It happened to me recently. I was telling someone how much I had enjoyed reading Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father and how it had changed my views of our President. A friend I was talking to agreed with me that it was, in his words ,“a brilliantly written book” However, he then went on to talk about Mr. Obama in a way which suggested he had no idea of his background at all. I sensed that I was talking to a book liar.

    And it seems that my friend is not the only one. Approximately two thirds of people have lied about reading a book which they haven't. In the World Book Day's “Report on Guilty Secrets”, Dreams From My Father is at number 9. The report lists ten books, and various authors, which people have lied about reading, and as I'm not one to lie too often (I'd hate to be caught out), I will admit here and now that I haven't read the entire top ten. But I'm pleased to say that, unlike 42 percent of people, I have read the book at number one ,Gorge Orwell's 1984. I think it's really brilliant.

    The World Book Day report also has some other interesting information in it. It says that many people lie about having read Jane Austin Austen, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky (I haven't read him, but haven't lied about it either) and Herman Melville.

    Asked why they lied, the most common reason was to “impress” someone they are speaking to. This could be tricky if the conversation became more in-depth!

    But when asked which authors they actually enjoy, people named J.K. Rowling, John Grisham, Sophie Kinsella (ah, the big sellers, in other words). Forty-two percent of people asked admitted they turned to the back of the book to read the end before finishing this story (I will come clean: I do this and am astonished that 58 percent said they had never done so.).

    Chinese consumers' crazy appetite for luxury goods and services appears unstoppable,with just 2 percent of the Chinese population responsible for one-third of the world's luxury items.

    As China's economic miracle develops,the market opportunities for all sorts of luxury goods and services are increasing.Luxury consumption in China now extends ways beyond well-known car,clothing and jewelry brands.For example,the luxury jet market in China is the fastest-growing in the world,even outstripping that of the United States, with a market share of 25 percent.This trend appears to continue,with 20 to 30 percent growth expected in China, compared with only 2 to 3 percent in the US.But more importantly,China's luxury jet market growth represents a major development in the private consumption of luxury items.

    China's high-quality red wine market also provides evidence of the growth in private consumption of luxury goods.In 2013,China became the largest market for red wine in the world,even overtaking France,with l.86 billion bottles consumed in China last year.Over the past five years,China's red wine consumption has grown 136 percent.

    According to my ongoing consumer research in this area while working at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing,public consumption of such expensive global luxury brands such as Prada and Armani is easily explained by the desire to "gain face" and publicly display social climbing through material possessions.On the other hand,it is "self-reward" that lies behind consumer motivation in this area.Chinese consumers who have experienced rapid financial and economic gains appear particularly prone to the need to reward themselves for their success.But this has little to do with "gaining face" and impressing others and much more to do with the need for personal contentment.

    Finally,the growth in private luxury consumption in China is set to continue in part due to the maturity of the Chinese consumer and advancement of Chinese consumer culture generally.

    Mark felt that it was time for him to take part in his community，so he went to the neighborhood meeting after work. The area city council(委员会)woman was leading a discussion about how the quality of life was on the decline. The neighborhood faced many problems. Mark looked at the charts taped to the walls. There were charts for parking problems, crime, and for problems in vacant buildings. Mark read from the charts, “Police patrols(巡逻)cut back, illegal parking up 20%.” People were supposed to suggest solutions to the council woman. It was too much for Mark. “The problems are too big,” he thought. He turned to the man next to him and said, “I think this is a waste of my time. Nothing I can do would make a difference here.”

    As he neared the bus stop on his way home, Mark saw a woman carrying a grocery bag, and a baby. As Mark got closer, her other child，a little boy, suddenly dashed into the street. The woman tried to reach for him, but as she moved, her bag shifted(滑落), and groceries started to fall out.Mark ran to take the boy's arm and led him back to his mother. “You gotta stay with Mom,” he said. Then he picked up the fallen groceries while the woman smiled in relief. “Thanks,” she said. “You've got great timing.” “Just being neighborly,” Mark said. As he rode home, he glanced at the poster near his seat in the bus. Small acts of kindness add up.Mark smiled and thought, “Maybe that's a good place to start.”

    Boomerang children who return to live with their parents after university can be good for families, leading to closer, more supportive relationships and increased contact between the generations, a study has found.

    The findings contradict research published earlier this year showing that returning adult children trigger a significant decline in their parents' quality of life and wellbeing.

    The young adults taking part in the study were "more positive than might have been expected about moving back home—the shame is reduced as so many of their peers are in the same position, and they acknowledged the benefits of their parents' financial and emotional support. Daughters were happier than sons, often slipping back easily into teenage patterns of behaviour, the study found.

    Parents on the whole were more uncertain, expressing concern about the likely duration of the arrangement and how to manage it. But they acknowledged that things were different for graduates today, who leave university with huge debts and fewer job opportunities.

    The families featured in the study were middle-class and tended to view the achievement of adult independence for their children as a "family project". Parents accepted that their children required support as university students and then as graduates returning home, as they tried to find jobs paying enough to enable them to move out and get on the housing ladder.

    "However", the study says, "day-to-day tensions about the prospects of achieving different dimensions of independence, which in a few extreme cases came close to conflict, characterised the experience of a majority of parents and a little over half the graduates".

    Areas of disagreement included chores, money and social life. While parents were keen to help, they also wanted different relationships from those they had with their own parents, and continuing to support their adult children allowed them to remain close.

    Rich countries are racing to dematerialise payments. They need to do more to prepare for the side-effects.

    For the past 3,000 years, when people thought of money they thought of cash. Over the past decade, however, digital payments have taken off— tapping your plastic on a terminal or swiping a smartphone has become normal. Now this revolution is about to turn cash into an endangered species in some rich economies. That will make the economy more efficient—but it also causes new problems that could hold back the transition(转型).

    Countries are removing cash at varying speeds. In Sweden the number of retail cash transaction per person has fallen by 80% in the past ten years. America is perhaps a decade behind. Outside the rich world, cash is still king. But even there its leading role is being challenged. In China digital payments rose from 4% of all payments in 2012 to 34% in 2017.

    Cash is dying out because of two forces. One is demand— younger consumers want payment systems that plug easily into their digital lives. But equally important is that suppliers such as banks and tech firms (in developed markets) and telecoms companies (in emerging ones) are developing fast, easy-to-use payment technologies from which they can pull data and pocket fees. There is a high cost to running the infrastructure behind the cash economy—ATMs, vans carrying notes, tellers who accept coins. Most financial firms are keen to abandon it, or discourage old-fashioned customers with heavy fees.

    In the main, the prospect of a cashless economy is excellent news. Cash is inefficient. When payments dematerialise, people and shops are less open to theft. It also creates a credit history, helping consumers borrow.

    Yet set against these benefits are a couple of worries. Electronic payment systems may risk technical failures, power failure and cyber-attacks. In a cashless economy the poor, the elderly and country folk may be left behind. And a digital system could let governments watch over people's shopping habits and private multinationals exploit their personal data.

The Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), China's leading aircraft maker, created the country's first fully solar-powered drone (无人机). The large drone, Qimingxing 50, took off at 5:50 pm on September 3rd, 2022, from an airport in Yulin of Shaanxi Province and stayed in the air for 26 minutes before landing on the same runway. AVIC said that all systems of the unmanned plane functioned well on its first flight.

Powered by six electric motors with solar batteries, the drone is designed to conduct long-time operations in near space. Near space is that part of Earth's atmosphere at altitudes of 20 to 100 kilometers. It is above the top altitudes of commercial airliners but below orbiting satellites.

Qimingxing 50, also called "quasi-satellite", features high operational efficiency and eco-friendliness and will be tasked with high-altitude reconnaissance (侦察), forestry fire monitoring, atmospheric environmental inspection, aerial mapping, communication signal relay and other operations.

"Thanks to its capability to conduct very long endurance flights in near space, the drone can essentially become a substitute for satellites," a Chinese aerospace expert said. Satellite services are not always available due to the limited number of satellites and relatively fixed schedules of overhead passes. In time-sensitive missions, near-space drones can offset these disadvantages, the expert said, noting that satellite services could also be damaged in wartime, so near-space drones could replace them in this occasion.

The successful first flight of the Qimingxing-50 lays a solid foundation for the development of key technologies in the country's new energy field, the composite (复合的) material field, which will enhance China's ability to perform tasks in near space and over far oceans. AVIC will seize the opportunity to increase investment and speed up the development of large solar-powered unmanned aircraft.