“We leave at dawn and head out overland by jeep towards Base One. We will get as far as we can before proceeding on foot,” Mark explained. The others sat and listened. Sarah, particularly, as a “casualty of events”, wouldn't have known what to say or suggest even if she'd been asked. But Harry had a lot to say.

    “We'll never make it,” he protested(抗议). “We'll still be crossing the desert when they catch up with us. They'll know where we're heading for and they seem to know every move we make or are going to make.”

    Mark said nothing, but spread his hands out as if to say “Well, what do we do then?” “We wouldn't be in this mess now,” Harry went on, almost ignoring Mark's gesture, “if we hadn't stopped to rescue Sarah.”( He glanced at her briefly.) “But since we did, we must get on—but not across the desert. There is the sand, and deep ravines (沟壑) which are almost invisible until you're right on them and then the heat. You have to be used to going out there, and none of us is. This is no ‘morning at leisure' on some pleasant holiday, you know! If we went north instead and made for the river,…"

    He broke off and looked around at the others, feeling somehow that his argument was pointless. No one said anything.

    “Good,” said Mark, look around with authority, and returned to checking their stores.

    A beautiful sunrise was about to burst over the horizon as the jeep headed out towards Base One.

    Cleaning your plate may not help feed hungry children today, but the timeworn advice of mothers everywhere may help reduce food waste from the farm to the fork, help the environment and make it easier to feed the world's growing population.

    Hard data still being collected, but experts in Chicago said about 30% to 50% of the food produced in the world goes uneaten. The average American throws away 33 pounds of food each month—about $40 worth, which means each person throws away almost 400 pounds of food. The US Department of Agriculture says that 23% of eggs and an even higher percentage of produce ends up in the trash.

"We forget we have all these fresh fruits and vegetables, and at the end of the week we have to throw them away", said Esther Gove, a mother of three young children in South Berwick, Maine. "Now, I don't buy as much fresh produce as I used to."

    But the effect of food waste arrives far beyond the kitchen. Agriculture is the world's largest user of water, a big consumer of energy and major emitter of greenhouse gases during production. Experts say reducing waste is a simple way to cut stress on the environment and can ease pressure on farmers, who will be called on to feed an expected 9 billion people around the world in 2050, compared with nearly 7 billion today.

    No matter how sustainable (可持续的) farming is, if the food's not getting eaten, it's not sustainable and it's not a good use of our resources. In richer nations, fruit and vegetables end up in the trash because they aren't pretty enough to meet companies' standards, have gone bad in a home refrigerator or aren't eaten at a restaurant. In developing countries, much food spoils before it gets to market due to poor roads and lack of refrigeration. High food prices are another reason, since some people can't afford the food that's produced.

    Europe is now the biggest market for organic food in the world, having grown by 25  percent a year over the past 10 years. Denmark's agriculture minister is herself an organic farmer. The UK market for organic food grew by 55 percent in 2000, while the food market as a whole grew by only one percent. Yet only seven percent of British shoppers account for nearly 90 percent of organic sales. However popular the idea of organic farming may be, it is still an interest for only a few people.

    So what makes the idea of organic farming popular? Organic farming means farming with natural materials, rather than with man-made fertilizers or pesticides. Organic farmers rely on many  methods — such as crop rotation (农作物的轮作) and the use of resistant varieties, because they are necessary for organic farmers to compensate for the shortage of man-made chemicals.

    Organic farming is often supposed to be safer than traditional farming for the environment. Yet after a long research on organic farming worldwide for a number of years, science continues to be against this opinion. The House of Commons committee on agriculture publicized that, even with complete research work, it would fail to find any scientific evidence to prove “that any of claims （宣称） made for organic farming is always true”.

    However, the talk about the benefits of organic farming is going on. This is partly because many people depend on their individual farm, the soil, the weather, and so on.

    After the sudden loss of her 5-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, Natalia Spencer felt she needed to do something to honor the little girl. That strong wish inspired Spencer to start what she calls a “Walk of Love”, a 6,000-mile trek (长途徒步旅行）along the British coastline.

    “Elizabeth particularly loved the beach and the sea and we visited the seaside a lot. After she passed away, I went to the seaside and it was the first time I had felt some comfort,” Spencer said. “I knew this was what I had to do. It was something I could do and it would somehow make life more bearable.”

    On Valentine's Day, Spencer began walking Durdle Door in Dorset, England, the last beach she took Elizabeth to before she became ill. So far, Spencer has journeyed about 1,500 miles, walking through Dorset, Cornwall, Devon and the entire coast of Wales. Every day, except Saturday, Spencer walks 20 miles. Often locals join her; many times they share stories about losing their own children.

    Everything changed for Spencer on Nov. 22, 2015. Spencer noticed Elizabeth was ill with what she thought—was a chest infection. But the girl's health worsened rapidly. Doctors diagnosed her with a life-threatening immune condition where the immune cells damage tissue and organ. This caused Elizabeth's organs to shut down and stopped the blood supply to her arms and legs. She was moved to Bristol Children's Hospital where she spent 18 days on life support before passing away on Dec. 10.

    After Elizabeth died, Spencer struggled. She stayed with friends because it felt too hard to live in a house with the memories of Elizabeth. In January, a friend encouraged Spencer to go for a walk and the two ended up at the Gower Peninsula in Wales. That's when she realized she wanted to walk along the coast for her daughter.

    While walking provides Spencer with time to grieve (感到悲痛)，she's also using the trip to raise￡100,000(about $144,000) for the Bristol .Children's Hospital. She admired the doctors and nurses and wanted to raise money to allow another family access to treatment.

    Spencer expects to complete her walk next spring. She'd love to finish on Valentine's Day, but doesn't know if that is realistic.

    Everyone should be so lucky as to have a friend like Francia Raisa. On Thursday, singer and actress Selena Gomez, 25, used Instagram to explain why she was “laying low” this summer. She posted a photo of herself in a hospital bed with her friend Francia Raisa holding hands. She said she recently received a kidney transplant from her best friend because of complications（并发症）from lupus（狼疮）, an autoimmune disease, which means it is the result of the immune system attacking normal tissue, including the kidneys, brain, heart and lungs.

    People with lupus may first experience tiredness, joint pain or a little bit of rash（皮疹）on their bodies and can go for a long time before their doctors realize it is more serious. Many people see two or four doctors before the real problem is picked up. According to Dr. Kyriakos Kirou, roughly a third to one-half of people with lupus develop kidney disease, and up to one in five of them will eventually need a transplant, sometimes because they weren't treated with effective drugs to prevent the immune system from attacking the kidneys. Though Gomez said that she was “very well now,” she warned about the dangers of not taking medical diagnoses seriously, like she initially did.

    Her Instagram post also called attention to two major health topics: the need for living organ donators and the fact that Gomez represents three groups more likely to be diagnosed with lupus and lupus-related kidney disease. Nine out of 10 people diagnosed with lupus are women, and most develop the disease between the ages of 15 to 44. And lupus is two to three times more common among women of color, including Hispanic women, according to the Lupus Foundation.

    Raisa is Latina, and Gomez's father is of Mexican origin. While it's not essential that the organ donator and receiver be of the sane ethnicity, people who share a similar background sometimes are better matched, according to data from the United Network for Organ Sharing.

    Not all of George H.W. Bush's extended family members were invited to his Washington D.C. memorial service.

    Nearly a week after many paid their respects at the Washington National Cathedral, Sharon Bush, who was married to the 41st president's son Neil from 1980 to 2003, told Page Six that she was allegedly unable to attend the funeral after she was told by her ex-husband's secretary that there were not enough seats.

    "I was going to take the train down. I wanted to pay my respects. But I paid my respects by raising three wonderful children during a 23-year marriage," Sharon told the Outlet.

    Neil and Sharon share three children: son Pierce and daughters Ashley and Lauren Bush Lauren, who gave a reading at the funeral, where the father of three attended with his second wife Maria Andrews, whom he wed in 2004.

    While the D.C. memorial service was taking place, Sharon recalled having lunch with Lady Gaga's mother Cynthia Germanotta and publishing heiress Anne Hearst.

    Though she was snubbed from the funeral, Sharon shared photos on Instagram to honor her former father-in-law. "My girls Lauren and Ashley read scriptures at their grandfather's funeral. I feel so proud of them. May he RIP." The mother of three captioned a photo of Lauren and Ashley.

    "May he RIP," Sharon also posted on Instagram, speaking of their children's upbringing. Sharon credited herself for raising them to be charitable and public servants. "I taught them everything they know about 'points of light' by taking them to soup kitchens and homeless shelters from the time they were 4 years old. I didn't want them spoiled," she said, referencing the public service nonprofit — Points of Light, for which her ex-husband serves as chairman of the board of directors. "I did this. Neil was never around. He was always traveling," Sharon added.