

Francesca Nava, FDI Campaign and Social Media Manager
Email: fnava@fdiworlddental.org 

About World Oral Health Day

Celebrated annually on 20 March, World Oral Health Day (WOHD) was launched by FDI World Dental Federation to raise global awareness on the prevention and control of oral diseases. www.worldoralhealthday.org

GUANGZHOU, China, Sept. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — This is a news report from South: 

Is China’s manufacturing rise squeezing out or creating opportunities for other economies?

Ahead of the 2026 APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting in China this November, journalists and experts from around the world gathered in Guangdong for the Asia-Pacific Media Forum (APMF) 2026.

The forum opened in Shenzhen on September 5, bringing together more than 400 representatives from across the Asia-Pacific region, as well as from international organizations.

Before the opening of the forum, participants travelled across Guangdong to see China’s industries and development first-hand.

In this episode of China Xplained, we look at the numbers, supply chains, investment and voices from across the developing world—to ask a bigger question: Is China squeezing out room for other economies?

SHANGHAI, Sept. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — A news report from CNS: The 2026 China Farmers’ Harvest Festival Golden-Autumn Consumption Season was held in Shanghai from September 4 to 6. As an important international trade hub, Shanghai served as a global platform for premium agricultural specialties from Guizhou in southwest China. Featured products included Guizhou Fanjing Matcha, Kaili sour soup, Guizhou rosa roxburghii, Dafang gastrodia, Xingren coix seed, and Zunyi red tea. Through this international showcase, Guizhou is bringing its unique mountain-grown flavors to global audiences worldwide.

BEIJING, Sept. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — On August 26, an ice-rock avalanche tore down a high-altitude slope in Nepal, unleashing a devastating debris flow that left people dead or missing on both sides of the China-Nepal border.

As of Friday, 31 people have been confirmed dead and 531 others remain missing after a mudslide triggered by the high-altitude glacier collapse in Nepal, struck Gyirong Port on the China-Nepal border in Southwest China’s Xizang Autonomous Region, according to local authorities, who have been conducting risks assessment work.

What happened in the mountains was more than a single disaster: it offered a glimpse into how rapidly warming mountain environments can turn increasingly fragile terrain into a source of sudden and deadly hazards.

As glaciers retreat and ice masses become increasingly unstable, ice and ice-rock avalanches are emerging as a growing threat in high-altitude regions – and one that remains extremely difficult to predict.

The danger is not new in essence. From the Alps and Andes to the Caucasus and the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, major ice avalanches have repeatedly torn through mountain valleys, claiming lives and reshaping landscapes.

What, then, made the August 26 collapse at Mount Langtang Lirung in Nepal different from some of the major ice avalanches of the past? And as climate change alters the behavior of glaciers and ice masses, what can humanity at this ecological juncture do to minimize damages and losses?

To find answers, Global Times reporters combed through some major disasters around the world and spoke with leading international experts, tracing what has changed — and what lessons the past may still hold.

Anticipating complex hazards

Mount Huascarán in Peru’s Andes is frequently mentioned in the history of major ice avalanche disasters. Alton C. Byers, a senior research affiliate at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado Boulder, told the Global Times that some of the earliest cases researchers continue to study date back to major avalanches on Huascarán in the latter half of the 20th century. Those events also generated hyperconcentrated slurry-like debris flows similar to the one triggered by the recent Mount Langtang Lirung avalanche, he said.

Byers described the Mount Langtang Lirung disaster as the latest in a series of ice avalanche events in recent years that have followed strikingly similar, in some cases nearly identical, processes. “We could go back even further to the 1970s in Peru,” he said.

In 1962, a massive glacier detached from the north peak of the Huascarán, moving 15 kilometers in seven minutes. The debris, deescalating 4,000 meters, engulfed everything in its path, including nine villages and towns, according to the US Geological Survey.

Eight years later, a magnitude-7.7 earthquake triggered a much larger collapse on the same peak. Up to 100 million cubic meters of rocks, snow and ice buried the town of Yungay at speeds of up to 335 kilometers per hour, killing more than 18,000 people, according to the US Geological Survey.

These disasters highlight the cascading hazards of ice avalanches: a single collapse can trigger debris flows and other secondary disasters, as seen in the recent Mount Langtang Lirung event.

Also, an ice avalanche in one place may not be an isolated event. The 2016 Aru Glacier avalanche in Xizang also underscored the need for regional monitoring. Ice-core data from the nearby Guliya Glacier showed a warming and wetting trend, with temperatures reaching a 1,000-year high, prompting calls for monitoring interconnected glaciers and comprehensive watch on ecosystem changes, including lakes and grasslands.

As global temperatures rise, weakening glacier stability and intensified freeze-thaw cycles are increasing ice avalanche risks, with international scientists reaching the consensus that such events could become more frequent.

Amod Mani Dixit, founder of the Nepal National Society for Earthquake Technology, senior geologist, disaster risk management specialist and PIFI visiting scientist at the Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the Global Times that authorities need to anticipate more complex, interconnected hazards occurring simultaneously.

For example, one warming event could trigger an ice-rock avalanche that breaches a moraine dam, potentially coinciding with heavy rainfall to create a compound disaster that overwhelms conventional defenses designed for individual hazards, Dixit said.

Geological factors matter

One comparison to the Mount Langtang Lirung ice-rock avalanche is the deadly disaster that struck Chamoli in India’s Uttarakhand state in February 2021. Like the recent event in Nepal, the Chamoli disaster involved a cascading combination of ice and rock failure.

“The recent event is really only directly comparable to the Indian Chamoli event,” Jakob Steiner, a geoscientist at the University of Graz in Austria, told the Global Times on Friday. In both cases, it was the underlying bedrock that first failed, dragging the overlying ice into the collapse. While the two events differed in scale and terrain, “we see similar processes” at work.

The comparison therefore highlights the importance of geological factors in both the Mount Langtang Lirung and Chamoli disasters, he said.

“Rather than the climate effect on ice, the climate effect on rock and permafrost becomes more important to understand,” Steiner said, pointing to a broader question for disaster prevention: As climate change reshapes high-altitude environments, understanding how it weakens not only glaciers but also rock and permafrost may be crucial to assessing future risks.

Steiner also noted that in terms of runout and impact, the Mount Lantang Lirung disaster was “much larger than any we recorded in modern times”, although not necessarily in terms of its initial volume.

The scale of the disaster, he said, should prompt a fundamental reassessment of how such events are understood and prepared for. “We can learn from these disasters that our probability estimates of certain dimensions happening need to be completely reassessed,” Steiner said. At the same time, “any solutions for early warning and potential monitoring need to be adapted to new realities.”

“We cannot just go on as we used to,” he stressed.

Doing so will require expertise from multiple disciplines and countries, bringing together lessons from the relatively small number of such events that are better understood so far.

Monitoring and early warning

Ice avalanches are among the most destructive cryosphere hazards, with complex dynamics, limited predictability and catastrophic consequences. In the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau region, quick warming accelerates ice retreat, leading to more and larger ice lakes, and unstable glaciers. Growing ice avalanche risks are threatening ecological security, and what can be done to better respond to ice collapse?

Humanity still lacks sufficient understanding of eco processes in the southern slope of the Himalayas. Dixit from Nepal noted that accelerating cryosphere degradation can trigger cascading risks. As glaciers retreat, weakened rock walls and loose glacial deposits can cause slope failures and increase sediment loads, posing risks to downstream areas long after the initial retreat.

He called for risk-based development planning for infrastructure and residential areas, urging multi-hazard risk mapping along entire valley corridors, from river channels to high-altitude ridges, to improve long-term resilience.

Byers from University of Colorado Boulder said the priority should be developing robust early-warning systems tailored to high-magnitude events, with downstream communities prepared to evacuate immediately when a phone alert or siren sounds.

But before such systems can be built, Byers said, the priority is to strengthen risk monitoring. For Nepal, that means identifying high-risk areas where glacial landscapes dominate the upper watershed while towns and cities lie along rivers downstream.

Regular and rigorous analysis of satellite imagery will be crucial, he said. A high-risk area could feature massive overhanging ice on a high-mountain slope, with a river valley descending 10 kilometers toward an urban area.

“How to effectively monitor all of the high-risk areas identified will be a challenge,” Byers said. But identifying the danger is only the beginning. In the end, the value of knowing where disaster may strike lies in having enough time to act when it does. As the saying goes, early warning means little without early action.

GUANGZHOU, China, Sept. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — This is a news report from South: 

According to Xinhua News Agency, the Asia-Pacific Media Forum will kick off in Shenzhen on September 5.

Over 400 domestic and foreign media professionals will gather in Shenzhen to explore China’s opportunities and identify new growth drivers for the Asia-Pacific within the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

BERLIN, Sept. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Roborock, a global leader in home robotics engineered to simplify daily life, reported revenue of RMB 10.084 billion in the first half of 2026, up 27.6% year on year, while net profit attributable to shareholders rose 45.6% to RMB 986 million. The company also reached a new global milestone, with Roborock recognized as the world’s No.1 robotic vacuum cleaner brand by both IDC and Euromonitor International.

Global Expansion Continues to Strengthen Growth

Roborock’s international business continued to deliver strong growth in H1 2026 across both mature and high-potential markets. During Amazon Prime Day 2026, Roborock ranked No.1 in the robotic vacuum category in Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, the United States and Canada. In Europe, Roborock reached a 45% share of the robotic vacuum market, with unit sales up 24% year on year, while wet-dry vacuum unit sales grew 112%. In North America, Roborock reached a 33% share of the robotic vacuum market, with unit sales increasing 30% year on year.

Momentum was also strong across key Asia-Pacific markets. Roborock ranked No.1 in both unit shipments and sales value in Australia, Korea, Taiwan region and Türkiye from Q1 2023 to Q1 2026. In Korea, the brand maintained more than 70% share of the premium robotic vacuum segment, while the S10 MaxV Ultra generated approximately KRW 28 billion in sales within ten days of its February 2026 launch. In Japan, Roborock continued to deepen its premium retail presence through cooperation with Yamada Denki, including dedicated brand displays and nationwide availability of flagship products. Across Asia-Pacific, the company continued to combine its global technology platform with localized channel, marketing and service strategies.

Roborock’s global leadership has also been independently recognized by IDC and Euromonitor International. According to IDC, Roborock ranked No.1 globally by both unit shipments and sales value among robotic vacuum brands in H1 2026, while Euromonitor International ranked the brand No.1 globally by retail sales value in 2025. Together, the two rankings reinforce Roborock’s global market leadership and reflect sustained consumer demand worldwide.

Sustained R&D Investment Supports Long-Term Competitiveness

Roborock continued to invest heavily in technology in the first half of 2026, with R&D spending reaching RMB 720 million, up 5.11% year on year and accounting for 7.14% of revenue. The company continues to build capabilities in intelligent navigation, AI-powered environmental perception, cleaning systems and robotic mobility, while increasingly bringing these technologies together at the system level rather than improving individual specifications in isolation. This integrated approach allows technologies proven in flagship products to be brought into a wider range of models and price segments, helping Roborock strengthen its portfolio while making advanced features available to more consumers.

IFA 2026 Highlights the Next Phase of Innovation

At IFA 2026, Roborock is showcasing its latest advances across indoor and outdoor cleaning. Its new robot vacuums and wet-dry vacuums bring advances in steam-powered care, adaptive cleaning and whole-home versatility, while the Roborock Saros Rover introduces a two-wheel-leg architecture designed to expand robotic mobility beyond flat floors. Roborock is also broadening its intelligent cleaning ecosystem with the debut of the RockAqua P1, its first intelligent pool cleaner, alongside the RockNeo Q2 LiDAR robotic mower, extending its autonomous cleaning capabilities across floors, pools and gardens.