4 . Microsoft won’t renew the contracts (合同) for dozens of news production staff working at its MSN website and plans to use AI to replace them. The roughly 50 employees were informed that their services would no longer be needed beyond June 30.

The Microsoft spokesman said in a statement, “Like all companies, we analyze and make judgments on our activities and services on a regular basis. This can result in increased investment in some places and, from time to time, rearrangement in others. These decisions are not the result of the pandemic.”

MSN will use AI to replace the production work its journalists had been doing. That work includes using an automated system (自动化系统) to identify trending news stories from dozens of publishing partners and to help improve the content by rewriting headlines or adding better accompanying photographs or slide shows.

“I spend all my time reading about how automation and AI are going to take all our jobs — now it’s taken mine” one of the terminated contractors said. “But with fewer human beings to monitor the technology, AI may not be fully familiar with strict editorial guidelines and could end up letting through inappropriate stories.”

MSN has experienced a number of changes since its launch as Microsoft Network in 1995. Once it offered original content and links to news, weather and sports. In 2013, it rolled back original news content and began cutting employees. By 2014, it launched are designed version that partnered with other news sites, paying them to redistribute their content. Today, the news service relies entirely on those partnerships with no original news content of its own. Selecting and editing stories rather than actually generating them made it easier for MSN to increasingly rely on an automated editing system.

6 . It was a beautiful, sunny, Spring day. I had just finished driving my daughter to the airport to ________an early morning flight.

My sons and I then went to a fast food place for breakfast before heading back home. After eating we all got into the car and ________the parking lot.

The restaurant was at the very top of a hill. At the bottom of the hill was as top sign so we found ourselves at the end of a long line of traffic ________while the cars at the bottom turned on to the main road one at a time.

As I looked down to the bottom of the hill my eyes saw an ________man standing by the stop sign. His clothes were old and ________. He held a cardboard sign with the words: Need Help Please! written on it.

My heart went out to him and I ________myself in his situation. As car after car turned on to the road without stopping for him, I ________for my wallet to look for whatever cash was left in it. As I was pulling it out of my ________, though, I saw a young woman walk up to him along the side of the road. She was carrying a bag full of takeout food from the restaurant I was just at. I watched as the old man thanked the young girl and smiled as she reached into give him a ________

Suddenly a loud HONK from the car behind me made me realize that I hadn’t been moving forward, because this ________choice for kindness had so ________my attention and my heart. By the time I reached the bottom of the hill both the man and lady who had helped him were gone.________, as I drove home the sun seemed to shine even ________and Heaven felt a bit closer to Earth.

A choice is such a ________thing. It can touch a heart and change a life. It can bring us closer to God and make Heaven smile. Each day we are given a thousand ________. May you make all of yours for kindness. May you make your whole life a choice for love, joy, and God.

7 . Last night my husband and I were walking when we saw a man bent over on the ground, crushing (碾碎) something with a rock. He was so focused on his _________ that he didn’t look up at anyone passing by. We kept noticing him and _________ what he could be doing. I thought he was crushing stones to make sand, but why would he do that?

_________, we decided to go up and ask him. He was crushing pieces of left-over bread that he had _________ to prepare food for the birds that come there early morning. The large pieces of bread would be _________ for the birds to eat so he crushed them into powder. Every _________, after coming home from his job as a tailor, he goes around the villa (乡间别墅), collecting left-over bread from all his housemates. He then eats a quick meal and comes here, and spends the next 1 — 2 hours _________ crushing each piece and makes a neat pile for the birds. He has been doing this for the last 3 — 4 years. What _________ us more was that he was _________ that we were even taking an interest in this, since for him it wasn’t a big __________.

8 . I was talking to my friend Sandy about our children. Sandy had recently moved into the neighborhood with her four kids: Jane, Joe, Christopher, and her youngest, eighteen-month-old Kim. She seemed happy to have kids nearby, until she saw our dog, Sam.

Sam, our shiny black dog, loved to play with the kids and protect them. But Sandy had a fear of dogs, and she started to back away as Sam approached. I grabbed Sam’s collar and made him sit, trying to ease Sandy’s discomfort.

Sandy mentioned that she needed to get her kids ready to go to their grandmother’s house. Just then, her door opened and her kids rushed out. Sandy shouted at them to stay away from Sam.

The kids huddled (蜷缩) around their mom, looking at Sam cautiously (谨慎地). Emma, my daughter, showed the kids how to approach a dog slowly and properly. The kids were won over by Sam’s friendly nature, but I knew it would take some time for Sandy to change her viewpoint.

After that incident, we made sure that Sam didn’t go near our neighbors without me present. One day, when the kids were playing across the street, I noticed the eighteen-month-old baby heading towards a small hill. I saw a car approaching and shouted to everyone to watch the baby. Without hesitation, Sam rushed out the door and ran across the street towards the baby. He ran to the boy in time to gently push the baby away from the oncoming car. The kids cheered, completely unaware of the danger. They thought Sam had come to play.

Within a year, Sam had made friends with all the neighbors. Even Sandy started to warm up to Sam and would occasionally come over to give him a hug.

9 .

Eradajere Oleita thinks she may have a solution     1     two of her country’s problems: rubbish and poverty (贫困). It’s called the Chip Bag Project. The 26-year-old student and environmentalist from Detroit is asking local chip lovers     2     (donate) their empty chip bags rather than throw them into the trash so she can turn them into sleeping bags for the homeless.

Chip eaters drop off their empty bags at two locations in Detroit: a print shop and a clothing store, where Oleita and other     3     (volunteer) collect them. After they clean the chip bags in soapy hot water, they cut them open, lay them flat, iron (熨) them together and use liners from old coats to line the insides.

It     4     (usual) takes about four hours to sew (缝) a sleeping bag, and each takes around 150 to 300chip bags, depending on whether they’re single-serve     5     family size. The result     6     (be) a sleeping bag that is waterproof (防水的), lightweight, and easy to carry around.

Since its start in 2020, the Chip Bag Project     7     (collect) more than 800,000 chip bags and created 110 sleeping bags.

Sure,     8     would be simpler to raise the money to buy new sleeping bags. But that’s only half the goal for Oleita—whose family moved to the United States from Nigeria ten years ago with the hope of     9     (have) a better life—and her volunteer helpers. “We are working to make a     10     (different) not only socially, but environmentally,” she says.