【推荐1】The Chinese television reality show called “Wonderful Friends”, where entertainers hug whale sharks, kiss lions, feed pandas and dress up baby chimpanzees, has come under fire from wildlife protectors who want it to be stopped, saying such activities are cruel and are dangerous for both the humans and animals.

The show is the latest hit from Hunan TV, which has attracted more than 196,000 followers. In each show, popular stars are given zoo-keeping tasks that allow them to interact with wild animals in order to bring humans and animals closer together.

Animal welfare advocates（倡导者）say that is exactly what should be avoided. Dave Neale of Animals Asia (an advocacy group) said, “It is hugely misleading to the public about the needs and welfare of captive animals（圈养动物）and putting the animals’ welfare and health at risk.”

“What they don’t realize is that wild animals need space,” said Xie Yan, a zoologist and China director of the Wildlife Conservation Society. “Putting clothes on chimpanzees is not as adorable as you may think from the animals’ point of view, I guess their idea was to get their viewers to love and protect the animals,” Ms. Xie added, “but we do not agree with his approach for entertainment.”

Using famous people do focus public attention on wildlife is a common practice in conservation campaigns. The Chinese basketball legend Yao Ming went to Africa and highlighted the problem of elephant and rhinoceros poaching（偷猎）in the documentary “The End of the Wild”. “But differently, he, as a human observer, kept his distance and was there to see the hard truth of poaching, and that is different from a show created to attract viewers.” Ms. Xie said.

Critics（评论家）also argue that the show violates（违反）Chinese wildlife protection laws.

【推荐3】Dessi Sieburth’s love of birds started about six years ago. Now，he has his own group called Protecting Our Birds. Recently，Dessi，11 years old，chatted with TFK about his work and goals for the future.

TFK: What is Protecting Our Birds?

DESSI: Birds are citizens of the world，so they need protection. I basically try to do conservation (保护)work to help birds get protected throughout the world. I recently wrote an article about a bird called the bar-tailed godwit(斑尾薄)，I interviewed a biologist(生物学家)named Nils Warnock，who had studied the bar tailed godwit. He expressed the concern about the threat that the bar-tailed godwit is facing. I wrote an article about his answers to the questions，which is published on the American Birding Association Website.

TFK: What impelled you to start this project?

DESSI: When I was eight years old，our class had to do a wood-working project，so I chose a bird feeder(喂食盒)，I didn’t like birds at the time. I made the feeder，filled it up with seed，put it in my backyard and then the birds started coming. I got really interested in birds as more came. I later got involved in my local Audubon Society，which is an association devoted to preserving natural ecosystems(生态系统).It really got me into birds and I realized bird populations were decreasing，and many are becoming endangered quite rapidly. I wanted to help them，so I started the project.

TFK: What are some future projects you plan to work on?

DESSI: I live in L.A. where there are a lot of parrots. Most of the parrots’ native range is in Mexico，but they’re really declining there because of habitat loss. I want to study the parrots and help them in their native range in Mexico, so they can start increasing again.

TFK: How can people learn more about Protecting Our Birds and the work you’ re doing?

DESSI: I have a website, It’s pretectingourbirds. my-free. website. There people can learn about what I do and how to help birds.

【推荐2】In 2018, China became the largest producer and consumer of the fruit in the world. Ninety-two-year-old Wu Mingzhu, a native of Wuhan, is the unknown hero who has helped make this possible.

“About 80 percent of the watermelons and sweet-melons served at people’s dining tables every day are the result of painful efforts made by Wu and her team over more than 60 years,” said Zhang Wenjun, a colleague of Wu’s.

Helping others had long been a dream of hers. And she thought the most beautiful thing in life is that everything you create can serve the people, so she made efforts to grow quality melons, which began paying off in 1973. She is one of the 8, 000 agricultural scientists who have come to Hainan annually from across the country over the past 60 years and have cultivated more than 20, 000 of China’s new seed varieties through off-season breeding.

Using innovative measures such as radiation mutation breeding, double haploid breeding and distant hybridization breeding, Wu and her team developed new germ-plasm (种质) resources, from which they cultivated more than 30 watermelon and muskmelon (香瓜) varieties with better adaptability and stronger disease resistance, said Yi Hongping, former director of the Xinjiang Muskmelon Research Center.

The new melon varieties have been promoted to more than 1.86 million hectares of fields from north to south. Some of these varieties have been promoted overseas, as far as California. Wu’s work has left her a number of honors. The “queen of melons” became an academician with the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 1999 and an honorary citizen of Sanya in 2004.

【推荐1】Born in 1954, Oprah Winfrey is best known for her multi-award-winning talk show as the most influential woman in the world. It's no surprise that her recognition can bring overnight sales fortune that defeats most, if not all, marketing campaigns. The star features about 20 products each year on her "Favorite Things" show. There's even a term for it: the Oprah Effect.

Her television career began unexpectedly. When she was 16 years old, she had the idea of being a journalist to tell other people's stories in a way that made a difference in their lives and the world. She was on television by the time she was 19 years old. And in 1986 she started her own television show with a continuous determination to succeed at first.

TIME magazine wrote, "People would have doubted Oprah Winfrey's swift rise to host of the most popular talk show on TV. In a field dominated by white males, she is a black female of big size. As interviewers go, she is no match for Phil Donahue. What she lacks in journalistic toughness, she makes up for in plainspoken curiosity, rich humor and, above all understanding. Guests with sad stories to tell tend to bring out a tear in Oprah's eye. They, in turn, often find themselves exposing things they would not imagine telling anyone, much less a national TV audience."

"I was nervous about the competition and then I became my own competition raising the bar every year, pushing, pushing, pushing myself as hard as I knew. It doesn't matter how far you might rise. At some point you are likely to fall if you' re constantly doing what we do, raising the bar. If you' re constantly pushing yourself higher, higher the law of averages, you will at some point fall. And when you do, I want you to know this, remember this: there is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction" as Oprah addressed graduates at Harvard on May 30.

【推荐2】Bessie Coleman was born in Atlanta, Texas, in 1892. Her mother was African American. Her father was part African American and part American Indian. Her family was poor. Bessie had to walk more than six kilometers to go to school.

Bessie had to pick cotton and wash clothes to help earn money for her family. She was able to save a little money and went to college in the state of Oklahoma. She was in college only one year because she did not have enough money to complete her studies. But during that year, she learned about flying. She read about the first flight of the Wright brothers and the first American female pilot Harriet Quimby.

When she was 23, Bessie Coleman moved to Chicago, Illinois to live with two of her older brothers. There, she heard stories from pilots who were returning from World War I. She decided she was going to learn how to fly airplanes. But she soon found this to be almost impossible. What flight school would admit a black woman? Bessie learned that she would have a better chance in Europe. She began to study French at a language school in Chicago.

Soon after the end of World War I, Bessie Coleman left for France. She attended the famous flight school, Ecole d'Aviation des Freres Caudron. She completed seven months of flight training. Coleman earned her international permit to fly in 1921 and she became the first black woman pilot.

Coleman returned to Chicago. She was the only black female pilot in the United States. So her story became popular in African American newspapers. She was asked by the Dallas Express newspaper in Texas why she wanted to fly. She said that women and blacks must have pilots if they were to keep up with the times.

【推荐3】Not long ago, few little girls imagined they could grow up to become astronauts. For years in the United States, only men had that opportunity. In 1983, that changed. Sally Ride made history by becoming the first American woman to travel to space.

On Monday, Ride died at the age of 61, “Sally was a national hero and a powerful role model,” President Barack Obama said in a statement. “She inspired generations of young girls to reach for the stars.”

Ride became interested in space when she was a kid. “If you asked me when I was 12 whether I wanted to be an astronaut, I’m sure I would have said yes,” she said in a 2010 interview. “But I didn’t even think about that as a possible career.”

After studying physics in college, Ride got her chance. She was accepted into NASA’s astronaut training program in 1978, and then chosen to be the first American female in space. In 1983, she blasted into space aboard the Challenger shuttle.

Ride returned to space on the Challenger a second time in 1984. Between the two missions, she spent a total of 343 hours in orbit. After that, she remained involved with the space program and also worked to share her passion for science with kids. She co-authored six science books for children, and started her own science and education company.

Ride knew that she held a unique place in history. “I realized how important it was for a woman to break that barrier and open the door for other women to be able to do the same exciting things that the men had been doing,” she said.

Since Ride’s historic trip, more than 40 other American women have travelled to space. They all had Ride to thank for opening the door to the final frontier.