3 . The “reading wars,” one of the most confusing and disabling conflicts in the history of education, went on heatedly in the 1980s and then peace came. Advocates of phonics (learning by being taught the sound of each letter group) seemed to defeat advocates of whole language (learning by using cues like context and being exposed to much good literature).

Recent events suggest the conflict of complicated concepts is far from over. Teachers, parents and experts appear to agree that phonics is crucial, but what is going on in classrooms is not in agreement with what research studies say is required, which has aroused a national debate over the meaning of the word “phonics.”

Lucy M. Calkins, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College and a much-respected expert on how to teach reading, has drawn attention with an eight-page essay. Here is part of her argument: “The important thing is to teach kids that they needn’t freeze when they come to a hard word, nor skip past it. The important thing is to teach them that they have resources to draw upon, and to use those resources to develop endurance.”

To Calkins’s critics, it is cruel and wasteful to encourage 6-year-olds to look for clues if they don’t immediately know the correct sounds. They should work on decoding — knowing the pronunciation of every letter group — until they master it, say the critics, backed by much research.

Calkins’s approach “is a slow, unreliable way to read words and an inefficient way to develop word recognition skill,” Mark S. Seidenberg, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, said in a blog post. “Dr. Calkins treats word recognition as a reasoning problem — like solving a puzzle. She is committed to the educational principle that children learn best by discovering how systems work rather than being told.”

Many others share his view. “Children should learn to decode — i.e., go from print on the page to words in the mind — not by clever guesswork and inference, but by learning to decode,” Daniel Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, told me. He said the inferences Calkins applauds are “cognitively (认知地) demanding, and readers don’t have much endurance for it. … It disturbs the flow of what you’re reading, and doing a lot of it gets frustrating.”

Yet a recent survey found that only 22 percent of 670 early-reading teachers are using the approach of phonics and what they mean by phonics is often no more than marking up a worksheet.

Both sides agree that children need to acquire the vocabulary and background information that gives meaning to words. But first, they have to pronounce them correctly to connect the words they have learned to speak.

Calkins said in her essay: “Much of what the phonics people are saying is praiseworthy,” but it would be a mistake to teach phonics “at the expense of reading and writing.”

The two sides appear to agree with her on that.

Neesha, an 8-year-old golden retriever, is a lucky dog. After spending a fortnight on her own without food or real shelter, the tough dog was accidentally spotted by a couple, who in spite of the cold weather, were hiking the range and came across her.

Two weeks earlier, Neesha’s owners had taken her and their other dog, a German shepherd named Harley, for some outdoor exercise. Frightened by a deer, both dogs ram away. Harley found his way back to the parking lot the next day, but Neesha did not.

The family made a thorough search. They left a laundry basket of unwashed clothing near the spot where they’d last seen Neesha in the hope that she’d head straight towards the familiar smell marker. They even turned to the Internet for help in finding Neesha—but there was still no sign of her.

“We posted our experience on social media. Then a weekend later, we were still looking for her. We were starting to give up hope,” said the pet’s owner Erina O’Shea Goetelen told The Irish Times.

Eventually, the family began to accept that Neesha might not be coming home. “We just thought she is 8, and it’s been two weeks. There was no way she could survive.“

Doctors Ciara Nolan and Jean Francois Bonnet must truly be crazy hikers. They braved the elements on the freezing day when the couple decided to reach one of Wicklow’s peaks. As they neared the top, Nolan was shocked to see a dog shaking in the snow.

“She was frightened, freezing cold. She didn’t have enough energy to bark or stand, ”Bonnet said in an interview. “We tried to get her to walk, but she couldn’t stand. So we covered her with our spare clothes and gave her some food.”

Bonnet lifted Neesha onto his back for the long path down the mountain.

Neesha’s owners could hardly believe it when they learned their dog had been found alive.

8 . Wholesale prices for gas and electricity are increasing suddenly across Europe,raising the possibility of increases in already-high utility (公共事业）bills and further pain for people who have taken a financial hit fromCOVID-19.

Governments are struggling to find ways to limit costs to consumers as scant natural gas reserves present yet another potential problem, exposing the continent to even more price increases and possible shortages if it’s a cold winter.

In the U.K., many people will see their gas and electricity bills rise next month after the nation’s energy regulator approved a 12% price increase for those without contracts that lock in rates. Officials in Italy have warned that prices will increase by 40% for the quarter that will be billed in October.

There are multiple causes for the price increases, energy analysts say, including tight supplies of natural gas used to generate electricity, higher costs for permits to release carbon dioxide as part of Europe’s fight against climate change, and less supply from wind in some cases.

Analysts at S&P Global Platts say electricity prices have risen due to strong demand from places like data centers and electric cars, but above all because of the rise in the price of natural gas used in generating plants. Utility companies’ exposure to natural gas prices has increased as high-emission coal plants have been retired, while utilities face higher costs for carbon allowances required by the European Union’s emissions trading system, which is aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.

The tight gas market could bite even more sharply if there’s an unusually cold winter. That’s because European distributors did not refill reserves reduced during last winter as they typically had done in summer months. In March 2008, when the freeze named “the beast from the east” hit Europe, industrial users in the U.K got a notice that there was a risk of interruption, although it didn’t come to that.

Could Europe run out of gas? “The short answer is Yes, this is a real risk,” said James Huckstepp, an analyst at S&P Global Platts. “Storage stocks are at record lows and there isn’t currently any spare supply capacity that is exportable anywhere in the world.The longer answer is that it’s hard to predict how it will play out given that Europe has never run out of gas in two decades under the current distribution system.”

That's all. Thanks for listening.