Having experienced a shocking electrical accident, which caused him to become both blind and deaf, James Franco's world became completely dark and quiet for almost ten years. The loss of sight and hearing threw him into such sorrow that he tried a few times to put an end to his life. His family, especially his wife, did their best to tend and comfort him and finally he regained the will to live.

    One hot summer afternoon, he was taking a walk with a stick near his house when a thunderstorm started all at once. He stood under a large tree to avoid getting wet, but he was struck by the lightning. Witnesses thought he was dead but he woke up 20 minutes later, lying face down in muddy water. He was trembling badly, but when he opened his eyes, he could hardly believe what he saw: a tree and a muddy road. When Mrs. Franco came running up to him, shouting to their neighbors to call for help, he could see her and hear her voice for the first time in nearly ten years.

    The news of James regaining his sight and hearing quickly spread and many doctors came to examine him. Most of them said that he regained his sight and hearing from the shock he got from the lightning. However, none of them could give a compellent answer as to why this should happen. The only reasonable explanation given by one doctor was that, since James lost his sight and hearing as a result of a sudden shock, perhaps, the only way for him to regain them was by another sudden shock.

    When I began planning to move to Auckland to study, my mother was a little worried about the uncertainty of living in a place that was so different from India, where we lived. She worried particularly about the lack of jobs, the cultural differences and the chance that I would face racism(种族偏见).

    Despite these worries, I came to New Zealand in July 2009. I have found the place and people very nice and supportive. Soon after I arrived, I realized the importance of getting a job for my living expenses.

    Determined to do this on my own, I spent a whole day going door to door asking for a job. However, I received little response. This became my routine every day after college for a few weeks.

    One afternoon, I walked into a building to ask whether there were any job opportunities. People there were very surprised, and advised me not to continue my job search in that manner. As I was about to leave, a clerk in the building, who had been listening to what the others had said, approached me and asked me to wait outside for a while. Fifteen minutes later, he returned. He asked me about my plans and encouraged me to stay confident. Then he offered to take me to Royal Oak to search for a job.

    I was a little surprised but had a good feeling about him. He gave me some suggestions on dressing and speaking. I handed out my resumes and went home feeling very satisfied. The following day, I received a call from a store in Royal Oak offering me a job.

    It seems that the world always gives back to you when you need it .And this time，it was a complete stranger who turned out to be a real blessing.

    Finding true love can be pretty tough for a lot of people, but a lady from a fairly well-known San Francisco advertising agency seems to think money helps. She is offering $10,000 to any of her friends who can introduce her to her Mr. Right. She wants to find her future husband through this way.

    The unnamed husband seeker who sent out the email had just finished reading the best-selling book named Lean In. It was 11 p. m. on a Sunday night and she realized this was the second self-help book she had read in the month. She was still single. Things were not looking fine, but there was hope for her still. If the book had taught her anything, it was that she needed to take a more positive role in finding love. After all, if she wanted to get a better job, she wouldn't just sit outside an employer's building and wait for someone to offer it to her, so why should finding a husband be any different? But instead of going out and meeting new people she decided to write an email to all her friends, offering to give them $10,000 on her wedding day if any of them managed to introduce her to her future husband.

    “I am writing you today because I've decided to make an aggressive action plan on finding the man that I get to hang out with forever,” the woman writes in her email. “Introducing me to my husband is just not high on your to-do list. But I think I have an idea that might change that…” You guessed it, and this is where she offers to reward her “closest friends” with cold hard cash.

    “I will personally give ten thousand dollars to the friend who introduces me to my husband.

    Here is how the program works:

    Step 1: You set me up on a date with a man.

    Step 2: I marry that man.

    Step 3: I give you $10,000 on my wedding day.

    I know you're thinking that this is nuts. Just plain crazy. 'You can find a husband without giving $10,000.' Well for starters, thank you! I'm happy.”

    A five-year-old dog named Kelsey has been praised as a hero for helping to save the life of her owner who slipped in the snow and broke his neck.

The man, Bob, was alone when he left his Michigan farmhouse on New Year's Eve to collect firewood. Expecting a journey of only several meters, Bob was wearing just long johns(衬裤), a shirt and slippers when he went outside, although the temperature was around-4℃.

    After the accident, he was unable to move in the snow. Fortunately, Kelsey came to his assistance.

    "I was shouting for help, but my nearest neighbor is about 400 meters away, and it was10:30 pm," Bob explained. "But my Kelsey came. By the next morning, my voice was gone and I couldn't yell for help, but Kelsey didn't stop barking."

    Kelsey's companion kept him warm by lying on top of him. She licked his face and hands to keep him awake. "Kelsey kept barking but never left my side," Bob recalled. "She kept me warm. I knew I couldn't give up and that it was my choice to stay alive."

Bob spent 20 hours in the freezing cold. When he finally lost consciousness, his dog kept barking. Finally, hearing the barking, Bob's neighbor discovered him at 6:30 pm on New Year's Day and called the emergency services at once. When Bob arrived in hospital, his body temperature was below 21℃. However, doctors were surprised to find that he didn't have any frostbite(冻疮). They believed it was because of Kelsey's determination to keep him warm. Dr. Chaim Colen, the doctor who treated Bob, said, "Animals can help and his dog really saved him... He was very fortunate.

    Bob said he was "enormously" grateful to both Dr. Colen and his Kelsey. "They saved my life. They are truly heroes!"

    David Cameron is urging today's youngsters to abandon French to concentrate on the tongue of the future—Mandarin(普通话)。

    Cameron said: "I want Britain linked up to the world's fast-growing economies. And that includes our young people learning the languages to seal tomorrow's business deals.”

    "By the time the children born today leave school, China is to be the world's largest economy. So it's time to look beyond the traditional focus on French and German and get many more children learning Mandarin.” To strengthen his message , he quoted Nelson Mandela—the former president of South Africa who said "If you talk to a man in a language he understands that goes to his head; if you talk to him in his own language that goes to his heart.”

    Cameron said that a partnership between the British Council (英国文化协会) and Hanban will double the number of Chinese language assistants in the UK by 2016 and provide increased funding to schools of offering Mandarin as a language choice. In a development of the UK—China School Partnership programme , funding will also be provided for 60 headteachers to make study visits to China in 2014.

    In recent research the British Council found only 1% of the adult population speaks Mandarin to a level that allows them to conduct a basic conversation. Just 3,000 pupils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland entered for Chinese languages GCSEs in 2013, putting it far behind the traditional choices of French with 177,000, Spanish with 91,000 and German with 62,000 entrants(加入者), as well as Urdu, Polish and Arabic.

    Professor Dame Helen Wallace, the British Academy's foreign secretary, said, " a lack of qualified teachers could be a barrier to improve its popularity.”

    Laura Chan, one of the co—founders of a bilingual Mandarin—English primary school, said the prime minister's announcement was good news for the status of Mandarin. She said, "It's a great help. It will increase people's awareness of Mandarin as a language they can learn.”

    Reading can be a social activity. Think of the people who belong to book groups. They choose books to read and then meet to discuss them. Now, the website Book Crossing.com turns the page on the traditional idea of a book group.

    Members go on the site and register the books they own and would like to share. Book Crossing provides an identification number to stick inside the book. Then the person leaves it in a public lace hoping that the book will have an adventure, traveling far and wide with each new reader who finds it.

    Bruce Pederson, the managing director of BookCrossing, says, "The two things that change your life are the people you meet and books you read. BookCrossing combines both."

    Members leave books on park benches and buses, in train stations and coffee shops. Whoever finds their book will go to the site and record where they found it.

    People who find a book can also leave a journal entry describing what they thought of it. E-mails are then sent to the BookCrossing to keep them updated about where their books have been found. Bruce peterson says the idea is for people not to be selfish by keeping a book to gather dust on a shelf at home.

    BookCrossing is part of a trend among people who want to get back to the "real" and not the virtual(虚拟). The site now has more than one million members in more than one hundred thirty-five countries.