【推荐1】“An Uber self-driving car hit and killed a woman crossing the street in Arizona，U．S．，”police said on Monday，marking the first death caused by an autonomous vehicle and a potential blow to the technology expected to transform transportation．

The ride services company said it was delaying North American tests of its self-driving vehicles，which are currently going on in Arizona，Pittsburgh and Toronto．

So-called robot cars，when fully developed by companies including Uber，are expected to thoroughly cut down on motor vehicle deaths and create billion-dollar businesses．But Monday’s accident highlighted (凸显)the possible challenges ahead for the promising technology as the cars face real-world situations involving real people．

“This catastrophic accident highlights why we need to be exceptionally cautious when testing and applying autonomous vehicle technologies to public roads，”said Edward Markey，   a member of the transportation committee，in a statement．

“Elaine Herzberg，49，was walking her bicycle outside the crosswalk on a four-lane road in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe at about 10 p．m．   MST Sunday when she was struck by the Uber vehicle traveling at about 65 kilometers per hour，”police said．The car was in autonomous mode with an operator behind the wheel．U．S．   federal safety officials were sending teams to investigate the crash．Canada’s transportation ministry in Ontario，where Uber conducts testing，also said it was reviewing the accident．

“Uber and Waymo on Friday urged Congress to pass a law to speed the introduction of self-driving cars into the united states．However，some congressional(国会的)representatives have blocked the legislation over safety concerns，and Monday’s death could hamper passage of the bill，”congressional assistants said Monday．

【推荐2】LAS VEGAS—It was different in the light of day.

There was no “pop, pop, pop” of gunfire, no screams. Just a quiet lot of cars abandoned by those, like Kassidy Owen, who escaped with their lives.

“It's strange to hear the silence” Owen said, “because all I remember was the noise”

The 22-year-old was one of dozens of concertgoers who returned to the scene of the Route 91 Harvest festival on Wednesday morning to fetch the vehicles they left behind as they fled from a gunman raining down bullets from high above in the tower of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino across the street.

Survivors of the deadly mass shooting in Las Vegas on Sunday needed their cars to move on with their lives-to get back to work, to school, home. It was the first time they were returning to a scene that would forever change them, when joy and celebration and music turned into killing and horror.

Before they could move forward, they had to go back to the place where they thought they were going to die.

Owen had run to her car to hide and had tried to drive away, but she couldn't. People were running, bodies dropped to the ground, and cars bottlenecked in the parking lot. During a brief pause after more than 10 minutes of gunfire, she worried the lights of her SUV made everyone inside a shining target.

“They're shooting again” her best friend's brother screamed. “Turn off the car!”

That's when she got out and fled.

“I just remember shutting the door and running.” Owen said.

Now, nearly three days later, she was back, sitting in the driver's seat of her SUV. Her eyes were swollen and red. This was a long way from over.

“You just keep hearing the gunshots in your head,” Owen said.

【推荐3】It was about 10:15 p.m., when Janice Esposito arrived at the Bellport train station, New York, jumped into her Honda Odyssey, and began the 20-minute drive home. She’d just returned from visiting her mother. When she turned left on Montauk Highway, out of nowhere a car T-boned her minivan, forcing her backward some 100 feet onto the railroad tracks. She sat in the minivan, bruised (挫伤) but mostly shocked.

As it happened, Pete DiPinto, a volunteer firefighter and retired teacher, 64, was getting ready for bed. When he heard the noise of metal on metal and broken glass coming from not far outside his bedroom window, he grabbed a flashlight and, still dressed in his pajamas (睡衣), ran out of the door. “Any firefighter would have done that,” he later said. “We’re always on duty.”

The first car he came upon was the one that had hit Esposito. Once concluding the driver was OK, DiPinto looked around and spotted Esposito’s minivan straddling (横跨) the railroad tracks. And then he heard the bells signaling an oncoming train.

DiPinto dashed to the minivan and struck on the driver’s side window. She just looked at him, her eyes unfocused. “I don’t know where I am,” she said. “Honey, you’re on the railroad tracks,” DiPinto shouted. “We have to get you off right now!” He pulled on the handle, but the door was jammed shut. The heavy train, traveling at 65 miles per hour, was whistling toward them. DiPinto ran to the passenger side and threw open the door. He pushed aside the deflating (放气) airbags, grabbed Esposito’s arms, and pulled her across the seat and helped her out to safety behind a signal box a few feet away. Within six seconds, the train crashed into the minivan. “It was like a Hollywood movie,” DiPinto told reporters the next day.

The Ambulance chief told CBS New York, “The hero arrived in pajamas, not in a fire truck.”

【推荐1】Abdul, 54-year-old man, has been working as a living statue for over three decades, standing perfectly still for six hours a day and resisting people’s attempts to make him move or smile, anything that proves he is a living person.

Known as “India’s Statue Man,” he has been performing his daily routine ever since 1985, soon after getting a job as a security guard. His boss had recently traveled to the UK, where he was so impressed by the statue-like members of the Royal Guard outside Buckingham Palace that he felt like doing something similar back home. So he had his guards receive three months of training, where they would sit perfectly motionless for around four hours. They weren’t allowed to talk or smile, eat, drink, or even shoo away a fly if it sat on their faces. In the end, Abdul proved the best of the group, so he got the strange job.

Abdul isn’t the only person in the world acting as a living statue but what makes him special is the fact that he can do it for as long as six hours without even blinking his eyes. Once, a $155 prize was put up for anyone who can make him move a muscle. But try as they might, no one has ever succeeded. Actually, Abdul tries to move about as much as he can in his spare time, and only eats healthy home-cooked food, to keep his body in shape. In the 32 years, Abdul has become a celebrity in India and other Asian countries. Many Bollywood celebrities have come to witness this living statue and try to finally make him move, but none has succeeded.

Abdul earns about 10,000 rupees ($156) a month, which is enough to support his family, but definitely not enough to encourage his children to follow in his footsteps. It’s just too stressful and taxing on the body. “Despite all the hardships and health problems, I love my job and I am thankful to people for the love and respect they have showered on me.” he says. “When the time comes, I want to die playing a statue.”

【推荐2】Doris Lessing, a novelist whose books have swept across continents and reflected her concern about the social and political issues of her time, won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. The award came with about $1. 6 million.

Ms Lessing never finished high school and largely educated herself through reading. She has written dozens of books of fiction, as well as plays, non-fiction and two volumes of autobiography. She is the 11th woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Ms Lessing was born Doris May Tayler in 1919 in what is now Iran. Her father was a bank clerk, and her mother was trained as a nurse. Attracted by the promise of farming riches, the family moved to Zimbabwe, where Ms Lessing had what she had called a painful childhood.

She left home when she was 15, and in 1937 she moved to Salisbury in Southern Rhodesia, where she took jobs as a telephone operator and a nursemaid. She married at 19 and had two children. A few years later, feeling as if she were put in prison, she deserted her family. Afterwards she married Gottfried Lessing, and they had a son.

When she divorced Mr Lessing, she and her son, Peter, moved to London, where she began her writing career. Her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, was published in Britain in 1949. Ms Lessing's strongest influence may be that she inspired a generation of feminists（女权主义者）with her breakthrough novel, The Golden Notebook. The book was published in 1962, which wrote about the story of Anna Wulf, a woman who wanted to live freely and was, in some ways, Ms Lessing's secondary personality. She wrote about the inner lives of women and rejected the opinion that they should abandon their lives to marriage and children.

【推荐3】The 64-year-old, a former senior officer at the State Bank of India, talks about his disabled and wounded dogs like a father about his children-with the same love, affection, and warmth.

He’s a well-known animal rights activist. the Secretary at People for Animals (PEA). But nothing defines Mahendra better than his love for animals. It was this love that led him to establish India’s first shelter home for dogs living with disabilities.

It all started in 1998 when, while taking a midnight walk, Mahendra came across a very weak dog on the street. Mahendra decided to feed it and for the next couple of days it became the center of his life, until the night when he found it dead.

Since then, Mahendra started providing treatment to all wounded and sick dogs he came across. After some time, somebody told Mahendra about PFA, which is India’s largest animal welfare organization, chaired by Mrs Maneka Gandhi. Mahendra contacted her and, impressed by the work he was doing, Mrs Gandhi asked him to start a PFA chapter in Ahmedabad.

Thus, in 2014, he started the shelter. It took a long time for Mahendra to find land where the shelter could be set up. Finally, Ramesh Bhai Patel, a farmer from a village named Jundal, agreed to give his land for free. Along with a team of four doctors and many volunteers, the shelter now has twenty-five dogs that were unable to walk at all when they were brought in. Today, they’re slowly healing.

Dogs that have healed with proper treatment are sent back to where they came from if the environment there is safe. However, the shelter will be home to the disabled dogs for all their lives. says Mahendra.

The shelter runs on the money coming from Mahendra’s own pocket. He and his wife get a monthly income of 45,000 rupees each. There have been some financial crunches now and then but Mahendra is determined that no matter what challenges come their way, they’ll fight through.