【推荐1】Every 40 days a language dies. This “catastrophic” loss is being intensified by the climate crisis, according to linguists. If nothing is done, conservative estimates suggest that half of all the 7,000 languages currently spoken will be extinct by the end of the century.

Speakers of minority languages have experienced a long history of persecution (迫害), with the result that by the 1920s half of all indigenous (土著的) languages in Australia, the US, South Africa and Argentina were extinct. The climate crisis is now considered the “final nail in the coffin” for many indigenous languages and the knowledge they represent.

“Languages are already endangered,” says Anastasia Rachel, director of the Strathy language unit at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Huge factors are globalization and migration, as communities move to regions where their language is not spoken or valued, according to Rachel. “It seems particularly cruel,” she says, “that most of the world’s languages are in parts of the world that are growing unpleasant to people.” Vanuatu, a South Pacific island nation measuring 12, 189 km², has 110 languages, the highest density of languages on the planet. It is also one of the countries most at risk of sea level rise. “Marty small language communities are on islands and coastlines easily subject to hurricanes and sea level rise,” she says. Others live on lands where rising temperature threatens traditional farming and fishing practices, leading to migration.

In response to the crisis, the UN launched the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (IDIL) in 2022. Promoting and conserving languages of indigenous communities is “not only important for them, but for all humanity”, said Csaba Korosi, the UN general assembly president, urging countries to allow access to education in indigenous languages.

Modern inventions have speeded up people’s lives amazingly. Motor-cars cover a hundred miles in little more than an hour, aircraft cross the world inside a day, while computers operate at lightning speed.     1     Every year motor-cars are produced which go even faster and each new computer boasts of saving precious seconds in handling tasks.

    2     When we lose or gain half a day in speeding across the world in an airplane, our bodies tell us so. We get the uncomfortable feeling known as jet-lag; our bodies feel that they have been left behind on another time zone. Again, spending too long at computers results in painful wrists and fingers. Mobile phones also have their dangers, according to some scientists, too much use may transmit harmful radiation into our brains, a consequence we do not like to think about.

However, what do we do with the time we have saved? Certainly not relax, or so it seems. We are so accustomed to constant activity that we find it difficult to sit and do nothing or even just one thing at a time.     3    

There was a time when some people’s lives were devoted simply to the cultivation of the land or the care of cattle. No multi-tasking there; their lives went on at a much gentler pace, and in a familiar pattern.     4     Yet before we do so, we must think of the hard tasks our ancestor faced: they farmed with bare hands, often lived close to hunger, and had to fashion tools from wood and stone. Modern machinery has freed people from that primitive existence.

【推荐3】For too many, the damage begins early in life. Four out of 10 babies born in the United States do not form a strong relationship with either parent, and they will pay for that the rest of their lives.

New research from Princeton University confirms what other researchers have already found: The number of babies born into families that are too poorly equipped to give them a fair chance of having a successful life is very big.

That finding is supported by many other research Projects, including a study from the University of Rochester showing that nearly one-third of U. S. parents don’t know what to expect from their newborns, or how to help them grow and learn and get along with others. Babies, as others have pointed out, don’t come with an owner’s manual.

The basic problem, according to the Princeton study, is 40 percent of infants in the U. S. live in fear or distrust of their parents, and that will turn into aggressiveness, defiance (挑畔) and hyperactivity (多动) as they grow into adults.

Of that number, 25 percent don’t have a close relationship with their parents because the parents don’t satisfy their needs. And 15 percent find their parents so troubling that they will avoid them whenever possible.

That will not necessarily result in a lifetime of violence, but it will make living a successful life much more difficult.

“They can overcome it,” sociologist Sophie Moullin of? Princeton, lead author of that study, said in a telephone interview. “It’s not a make or break situation, but they might find it harder to control their behavior.”

Moullin, along with coauthors from Columbia University and the University of Bristol in England, analyzed more than 100 research projects, to reach their conclusions.

There are many factors, including poverty, ignorance, and stress among parents who are so busy with their own problems that a new child is sometimes more than they can deal with.

Yet strong relationships, the researchers say, are amazingly simple to achieve.

【推荐1】Download an app, open it, place your order, and wait for your food to be delivered to your home — this is a picture of how many people eat in China these days. According to the latest data from the China Internet Network Information Center, 421 million Chinese people use online food delivery services. That’s equal to half of the total number of internet users in China.

Which group of people is ordering food online the most? Unsurprisingly, it’s mainly young people. A recent report that was jointly (联合) published by the China Hospitality Association and Meituan, a food delivery service, showed that 86.3 percent of the service’s users are between 20 and 34 years old. These people, who are more likely to live in small families, are the major force driving the development of the food delivery industry.

Small families depend greatly on food delivery services. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, Chinese families have changed in size over the past decade. In 2002, only 7.7 percent of families were single-person households. But this number increased to 15.6 percent in 2017. The percentage of two-person families rose from 18.4 in 2002 to 27.2 in 2017. For small families, relatively, people spend more time and resources in cooking, they think it’s a waste of time and resources, so ordering food online has become more popular, which is so convenient.

The improvement of China’s food delivery services has also attracted more customers. According to Meituan’s report, the average time it takes to make a food delivery dropped from 38 minutes in 2016 to 29 minutes in 2019. Many delivery platforms are also offering more services, delivering products such as toys, fruits, vegetables, medicine and flowers, even furniture and electrical equipment and so on. As its services continue to improve, it’s more likely that the food delivery industry will keep growing.

When do people order food online?

【推荐3】Bill Gates said his three children understand why he has promised to leave his £70 billion fortune to charity when he dies.

In a revealing insight into his private life, the Microsoft founder, 60, said his children are “proud” of his decision to devote his money to helping the world's poorest.

Gates said that instead of billion-dollar trust funds, his two daughters and son will be given a “great education” to help kick-start their own careers.

But the business mogul did say there would still be a financial safety net in place, adding, “They are never going to be poorly off”.

Gates and his wife Melinda, 52, have three children together, Jennifer, 20, Rory, 17, and Phoebe, 14.

Jennifer is in her second year at prestigious Stanford University, California, where her father donated £5million to the construction of a computer science building in his name. She is also an accomplished equestrian, riding in national competitions.

The Gates will only pass on a fraction of their vast wealth to their children. The rest will go to their charity, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which funds health and education projects around the world.

He said, “This money is dedicated to helping the poorest. They know that, they are proud of that, they go on trips with us to see the work that's being done.”