1 . During the 1930s，the Great War broke out. A 25-year-old American soldier, probably never thought that his life would change forever when he volunteered to go to France.

One night while the American unit was returning to the base after a bloody fight, Suleyman stumbled(绊倒) into the ground and noticed a bit of movement from the bush. Being stuck between two choices either its enemy or an animal, Suleyman found a five- year old girl from the bushes shivering with cold and utmost fear. Due to the atrocity of the war, the girl was abandoned by her family and the whole village was killed.

During the war, it was impossible to find the child’s family so Suleyman took this little French girl under his wings and gave her an American name Flora which means like the flower. Soon, Flora became the apple of the eye of everyone living in the army camp.

For one and a half years, Flora and Suleyman became inseparable; however, every fairy tale comes to an end. When the war ended, Suleyman was sent back to USA, while Flora was put in an orphanage (孤儿院), the Normandy School, which was founded by the American government for orphaned French children to have an education.

For years, Suleyman always thought about Flora. When the French National Olympic Team was playing in the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in 1984, Suleyman gazed through the audience on TV, hoping to catch a glimpse of Flora, but he never could.

At the age of 85, Suleyman attended the 60th anniversary reception of the Great War where Suleyman shared his story with American and French officials. After hearing his story, a French journalist started to investigate the story, and all government files were read in detail. The moment the journalist helped dial the number, in tears, Flora said Suleyman was her hero, and everything came flooding back to her.

5 . If I could have your attention, please. I’d like to talk to you about young people’s screen time. There is so much to look at: photographs, social media feeds, messages and emails; it is no wonder they are glued to their screens.     1    

There have been many claims about the damage looking at screens does to our eyesight.     2    . This is a particular concern for children and young people, who spend a higher percentage of time using electronic devices.

But a new study says time in front of computers and phones might not be as bad for young people as many people think. Research by the Oxford Internet Institute examined data from more than 17, 000 teenagers in the UK, Ireland and the United States.     3     Professor Przybylski, director of research at the institute, said, “99.75% of a person’s life satisfaction has nothing to do with their use of social media.” The research found that family, friends and school life all had a greater impact on health.

    4     The Oxford researchers are confident that their study is strong in its findings and that any relation between screen time and mental health is very small. Dr. Max Davie, officer for health improvement at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, calls the study a “small first step”, but he said there were other issues to explore, such as screen time’s interference with other important activities like sleep, exercise and time with family or friends.     5    

7 . CHRISTMAS 2020 was shaping up to be a heartbreaker for Melanie Lee. A few weeks earlier, her 33-year-old son had lost his battle with a long illness. Then the transmission (车辆变速器) on her 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe conked out. She had no means of paying for it to be fixed.

“When it broke down, I broke down,” Lee told CNN. “Now I don’t have my baby, now I don’t have transportation. How am I supposed to stay active in my grandchildren’s lives?”

Enter Eliot Middleton, 38, is the owner of a barbecue restaurant and former auto mechanic who, in his free time, repairs and gives away used cars. He’d heard about Lee’s situation from her nephew Frank McClary, the mayor of Andrews, South Carolina (population 3, 000). On Christmas morning, Middleton showed up unannounced at Lee’s home with a gift: a white 1993 Oldsmobile.

“I had no idea what was going on,” said Lee. “He handed me the keys and didn’t ask for anything.” Once again, she’s able to pick up her granddaughters from school and take them to dance class. “I got my freedom back.”

The idea for the used-car giveaway came to Middleton a year earlier during a food drive he’d organized. Many of those who’d lined up for a meal walked up to four miles to get there because they didn’t have cars.

Cars are a lifeline in this part of South Carolina, Middleton told CBS. “There’s no public transportation, no Ubers, no taxis to take people to job interviews, doctor appointments, even food shopping.” So he posted on Facebook an offer to trade slabs of his restaurant’s specialty, barbecued ribs, for broken-down vehicles. Since then, friends and strangers have dropped off more than 100 cars in various states of disrepair. Many sit in Middleton’s yard waiting to be fixed up and donated, usually to those he’s heard about through word of mouth. It’s a list of names that grows daily.

“People think Eliot is an angel,” Mayor McClary told the Washington Post. “And I do too.”

9 . Given how valuable intelligence and automation are, we will continue to improve our technology if we are at all able to. At a certain point, we will build machines that are smarter than we are. Once we have machines that are smarter than we are, they will begin to improve themselves. The concern is really that we will build machines that are much more competent than we are. And the slightest divergence (分歧) between their goals and our own could destroy us.

Just think about how we relate to ants. We don’t hate them. We don’t go out of our way to harm them. In fact, sometimes we take pains not to harm them. We step over them on the sidewalk. But whenever their presence seriously conflicts with one of our goals, we will kill them without hesitation. The concern is that we will one day build machines that, whether they’re conscious or not, could treat us with similar disregard.

The bare fact is that we will continue to improve our intelligent machines. We have problems that we desperately need to solve. So we will do this, if we can. The train is already out of the station, and there’s no brake to pull. If we build machines that are more intelligent than we are, they will very likely develop in ways that we can’t imagine, and transcend us in ways that we can’t imagine.

So imagine we hit upon a design of super intelligent AI that has no safety concerns. This machine would be the perfect labor-saving device. It can design the machine that can build the machine which can do any physical work, powered by sunlight, more or less for the cost of raw materials. So we’re talking bout the end of human labour. We’re also talking about the end of most intellectual work. So what would apes like ourselves do in these circumstances?

But the moment we admit that information processing is the source of intelligence, we have to admit that we are in the process of building some sort of god. Now would be a good time to make sure it’s a god we can live with.

Zhoukoudian is a small village lying about 50 kilometers to the southwest of Beijing City. In the 1920s, archaeologists discovered some prehistoric human bones there, which changed people’s view of China’s history. They came from     1    unknown species of man, and were the first evidence of human life in China thousands of years ago. The remains were three    2    (tooth)!

In 1929, a complete skull(颅骨)    3    (dig) out. Eventually, archaeologists found almost 200 items, including 6 skulls. These discoveries proved the    4    (exist) of a human species who lived in the area between 700, 000 and 200, 000 years ago. Four sites    5    Peking Man and their relatives lived were discovered on the northern face of Longgushan.

Zhoukoudian was listed    6    a World Heritage Site in December 1987. It has not only given    7    (we) important information about prehistoric Asian societies, but also provided amazing evidence about the process of evolution. Today, parts of the caves have been badly destroyed by rain. Some areas are almost    8    (complete) covered in weeds, causing serious damage. Also, pollution    9    (cause) by the nearby factories has contributed to the problem.This is a very serious matter. The Chinese Academy of Sciences is doing all it can    10    (raise) public awareness of it.