【推荐3】The first drop in what might be a flood of unheard Jackson material is a song called “This Is It“, which Sony had scheduled to send to radio stations on Sunday night. Based on a tape Mr Jackson left behind containing only his piano and vocals, a full arrangement was built, complete with swelling strings and his brothers’ backup vocals. The song is to run with the new Jackson film, perhaps not coincidentally called This Is It. An album containing the track goes on sale 27 October, and the film is due out the next day.

Mr Jackson died on 25 June 2009, and Sony and the Jackson estate have only begun what is expected to be a long process of musical archaeology(考古学). “We probably have at least 100 songs in varying degrees of being finished,” said Rob Stringer, chairman of the Columbia/Epic Label Group, a Sony division. “And we think there probably is a lot more.”

It is not clear when the song was written or recorded, Mr Stringer said, and Sony originally believed that the tape was made around the time of Mr Jackson’s 1991 album Dangerous. But it could have been much earlier, perhaps even as early as the album Off the Wall, from 1979. “We just found the song,” Mr Stringer said. “It was titled’ This Is It’. It was in a box, and we listened to it.” “This Is It” was also to have been the title of Mr Jackson’s 50-concert run in London; Mr Stringer and others with knowledge of the production say the song was not part of it.

One challenge in releasing new music could be security. Both Sony and the estate have kept a tight hold on music and information and went to unusual lengths to prevent “This Is It” from leaking. Radio programmers said they had been told that they would be getting the song at midnight on Sunday—Sony also planned to post it on Michael Jackson official website—and even then they were not allowed to hear it. Even with those protections, 43 seconds of the song leaked over the weekend, apparently from Sony in Japan. Low-quality versions spread quickly.

People who have heard the full track describe it as an inspirational love song. “This is it/ Here I stand,” Mr Jackson sings. “I’m the light of the world/I feel grand.” It is a mid-tempo, major-key ballad, punctuated by light guitar riffs and rich orchestration.

“Wherever ‘This Is It’ comes from, its success on the radio is guaranteed. It will definitely be a spectacle,” said Mr Darden, programme director of a New York hip-hop radio station. “It’s Michael Jackson, and his fans will be his fans forever. Everybody loves him.”

【推荐1】A quick nap before arriving at your destination is normal, especially when you lack that much-needed sleep. But even if you feel energized, sleeping on buses and trains just seems to be a natural thing.     1     ? Here are some of the reasons.

    2    

Although buses and trains are not close to the comfort level of your couch or your bed, just being in a cozy(舒适的) enough position is sufficient to make you nod off. Sitting down, closing your eyes, and leaning your head a bit are enough to get you in a relaxed state.

Long periods of inactivity

On buses and trains, you don’t move around very much.     3     . Basically, you’re away from the things that keep your mind and your physical body busy. This inactivity also slows your brain activity down because there’s no stimulus to keep it awake.

White noise

    4    . It’s a consistent noise, like the hum of tires or the purring of the car. White noise masks distracting sounds, and is helpful for people who have trouble getting sleep. When you’re riding a vehicle, white noise is continuously emitted, making it easier for passengers to come to dreamland.

Increase in carbon dioxide in public transportation

Buses and trains get crowded every day with people going to and from work. Carbon dioxide increases when there are lots of people in a small space.     5     .

【推荐2】The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (HZM Bridge) will connect Hong Kong on the east bank of the Pearl River Delta to Zhuhai and Macao on the west bank, based on the planning of the national highway network. It will provide a significant part of the Pearl River Delta regional transportation loop—being a key new highway transport corridor crossing the Lingdingyang and connecting the east and west banks of the Pearl River.

The Pearl River Delta is seen as a pioneering region for China’s Reform and Opening-up Policy and an economic center of great importance. Taking advantage of the proximity (邻近) of Hong Kong and Macao, the Pearl River Delta plays a leading role and has a significant strategic status in China’s Reform and Opening-up as well as its economic and social development. The development gap between the east and west coasts of the Pearl River has widened during the recent period of rapid development of the Pearl River Delta, with the economic development of the west coast evidently lagging behind that of the east coast. The lack of convenient transportation with Hong Kong is an important reason. Obstructed (阻隔) by the Pearl River, overland transport has to detour through the Humen Bridge, while the transportation by water takes a lot of time and it is vulnerable to weather conditions. The current transport infrastructure (设施) cannot meet the demands of the economic and social development and transportation between the east and west banks of the Pearl River.

To sum up, the construction of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge is both essential and urgent in order to coordinate, fully develop and interlink the national comprehensive transportation expressway network with the networks of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao.

【推荐3】We all realize the damaging pollution created by driving petrol and diesel vehicles. Many of the world’s cities are jammed with traffic, creating harmful gases like carbon dioxide. The solution for a cleaner, greener future could be electric vehicle. But how potimistic should we be?

There was much excitement last year when the UK government announced it would ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030. But is that easier said than done? The road to global traffic being totally electric is sill a long way of. Currently, battery life is an issue-a fully charged（充电）battery won’t take you as far as a full tank of petrol. There are also limited charging stations to plug an electric vehicle into.

Of course, technology is always improving. Some of he biggest tech companies, like Google and Tesla, are spending huge amounts of money developing electric cars. And most of the big car manufacturers are no making them too. Colin, a low-carbon vehicle expert, told the media: “The big leap forward will come with reliable batteries, which will appear first in mobile phones and laptops before they pogress to cars. These will charge more quickly and enable cars to travel longer.”

Cost is another issue that may delay people switching to electric power. But some countries offer incentives, such as cutting prices by reducing import taxes, and not charging for road tax and parking. Some also provide exclusive lanes for electric cars to be driven on, beating traditional cars which might be stuck in jams. These kinds of measures have made Norway rank No.1 with more than thirty electric cars per 1,000 ctizans.

But electric motoring doesn’t mean a zero-carbon future. It’s emission-free（零排放）motoring, but the car has to be built, the battery has to be built, and the electricity does come from somewhere. Maybe it’s time to think about making fewer journeys or using public transport.

【推荐1】Movies were more than photographs and different from books. They transmitted romance, danger and comedy straight into your emotional bloodstream, with no need for translation and no cultural barriers. They were creating another world out there on the screen, a world of joy and sadness, laughter, romance, places far away in space and in time, heroes and heroines and ordinary people — a world that moviegoers could enter and live other lives. They were giving our audience a common culture.

Over the decades, movies and movie theaters have survived many competing technologies that threatened their extinction, among them television, VHS tapes, DVDs and Blu-rays, and streaming. Through all of these worthwhile advances, people continued to leave their homes to watch movies in theaters. From 2010, just after streaming became important, to the beginning of 2020, the number of movie theaters nationwide remained nearly constant, going from 5,773 to 5,798. Annual ticket sales dropped by only 7 percent, from about 1.33 billion to about 1.24 billion.

Seeing a movie in a public theater on a giant screen, surrounded by other people, is not only entertainment. It is also an experience, a communal activity, a night out of the house almost everyone can afford.

Then came the covid-19 pandemic. Few industries have suffered more than movie theaters. The small number of theaters that remain open have seen attendance decline dramatically. If theaters do not survive, something irreplaceable will have been lost. We are social creatures. No matter how comfortable our living rooms and complex our technology we need community, we need physical contact with one another.

On the screen were the enduring themes of chivalry, good vs. evil, conquest and dominion, fashioned for our technological age. We moviegoers left the theater in crowds, talking to each other, sharing impressions, some of us speechless. But all of us felt that we now shared some magical bond. Lawmakers should act to save that magic.

【推荐2】Parents have long been subject to the opinions of others, some of which include judgments about the number of toys they should provide for their children. Some suggest more toys show children they are more loved, while others argue more toys is overkill and a poor substitute for parental attention. Do our kids really need so many toys?

A US research team at the University of Toledo has conducted a simple experiment to test creativity in kids playing with toys. In the experiment, parents were asked to bring kids to a play area where the little ones were given either four toys or 16 toys to play alone with for 30 minutes. Each of the 36 kids who participated was observed by the researchers who were in search for activities that could be counted as creative.

The researchers found that the kids playing with four toys engaged in more creative activities than the kids who had 16 toys to choose from. They also found, unsurprisingly, that kids with fewer choices tended to play with each of the toys available to them for a longer amount of time. Much of that additional time was taken up with finding new ways to play with them.

The researchers are not suggesting that children should have fewer toys overall-instead, they are suggesting that children show more creativity if they only have the choice of playing with just a few of them at a time. They believe parents should keep most of their children’s toys locked away while their kids play with a small part at any given time. Lots of toys may curb kids’ creativity and focus, making it more difficult to get the most out of any one toy-fewer toys nudge (推动) them towards resourcefulness.