2 . High school often serves to prepare students for a college education, or it might be the last stop on the educational journey for some people. No matter which path one may select, high school life offers students the opportunities to achieve a great deal of learning, get to know themselves, or simply have fun.

In America, high school is a special experience with a culture of its own. Public high schools exist in all communities. Every community in the United States has a public school system, teaching children at primary and secondary levels. These schools are free and supported mainly by taxes, with additional aid from states and governments. Private high schools are a choice for parents who want to give their child a better education. They are often very expensive. Private schools are usually famous for their academic reputation (学术声望). This academic reputation is related to college preparation.

In high school, students study various academic subjects such as English, literature, foreign languages, maths, science, history, geography and so on. Some large high schools have classes that teach job-related subjects like auto mechanics, cooking and others, in order to provide students with skills needed for certain jobs. High school might also offer “honours classes” for particularly smart and sharp students.

Some states give basic skills exams during the last year of the high school process to make sure that certain academic standards are met, but, again, high school curricula (课程) vary greatly among communities.

High school sports, particularly basketball and football, are often organised. Inter-city and cross-town competitions are often held. These competitions are popular, especially in communities that do not have their own professional sports teams. Nearly all high school teams have nicknames: the Knights and the Tigers being some famous examples.

3 . A snowboarder was feeling lucky to be alive yesterday after a helicopter rescue(直升机营救).

Ben Akintola, 30, was snowboarding in the French Alps under a clear blue sky in the afternoon when a large amount of snow fell down the side of the mountain. He didn’t have time to escape(逃脱) and it hit him with full force and knocked him senseless.

He woke in the night in total darkness. He was lying on an icy rock. Amazingly, he still had a mobile phone signal(信号), so he called a friend a thousand kilometers away in Britain. His friend called the French rescue services.

“I was waiting for what seemed like hours on that rock. I was beginning to give up hope when I heard the sound of a helicopter. It was circling around in the darkness, looking for me. I was trying my best to wave my mobile around. Fortunately the helicopter pilot saw the light.”

“I was overjoyed when the helicopter headed my way. It stayed above me and began lowering a rope.”

Ben was in hospital last night but he was not being treated for any serious injuries. He’s looking forward to going home today.

The French rescue services said: “We were very pleased that we were able to save Ben. The risk of snow slide off-piste(非滑雪场地的) is much higher at this time of year. All snowboarders and skiers should stay on the ski runs and not go off-piste. Ben was very lucky.”

4 . A single cigarette sold on a street corner may not cost a lot; however, the whole costs of smoking are huge.

First, consider the cost of human life. The World Health Organization says about 10 people die of a tobacco-related disease every minute. That speed adds up to almost six million people dying of such diseases every year.

Most of these preventable（可预防的）deaths happen in low-income and middle-income countries. The World Bank says each of these countries has a total national income（收入）of less than $12,746.

The World Health Organization says tobacco kills 6 million people yearly — a number that is expected to rise to 8 million by 2030 unless immediate action is taken.

For most people, stopping smoking is hard. Many began smoking as teenagers. They are used to it. Also, tobacco contains the powerful drug nicotine.

Studies show people who want to stop smoking can do so with different treatments. Some get help from electronic cigarettes, medicine or nicotine patches that reduce their desire for the drug.

But smoking costs more than the life of a person. It can affect the health of the whole country. The World Health Organization says low-income countries depend heavily on taxes from cigarettes. They use the money, in part, to pay the costs of health care for tobacco-related diseases.

But the illegal trade in tobacco products is further testing the economies of low-income countries. WHO officials say the illegal trade earns about $31 billion every year.

Douglas Bettcher is the director of the WHO’s Department for the Prevention of Non-communicable Diseases. He calls the illegal trade a monster with many heads. He says the trade enables young people to buy cigarettes at low prices, become addicted to tobacco and suffer from serious health problems. It also increases crime and reduces taxes.

The World Health Organization is strongly suggesting that the United Nations member states sign an agreement to end the illegal trade in tobacco products. Eight countries have agreed to the agreement. But the agreement of 32 other countries is still needed for it to become an international law.

7 . The Indian government may use 3D paintings as virtual speed breakers（减速带） on major highways and roads, in order to check speeding and careless driving, and finally make its deadly roads a little safer. "We are trying out 3D paintings used as virtual speed breakers to avoid unnecessary requirements of speed breakers," India's transport minister Nitin Gadkari wrote.

The optical illusions(视觉错觉) are supposed to encourage drivers to slow down automatically. Earlier, India had ordered the removal of all speed breakers from highways, which are considered to be a safety hazard for high-speed vehicles. India has the highest number of road accident deaths in the world. According to the World Health Organisation, over 200,000 people are killed by road accidents.

The use of optical illusions as speed breakers was first pioneered in the American city of Philadelphia in 2008, as part of a campaign against speeding motorists. The technique has also been tried out in China to create floating 3D crossings. In India, cities such as Ahmedabad and Chennai have already experimented with 3D zebra crossings in the last one year. In Ahmedabad for instance, a mother and her daughter, both artists, have painted 3D crosswalks in the first few months of 2016. The artists say their motto is "to increase the attention of drivers", and that the concept has been successfully tested in accident-prone zones on a highway.

However, critics argue that once drivers know that these speed breakers are visual illusions, they may ignore them. Others also point out that India's decision does not consider the safety of a large number of pedestrians. In the end, the new policy may be just one step towards improving road safety.

Technological change is everywhere and affects every aspect of life, mostly for the better. However, social changes are brought about by new technology are often mistaken for a change in attitudes.

An example at hand is the involvement of parents in the lives of their children who are attending college. Surveys (调查) on this topic suggests that parents today continue to be “very” or “somewhat” overly-protective even after their children move into college dormitories. The same surveys also indicate that the rate of parental involvement is greater today than it was a generation ago. This is usually interpreted as a sign that today’s parents are trying to manage their children’s lives past the point where this behavior is appropriate.

However, greater parental involvement does not necessarily indicate that parents are failing to let go of their “adult” children.

In the context (背景) of this discussion, it seems valuable to first find out the cause of change in the case of parents’ involvement with their grown children. If parents of earlier generations had wanted to be in touch with their college-age children frequently, would this have been possible? Probably not. On the other hand, does the possibility of frequent communication today mean that the urge to do so wasn’t present a generation ago? Many studies show that older parents — today’s grandparents — would have called their children more often if the means and cost of doing so had not been a barrier.

Furthermore, studies show that finances are the most frequent subject of communication between parents and their college children. The fact that college students are financially dependent on their parents is nothing new; nor are requests for more money to be sent from home. This phenomenon is neither good nor bad; it is a fact of college life, today and in the past.

Thanks to the advanced technology, we live in an age of bettered communication. This has many implications well beyondthe role that parents seem to play in the lives of their children who have left for college. But it is useful to bear in mind that all such changes come from the technology and not some imagined desire by parents to keep their children under their wings.

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All this saves time, but at a price. When we lose or gain half a day in speeding across the world in an airplane, our bodies tell us so. We get the uncomfortable feeling known as jet-lag; our bodies feel that they have been left bebind in another time zone. Again, spending too long at computers results in painful wrists and fingers. Mobile phones also have dange according to some seientists; too much use may transmit harmful radiation into our brains, a consequence we do not like to think about.

However, what do we do with the time we have saved? Certainly not relax, or so it seems. We are so accustomed to constant activity that we find it difficult to sit and do nothing, or even just one thing at a time. Perhaps the days are long gone when we might listen quietly to a story on the radio, letting imaginations take us into another world.

There was a time when some people’s lives were devoted simply to the cultivation of the land or the care of cattle. No multi-tasking there; their lives went on at a much gentler pace, and in a familiar pattern. There is much that we might envy about a way of life like this. Yet before we do so, we must think of the hard tasks our ancestors faeed; they farmed with bare hands, often lived close to hunger, and had to fashion tools from wood and stone. Modern machinery has freed people from that primitive existence.