Here are four pieces of news from China Daily:

    SHANGHAI—The Huachen Group, which has put 83 million yuan in the development of the commerce market since its official registration late last year, recently held a meeting in Shanghai to show the use of its newly opened tourism business payment network. The network aims to serve tourists from all over the world, but especially from Europe and the United States where credit cards are popularly used. After opening the www.ehinaeonet.com website, netizens can get information about hotels and tourism services on tourism page. Hotels and services can be reserved and payment made through credit cards. The network opened in February in Beijing.

        SYDNEY—The Sydney Olympic flame will travel underwater on Australia's Great Barrier Reef during the torch relay following a successful test.

        Scuba diver Wendy Craig, a marine biologist, will carry the torch on three-to-four-minute underwater journey at Agincourt Reef on June 27, creating Olympic history, organizers said yesterday.

        Burning at 2,000 degrees, the torch is expected to remain alight three meters underwater because of a special kind of technology which creates a “fierce flame”— too powerful to be drowned out by water. Charles Tegner, managing director of torch creator, said the flame would burn like a flame from oxygen-producing chemicals.

        BEIJING—The election of a new leader in Taiwan cannot change the fact that Taiwan is part of China. “Taiwan Independence” in whatever form will never be allowed, according to a statesman of China's central government.

        “We should listen to what the new leader in Taiwan says and watch what he does. We will observe where he will lead Cross-Straits relations. We are willing to exchange views on Cross-Straits relations and peaceful reunification(统一) with all parties, organizations and people in Taiwan who favor the one-China principle,” says the statesman, from Taiwan Affairs Office of the CPC Central Committee.

        HAIKOU—Customs officers in Haikou, capital of South China's Hainan Province, recently stopped a boat loaded with 781 cases of foreign-brand cigarettes being smuggling into China. The cigarettes are estimated to be worth more than 1.8 million yuan, said a customs officer. They discovered the smuggling boat as they were going around the northern sea area of Yangpu Port.

        The smuggled cigarettes cases, packed into two containers, were disguised to avoid being examined. The boat was registered in the coastal city Xiamen in East China's Fujian Province. All eight suspects aboard the boat were kept by the police in Haikou.

"Dad," I say one day …..take a trip. Why don't you fly and meet me?"

    My father had just reired……….. His job filled his day, his thought, his life. While he woke up and took a warm shower, I screamed under a freezing waterfall Peru. While he tied a tie and put on the same Swiss watch, I rowed a boat across Lake of the Ozarks.

    My father sees me drfting aimlessly, nothing to show for my 33 years but a passport full of funny stamps. He wants me to settle down, but now I want him to find an adventure.

    He agrees to travel with me through the national parks. We meet four weeks later in Rapid City.

" What is our first stop?" asks my father.

"What time is it?"

"Still don't have a watch?"

    Less than an hour away is Mount Rushmore. As he stares up at the four Presidents carved in granite(), his mouth and eyes open slowly, like those of little boy.

"Unbelievable," he says, "How was this done?"

    A film in the information center shows sculptor Gutzon Borglum devoted 14 years to the sculpture and then left the final touches to his son.

We stare up and I ask myself, Would I ever devote my life to anything?

No directions, …… I always used to hear those words in my father's voice. Now I hear them in my own.

    The next day we're at Yellowstone National Park, where we have a picnic.

"Did you ever travel with your dad? I ask.

"Only once," he says. " I never spoke much with my father. We loved each other—but never said it. Whatever he could give me, he gave.">

    The kast sebtebce—it's probably the same thing I's say about my father. And what I'd want my child to say about me.

In Glacier National Park, my father says, "I've never seen water so blue." I have, in several places of the world, I can keep traveling, I realize—— and maybe a regular job won't be as dull as I feared.

    Weeks after our trip, I call my father.

"The photos from the trip are wonderful," he says." We have got to take another trip like that sometime.

    I tell him I've learn decided to settle down, and I'm wearing a watch.

    It was a cold winter. The wind blew all night and the snow was blinding. When morning came, my three children and I got up and made our way to the windows. As we looked out the window, we saw that the henhouse was gone. Our three hens had been blown away.

    I looked at the emptiness outside. Then I saw all three chickens sat around the edge of a white bucket. How was this violent wind not blowing them into the field beyond? I quickly pulled on long snow pants and heavy winter coat, wrapped a scarf and stuck my feet into very large boots .

    I shouted at the wind as it blew. I was alone, save for my children. They stared out the window into the vast white sea of snow, their eyes peeled for any sign of movement. Outside I heard the sound of my boots as I walked against the wind.

    The snow circling around me, I steadily made my way to the soft cluck-cluck-cluck sound my hens always made. When I reached them, I saw that their little feet were holding on to the edge of the bucket, heads bent forward and away from the wind. I gently lifted each hen and put it carefully into the warm inside. Then I began the freezing walk back to the small shed directly behind our house. One by one I laid my chickens on the cold floor, and they began to cluck softly.

    As I shut the shed doors, my eyes went directly to the window where my children were watching. They jumped up and down cheering, and so did I! I wasn't some dragon slayer (屠龙者) from a fairy tale. I was simply a mom, but the look on my children's faces told me that they thought I was a hero mom.

    American schools do not have separate classes for boys and girls. If boys want to cook or to sew, they can learn these things in classes that are no longer just for girls. If girls want to repair cars, they can now learn this in school. Most students like to have boys and girls on the same baseball team.

    Many boys and girls dress alike in school. They wear blue jeans and sport shirts. Some have long hair and some have short hair. Sometimes a boy has longer hair than a girl.

    Even the language is different. Students learn to say fire fighter instead of fireman, police officer instead of policeman, and letter carrier instead of mailman. A person does not need to be a man to fight a fire or to deliver the mail.

    Most people think that these changes are great. They give all people an equal chance to be happy and to do what they want to do with their lives. Fathers like to tell their sons that they can grow up to be president. Today, mothers can tell the same things to their daughters.

    One of the great concerns that ornithologists have is that climate change will throw the nesting activities of birds out of sync (同步) with the availability of food for the raising of chicks. For one species, the pied flycatcher, a new study shows that some of its clan are proving to be remarkably adaptable.

    Upon returning to Europe from their African wintering grounds, the flycatchers time their egg-laying to the short period when juicy caterpillars (毛毛虫) are most abundant. During the past three decades this caterpillar peak has advanced by three weeks. Pied flycatchers initially had difficulty adjusting, but over time have started laying their eggs earlier to grab the caterpillars. Some, though, are doing a lot more to improve their reproductive chances of success, according to a study in the Journal of Avian Biology led by Christian Both of the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands.

    Like most bird species, pied flycatchers have long been thought to lay a single clutch of eggs during the breeding (繁殖) season. This was widely considered to be a trait that wouldn't change. Then, in 2007, a Swiss team led by Dr Ravussin began to suspect that clutch numbers were flexible. They discovered a female pied flycatcher that immediately produced a second brood with a new male after raising an early set of chicks. Aware of Dr Ravussin's findings, Dr Both wondered whether this was just a single, odd instance or if second broods might be happening on a larger scale driven by the arrival of earlier springs. So, they cooperate to delve into the data to find out.

    The team studied pied-flycatcher populations in the Netherlands and Switzerland that were known to be among the earliest nesting members of the species. In total, they tracked the egg-laying times and hatchling-rearing success of 8,848 breeding pairs in the Netherlands and1, 372 in Switzerland between1980 and 2018. They found that since 2006, 11 cases of second broods were observed, all of them among the earliest breeders in both populations.

    Further studies ruled out that the birds were making up for a failed first attempt at raising chicks or that the second group of nestlings suffered.

    With no obvious downside to laying a double clutch, Drs Both and Ravussin conclude that the birds are attempting to double their annual reproductive output. While this behavior is still rare, they argue that if the tendency is driven by heritable genes (which it may well be), then a succession of early springs could make the strategy much more common.

    Wong Fuk-wing, a Hong Kong volunteer at an orphanage (孤儿院) in Yushu, was killed in the earthquake when he was trying to save others on April 14, 2010.

    Wong managed to run safely out of the building with some children when the first quake happened at 7:50 am on April 14, but he went back inside to rescue three other children and three teachers inside, although he knew the danger of aftershocks (余震).

    At 10 am, all the children and one of the teachers were saved. However, Wong was buried under the fallen building and died. The other two teachers were still waiting to be rescued.

    46-year-old Wong was a truck driver, who often said he could only give his efforts to charity instead of money, as he did not earn a lot. His tragic (悲剧的) end touched the hearts of many people both in Hong Kong and on the mainland.

    Wong began volunteering in 2002. In 2003, Wong was told by the doctor he got serious illness, which gave him a great blow. However, the illness did not deter the warm-hearted man. When the earthquake struck Wenchuan in Sichuan Province in 2008, Wong rushed to the disaster area of Shifang to offer his help though his family did not want him to go.

    In fact, Qinghai is a place Wong had often visited since 2006. As a volunteer, he gave out medicine and clothing to the orphanage there. No one could expect that Wong would die helping others.

    Hong Kong Chief Secretary Henry Tang Ying-yen said he had "the highest respect" for the hero who gave his life for others. "What he did has shown the Hong Kong spirit." The citizens of Hong Kong called him "the pride of Hong Kong's people" and people on the mainland have also praised him as "a true hero".