In choosing a friend, one should be very careful. A good friend can help you study. You can have fun together and make each other happy. Sometimes you will meet fair­weather friends. They will be with you as long as you have money or luck，but when you are down, they will run away. How do I know when I have found a good friend? I look for certain qualities of character，especially understanding, honesty and reliability(信任)．

    Above all else, I look for understanding in a friend. A good friend tries to understand how another person is feeling. He is not quick to judge. Instead, he tries to learn from others. He puts himself in the other person's place, and he tries to think of ways to be helpful. He is also a good listener.

    At the same time, however, a good friend is honest. He does not look for faults in others. He notices their good points. In short, a friend will try to understand me and accept me.

    Another quality of a friend is reliability. I can always depend on a good friend. If he tells me he will meet me somewhere at a certain time, I can be sure that he will be there. If I need a favor，he will do his best to help me. If I am in trouble, he will not run away from me.

    There is a fourth quality that makes a friend special. A special friend is someone with whom we can have fun. We should enjoy our lives, and we would enjoy our friendship. That is why I especially like friends who are fun to be with. A good friend likes the same things I like. We share experience and learn from each other. A good friend has a good sense of humor too. He likes to laugh with me. That is how we share in the joy of being friends. And I know that he is looking for the same quality in me.

    When I meet someone who is reliable, honest, and understanding，I know I've found a friend!

    Move over millennials(千禧一代), here comes Generation Z, today's youngest group.

    Born in 1995 or later, a lot of Gen Z-ers are entering into adulthood and will soon join the workforce. People of Generation Z have grown up with the internet. Policy makers, sociologists, as well as employers and marketers, are trying their best to understand these young people. So, how should we pin down the Gen Z-ers?

    Most people will agree that the single biggest difference between Gen Z and other generations is how connected they are. This is a group of people who were hooked up to social media as soon as they were born. A recent Guardian article says that the average teenager in the UK has at least 150 followers on Instagram and spends around half an hour a day on Snapchat, an image messaging app. “We are the first true digital natives,” Hannah Payne, an 18-year-old UCLA student and lifestyle blogger. “I can almost create a document, edit it, post a photo on Instagram and talk on the phone at the same time, all from the user-friendly interface(界面) of my iPhone.

    The Guardian also notes that young people in the UK are becoming more active in politics. Voting is just one way of making one's voice heard. Most of Generation Z are still too young to vote, says the Guardian. Instead of party politics, they focus more on single-topic issues such as feminism(男女平等)or climate change. And “much of the civil engagement and organizing they do takes place on social media rather than through traditional political structures,” according to the newspaper.

    Lemurs are cute animals that live on the island of Madagascar, the fourth-largest island in the world. Lemurs have big eyes, long noses, and long tails(except for the Indri) and live high in the trees of Madagascan forests. Lemurs are quite intelligent. They are the cousins of monkeys and look quite similar. They also swing through the trees and live in family groups.

    There are different species of lemurs. Some lemurs (the Indri) sing like a whale, and some (the Sifaka) walk like a ballet dancer. Some lemurs are very small, like the Pygmy Mouse Lemur which weighs only 25-30 grams. Others, like the Indri, can weigh up to ten kilograms. Some lemurs are nocturnal, being awake at night and sleeping during the day, and some are not nocturnal but diurnal. Generally, the smaller lemurs are nocturnal, while the bigger ones are diurnal. All the species are unique to Madagascar.

    However, all of the lemurs are endangered species. Many species have already disappeared in the last few centuries. There are not many of lemurs left. People in Madagascar have been destroying the forests where lemurs live. Local people also hunt lemurs for food. Some of the local people see lemurs as bringers of bad luck, so they kill lemurs.

    At the moment, there are about 85 lemur species left. But many people fear that the number of species will fall quickly. Soon there may be no lemurs left if we do not make serious efforts to protect them.

    A recent university study found that current electric cars could be used for 87% of daily car journeys in the US. That figure could rise to 98% by 2020.

One hurdle to the widespread adoption of electric cars has been “range anxiety” —drivers' concerns about running out of petrol on a journey. While petrol stations are conveniently located across national road systems, the necessary network of electric charging stations is still being developed. In fact, charging points are becoming increasingly common throughout the USA.

    Attitudes towards electric vehicles have changed quite considerably over the last few years. Not that long ago, electric cars met with doubt, and their high price drove customers away. Thanks to improvements in battery capacity(电池容量), recharging times, performance and price, the current generation of electric cars is starting to persuade critics.

    As well as progress on the road, electric vehicles are taking to the sea and sky. Electric boats are among the oldest electric vehicles, having enjoyed several decades of popularity from the late 19th to the early 20th century before petrol-powered outboard motors took over. Now, the global drive for renewable energy sources is bringing electric boats back. Steps towards electric planes are also being made, with Airbus and NASA among the organizations developing and testing battery-powered planes. The experiments could soon make electric flight a reality.

    Electric vehicles do not produce any emissions(排放物). Were the US to act on the study's findings and replace 87 percent of its cars with electric vehicles, it would reduce the national demand for petrol by 61 per cent. However, because of the production processes and the generation of electricity required to charge these vehicles, they cannot claim to be completely emission-free. Even so, as many countries continue to increase their use of renewable energy sources, electric vehicles will become even cleaner.

    On the very first day, God created the cow and said to him, "As a cow, you must go to the field, working under the sun all day long! And I will give you 40 years to live." The cow objected, "What? You want me to live such a tough life for 40 years? Let me have 20 years, and I'll give the rest back to you." So God agreed.

    On the second day, God created the dog and said, "You'll be man's best friend, guarding his house and eating his leftovers. I'll give you a life span of 30 years." The dog shook his head. "Eating leftovers for 30 years? No way! I'll give half back to you!" So God agreed.

    Then, God created the monkey, saying, "Your job is to entertain people. You've got to do monkey tricks and make them laugh. And you'll live 20 years."" Do monkey tricks to make them laugh? 10 years will do." the monkey said. So God agreed.

    Finally, God created the man. "You will be the man. All you need to do is to sleep, eat, and play, simply enjoying your life. And I'll give you 20 years to live." Thinking for a while, the man replied, "I can be the man, but I want to take all the years that the cow, the dog and the monkey didn't want." So God agreed.

    Since then, man eats, sleeps and plays in the first 2 decades, marries and spends the next 2 decades like a cow, working very hard to support his family. Then when he has children, he lives 15 years like a dog, taking care of the house and eating whatever is given to him. And when he is old, he retires and lives 10 years like a monkey, doing tricks to amuse his grandchildren.

    The problem of robocalls has gotten so bad that many people now refuse to pick up calls from numbers they don't know. By next year, half of the calls we receive will be scams(欺诈). We are finally waking up to the severity of the problem by supporting and developing a group of tools, apps and approaches intended to prevent scammers from getting through. Unfortunately, it's too little, too late. By the time these "solutions" become widely available, scammers will have moved onto cleverer means. In the near future, it's not just going to be the number you see on your screen that will be in doubt. Soon you will also question whether the voice you're hearing is actually real.

    That's because there are a number of powerful voice manipulation (处理) and automation technologies that are about to become widely available for anyone to use. At this year's I/O Conference, a company showed a new voice technology able to produce such a convincing human-sounding voice that it was able to speak to a receptionist and book a reservation without detection.

    These developments are likely to make our current problems with robocalls much worse. The reason that robocalls are a headache has less to do with amount than precision. A decade of data breaches(数据侵入)of personal information has led to a situation where scammers can easily learn your mother's name, and far more. Armed with this knowledge, they're able to carry out individually targeted campaigns to cheat people. This means, for example, that a scammer could call you from what looks to be a familiar number and talk to you using a voice that sounds exactly like your bank teller's, tricking you into "confirming" your address, mother's name, and card number. Scammers follow money, so companies will be the worst hit. A lot of business is still done over the phone, and much of it is based on trust and existing relationships. Voice manipulation technologies may weaken that gradually.

    We need to deal with the insecure nature of our telecom networks. Phone carriers and consumers need to work together to find ways of determining and communicating what is real. That might mean either developing a uniform way to mark videos and images, showing when and who they were made by, or abandoning phone calls altogether and moving towards data-based communications — using apps like FaceTime or WhatsApp, which can be tied to your identity.

    Credibility is hard to earn but easy to lose, and the problem is only going to get harder from here on out.