【推荐1】Electric scooter(小型摩托车) sharing, which once looked like it would completely change traffic in large cities around the world, is turning out to create just about as many problems as it solves.

When scooters began to appear on city streets, they were considered as a way to solve traffic problems. It was thought that many people would take scooters instead of driving, alleviating traffic, pollution, and parking problems.

Companies put lots of scooters in popular locations around busy cities. Customers use smartphones to find and rent the scooters. It usually costs about $1 to unlock a scooter and then about 15 to 25 cents for every 15 minutes after that. When customers finish, they simply park the scooters in any place that’s convenient. Scooter companies can lock, unlock, and follow scooters over the Internet. But some people worry because this lets scooter companies collect information on where riders go.

As scooters became popular, competition quickly grew between companies trying to get riders to use their scooters. The companies often didn’t even check with cities before they began leaving thousands of scooters on city streets. Soon scooters were being left almost everywhere.

Scooters weren’t just in the way, they were also dangerous. Scooters can go as fast as 16 miles per hour. They’re too fast for sidewalks and can put walkers in danger.

People began to get injured. US government scientists studied nearly 200 people who got injured in a three-month period in Austin, Texas. Around half of them had head injuries. About 15% had serious brain injuries.

Sadly, scooters aren’t as good for the environment as many people thought. That’s partly because of the materials and effort needed to make them. Collecting, recharging (充电)，and returning the scooters also cause pollution.        

Scooters have become a very popular way to get around many big cities, but it will take time and effort to make scooters fit in safely with big city traffic.

【推荐2】In the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games, the athletes were fighting hard to win glory for themselves and their country. Do you care about the gold medal count? Shouldn’t we just enjoy the game? Readers share their opinions.

George

The spirit of the Olympic Games is about sportsmanship and performing your personal best, which brings the whole world together under peace and competition. It was never purely about winning gold medals and dominance, as no single athlete can dominate (统治) the whole Olympic Games. The spirit of the Olympics also give an important message to the world that no single country should seek to dominate over others.

Eric

None of the athletes who fail to win a gold medal have anything to be ashamed of. If they win a medal, great! If they don’t, we know they did their best. One minute on stage, 10 years of practice off stage. The small medals contain their countless efforts. Gold, silver, bronze, even if they didn’t win any medal, we cheer for them and are proud of them. Go China!

Allende

The Chinese delegation has been put on too much pressure, which is unfair to all hard-working athletes. A gold medal is not everything. Think about those players who lost the gold but tried their best, most people do not show friendly sympathy to them, but even lightly blame them, and I was one of these people. I have to take this occasion to apologize for my behavior. Don’t create unreasonable pressure, you are not the one playing the game!