Four Most Beautiful Villages in Italy

San Gimignano is a small walled medieval (中世纪的) hill town in the province of Siena. It is the most beautiful village in Italy and also one of the most breathtaking places in the world. It’s one of the best preserved towns with 13 towers adding to its charm (魅力). A UNESCO World Heritage Site sitting in the middle of vineyards, sunflowers and trees, this village is truly one of a kind. To preserve its quality of being authentic, no traffic is allowed near its center. You’d better explore it on foot.

Set in the province of Como, right on the western shore of Lake Como, the area is frequently visited for its Menaggio and Cadenabbia Golf Club founded in 1907. This beautiful village still keeps its old charm, with beautiful surroundings that could be enjoyed from one of the many waterfront balconies. One of the best times to visit Menaggio is during the Guitar Festival that takes place every summer.

Apart from its rich history, the walled medieval village Montone has the advantage of being surrounded by the countryside in Umbria, an area filled with great wheat fields and grapevines that is truly beautiful and peaceful. Montone was a small industrial village during the middle age.

Positano is a village on the Amalfi Coast in Campania. It has a great beach and a lovely harbor from where you could take a boat to explore the scenic area. The roads leading here are narrow and with single tracks but there are buses that can take you to the town.

Chef Jeremy Pang and a team of helpers are on a task to help feed London’s homeless and those facing food shortage in London. Pang and about 180 volunteers wore aprons and sharpened their cooking skills to make 4,000 dumplings, 700 noodle stir-fries, and 700 liters of curry in just four hours on a cold morning in Borough Market.

Now in its third year, the aim of the event, which is called Wok for 1,000, is to raise awareness of food waste and food shortage throughout the United Kingdom. Pang, who founded School of Wok in London’s Covent Garden，led a team of experienced chefs in teaching volunteers how to cook the dishes. The hot meals were then packed up and loaded into trucks so they could be distributed to those in need.

The event was part of Pang’s work to support the charity (慈善组织) Plan Zheroes, which aims to help connect food businesses with charities in order to redistribute surplus (过剩的) food and support measures to help prevent food waste. “1,300 meals get distributed to around 10 charities across London who are fighting food shortage,” Pang said. “The idea is that with ‘small steps for big changes’, an event like this can show people that one person can easily cook for 10 people and feed a lot of people in need.”

The food materials used at the event were donated by School of Wok^ suppliers as well as from stallholders (摊主) in Borough Market.

“As soon as we met Plan Zheroes, it was clear to me that it was a charity we wanted to raise money for,” said Pang. “So, not only are we creating thousands of meals but, at the same time, we are raising around 5,000 to 6,000 pounds for a very small charity doing a huge job.’’

As Americans live longer and the job market stays competitive, fast-food chains are increasingly hiring from senior centers, churches and aging advocacy groups like AARP, Bloomberg reports. And it’s not just death rate and economic trends driving the change. Seniors have more polished social skills, but teens are stopped from growing up online with fewer real-world connections.

“I spend a lot of time with young kids. They can be very disrespectful,” 63-year-old Church’s Chicken manager Stevenson Williams tells Bloomberg of his teen co-workers. “You have to coach them and tell them this is your job, not the street,” Williams says. “Having ‘soft skills’ such as politeness often comes more easily to the seniors, who have had a lifetime of experience in the workforce to learn how to treat customers compared with young people.”

Employers thus get a more mature worker at no additional cost — but the reasons for seniors outpacing teen hires are many. The US Census Bureau reported this year that, by 2035, there will be more Americans over age 65 than there are children under age 18. Plus, fewer people in their prime (盛年) are working — thanks to the unaffordable child care that forces many parents to stay at home, according to a joint study by Princeton University.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) forecasts the number of American workers aged 65 to 74 will swell 4.5 percent by 2024, while the 16-to-24s will shrink 1.4 percent. By 2024, the BLS projects the labor force will grow to about 164 million people. That number includes about 41 million people aged 55 and older — about 13 million of those who are expected to be aged 65 and up.

So don’t be surprised to see even more service with a smile and silver hair in that drive-through lane.

Wearing a hearing aid can slow the progress of dementia (痴呆) by up to 75 percent, according to a new study. Scientists believe that keeping older people active by adopting the devices can significantly reduce age-related cognitive (认知的) decline.

They followed the progress of 2,040 people between 1996 and 2014, asking them to complete word memory tests at various stages and monitoring the rate of decline before and after getting a hearing aid. The research team found that while the aids did not halt cognitive decline, they slowed it down by three-quarters. Meanwhile, in a separate group of 2,068 who underwent cataract surgery (白内障手术), decline slowed by around half.

The team at the University of Manchester said the strength of the connection between hearing aids, cataract surgery and mental decline meant policy makers should consider hearing and sight loss screening for all older adults. Dr. Piers Dawes said, “These studies underline just how important it is to overcome the barriers which stop people from accessing hearing and visual aids. It’s not really certain why hearing and visual problems have an effect on cognitive decline, but I’d guess that separation, shame and the resultant lack of physical activity that are linked to hearing and vision problems might have something to do with it.” “And there are barriers to overcome —people might not want to wear hearing aids because of embarrassment attached to wearing them, or they feel the amplification (放大) is not good enough or they’re not comfortable.”

The number of people in Britain suffering hearing problems will rise by 40 percent by 2035, a charity has forecast. The charity Action on Hearing Loss believes the number of people suffering such difficulties will rise from one in six to one in five, so it calls for more investment in treatment and research into hearing loss.