【推荐1】An 50-year-old American officer（官员）came back to his school. The teacher asked him to give a talk to the small boys and girls there. The talk was about the love of their great country. All the little ones were sitting in a large meeting-room. The old officer went up and began speaking. He said, “Boys and girls, I studied in this school forty years ago. When I was your age, we were not as happy as you are today. Think about it and answer me, why are you so happy now?”

No sound came from the children. The old man waited for a long time. Then a short boy in front put up his small dirty hand. “Good boy! Please answer me, dear.” said the officer.

With a big smile on his face, the boy stood up and said, “If you speak long enough, we won’t have Maths and biology（生物学）lessons this morning.”

【推荐2】In the United States, headmaster and teachers punish students in several ways. The teachers often writes to or calls the students’ parents. Sometimes students have to stay at school for an extra hour. If a student behaves very badly, the headteacher can suspend（使暂停上课）the student. The student can’t come to school for one, two, or three days. Mr. Lazares didn’t like to suspend students. When he suspended students, they were happy. “A three-day holiday!” they thought. One day, a boy named Robert was in Mr. Lazares’ office. The boy was not behaving well in class. Mr. Lazares phoned the boy’s parents. “If you come to school with your son, I won’t suspend him,” he said. The boy’s father came to school and went with his son to every class. Other students stared at the boy and his father. The boy was embarrassed. After that he behaved better. He didn’t want his father to come to school again. Other students behave better, too. They thought, “I don’t want my parents to come to school!”

That year about 60 parents came to school with children who didn’t behave well. The next year only a few parents had to come to school. The students were behaving better.

【推荐1】Many people know that rubbish is a big problem on the planet Earth. What many people don’t know is that junk（垃圾）has become a problem in outer space too.

According to BBC News, there are more than 22, 000 pieces of space junk floating around the earth. And these are just the things that we can see from the surface of the earth by telescopes （望远镜）. There are also millions of smaller pieces of junk that we can’t see.

Objects, like bits of old space rockets（火箭）or satellites（卫星）, move around the planet at very high speed so fast that even a very small piece can break important satellites or become dangerous to astronauts. If the tiniest piece of junk crashed into a spaceship, it could damage （损害）the space tool.

To make things worse, when two objects in space crash, they break into many smaller pieces. For example, when a U.S. satellite hit an old Russian rocket in 2009, it broke into more than 2,000 pieces, increasing the amount of space junk.

To reduce additional （额外的）space junk, countries have agreed that all new space tools can only stay in space for 25 years at most. Each tool must be built to fall safely into the earth’s atmosphere （大气层）after that time. In the upper parts of the atmosphere, it will burn up.

Many scientists also suggest different ways to clean up space junk. In England, scientists are testing a special net that can be sent into space junk. The net catches the junk and then pulls it into the earth's atmosphere to burn up. The Germans are building robots that can collect pieces of space junk and bring them back to Earth to be safely dealt with.

“The problem is becoming more challenging because we’re sending more objects into space to help people use their mobile phones and computers,” says Marco Castronuovo, an Italian space researcher.

China Builds Beidou

On May 17, 2019 China launched a new satellite at the Xichang Launch Center (西昌卫星发射中心). It was the forty-fifth Beidou satellite that China had sent into space.

So what is Beidou?

Beidou is a positioning system (定位系统). It is developed by China. China is the third country in the world to have its own positioning system. With Beidou, China no longer has to depend on foreign system. This is very important for national safety.

Work on Beidou began in 1994. However, the first two Beidou satellites were not sent into space until 2000. Since then, China has launched dozens of Beidou satellites. These satellites have formed a global network. Now, China is further improving the system. It plans to launch ten more Beidou satellites. If all goes well, Beidou will be completed before 2020.

The completed Beidou will be more powerful than any existing (现存的) positioning system. Yang Changfeng is a designer of Beidou. He says the system can notice the sway (摇摆) of a building in strong winds.

Beidou has brought many advantages to our lives. In Shanghai, thousands of buses have been using Beidou. When we are waiting for a bus, we can know when it is about to come.

Many smart phones have also been using Beidou. “Many people say, ‘Let me turn on my GPS.’ In fact, their phones are using Beidou,” jokes a salesperson in Beijing.

【推荐3】Mission to Mars

On July 4, 1997, space exploration took a huge step. On that day, a spacecraft called Pathfinder landed on Mars. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sent Pathfinder to discover new information about the Red Planet.

The mission was a complete success. After landing, Pathfinder sent a small rover (漫游机器人), Sojourner, onto the planet's surface. Sojourner explored more than 250 square meters of Mars. Together, designed Sojourner to last for only seven days, but little vehicle ran twelve times longer! Pathfinder surprised scientists, too. It sent back information for almost three months. That was three times longer than it was built to last.

Because Pathfinder and Sojourner ran for so long, scientists got more information than they ever dreamed of getting. For one thing, they discovered that Mars is very sandy. Pictures of sand dunes around the land site hint that Mars once had water. Scientists know that water means life. Was there ever life on Mars? We don't know yet. In addition, the Pathfinder mission told scientists that Mars is dusty. Huge "dust devils" on Mars spit enormous amounts of dust into the Martian air. Pathfinder also discovered frosty Martian temperatures at 200 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. At that temperature, a glass of water would freeze solid in just a few seconds.

In October, scientists lost Pathfinder's signal because the spacecraft's battery had run down. They tried to revive the signal but had no luck. The mission officially ended on November 4.

Scientists hope to use the knowledge from these missions to better understand how life on earth began. They will also use it to plan future Mars missions.

Singer Han Hong took action to help Wuhan, the city at the center of the coronavirus outbreak (冠状病毒爆发). Han Hong had planned to hold the first concert of her 2020 national tour in Wuhan on February 29. But she called off (取消) the show and called upon people to donate (捐赠) to the city. Soon over 2 billion yuan was donated through Han Hong Love Charity Foundation which she founded in 2012.

“When you’re going through a situation like this, you want to do anything you can to help. There are so many kind people out there,” wrote a fan, who donated through Han’s foundation. “It’s good to know that there are trucks with medical things going straight to the hospitals. They are badly needed.”

In 2008, Han held a charity performance for Wenchuan, Sichuan Province, after an earthquake. That inspired her to found her foundation. Over the years, she has donated to people in different disasters, including an earthquake in Yushu, Qinghai Province, in 2010, a huge mudslide (泥石流) in Gansu Province and an earthquake in Yunnan Province in 2013.

“I almost spent all my savings. That’s what I want and what I can do,” Han said in an interview on the online show, Opinion, in 2015. “Many people don’t trust charity organizations to use their donations properly. Charities are held at a higher standard and need to win people’s trust.” The show also reported that Han had helped over 200 orphans (孤儿) since 1999.

【推荐3】The spacecraft ShenzhouXIII carried Chinese astronauts Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu to space. Many people may want to know about the three Chinese astronauts’ life in space. In fact, they could do many of the things as we do on Earth.

They brushed their teeth, washed their hair and went to the bathroom. However, because of the microgravity（失重）environment, they tended themselves in different ways. They washed their hair by using the no-rinse shampoo（免冲洗洗发剂）because there were no real showers in the spaceship.

Astronauts ate three meals a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner. But how much they ate depended on themselves. There were many kinds of food, such as fruits, nuts, chicken, beef and sea-food. They could also drink coffee, tea and orange juice.

Astronauts could have much fun too. They enjoyed wonderful sunrise which happened every 90 minutes. Astronauts could even spend weekends. They watched movies, played music, read books and talked to their families.

After a long day at work, nothing was better than a good night’s sleep. Astronauts had to sleep in sleeping bags in special cabins. Usually, astronauts were planned to have eight hours of sleep. Like on Earth, they might wake up in the middle of their sleep to use the toilet. And astronauts also had dreams.

【推荐1】I have two good friends, Tom and Mary. We spend time doing many things together. Tom lives near my house and we are in the same class. He's twelve years old and he is of medium height with blonde hair and blue eyes. He's very clever. He's good at math and he helps me with my homework sometimes. He usually wears blue jeans and a white T-shirt, but in the photo he's wearing black trousers and a yellow T-shirt. We also play ping-pong at a nearby park together and sometimes we do our homework at my house.

Our friend Mary isn't at our school. She's tall and slim with straight brown hair and brown eyes. She's quiet and kind. We all have dance lessons every Tuesday and Friday afternoon. We love dance. Mary is really good at dancing. We call her "dancer". She often reads in the library with us, too. In the picture she is wearing a dress, but she doesn't usually wear skirts or dresses. She often wears T-shirts and jeans. We have great fun together.

【推荐2】When I was in Grade 8, I had a heated argument (争吵) with my classmate, Tony. I have forgotten what the argument was about, but I have never forgotten the lesson I learned that day.

I believed that I was right and he was wrong, and Tony believed that I was wrong and he was right. Our teacher, a kind and smart lady, decided to teach us a lesson. She brought us to the front of the class and placed him on one side of her desk and me on the other. In the middle of her desk was a large and round object. I could clearly see that it was black. The teacher asked us what color the object was. “White,” Tony answered. I couldn’t believe he said the object was white! “Clearly, it is black!” Another argument started between Tony and me, this time about the color of the object.

The teacher told me to go and stand where Tony was standing and told him to go and stand where I was standing. We changed places, and then she asked me what color the object was. I had to answer, “White.” It was an object with two differently colored sides—from his side it was white, while from my side it was black. “Boys, now, what do you say?” the teacher smiled at us. Tony has been my best friend ever since.

My teacher taught me a very important lesson that day: When you disagree with others, you’d better be in their shoes. That will help you look at the situation through their eyes, and truly understand their ideas and ways of thinking.

【推荐3】When I was ten, my mother worked all day so I had to take care of my younger brother. At that time my little brother was about four years old and he missed mum all the time.

One day, after I had given him his dinner, he started crying for mum. He was so young and really needed mum. So I dressed him, put on his shoes, carried him on my back and walked out. Soon he fell asleep. About half an hour later, I found that he had lost a shoe while sleeping. I took him off my back and put him down. I knew we needed to find that shoe, for our mother couldn’t afford new shoes. We had to go back to find it, so I told my brother to wait right there. A man heard it and stopped me just before I walked off. He asked me, “You are leaving your brother here to find the shoe? What would you do if he is not here when you return?” I did not know how to answer that question. He continued, “It’s OK if you can’t find the shoe, but it is not OK to lose your brother.” Then he sent us to mum’s workplace by taxi.

My whole life I have depended on (依靠) the kindness of many strangers, I feel regretful that I cannot find them and say thank you. I do not even remember what the man’s face looked like, but he taught me a lesson—people are more important than things.