Letter One

Dear Editor,

    After I finish my homework, I often go online and chat with my friends. Sometimes I play Internet games. But my parents hate to see me playing games on the computer. Maybe they have heard too much news about how QQ and Internet games harm children. Once I went to a net bar to play games after school. But after that I told my parents that I was playing basketball at school. I said so because I didn't want to make them unhappy. I feel bad about it. However, I need to rest for a while by playing computer games after studying for a long time. I really want my parents to understand that. Do foreign parents do the same to their children? Please help me.

Li Ping, Nantong

Letter Two

Dear Li Ping,

    I think it's not strange for parents to keep their children away from anything bad. Foreign parents will do the same as your parents! They may not let their children watch TV for too long a time, or like your parents, they don't want their children to play computer games.

    Talk to your parents and be honest to them, I think. Tell them what you are doing and why you are doing so to make them understand you. It's never good to do things behind your parents' backs. They aren't fools as you think sometimes! Our parents seem to know what is the best for us. Remember: to be honest is the best way.

Good luck,

Rebecca

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    The winner of the Art Fund Museum of the Year will be announced on 5 July.Art Fund director Stephen Deuchar said,"All the finalists have had a remarkable year,reaching—in a range of ways—new heights in their efforts to serve and inspire their visitors."The￡100,000 award is being competed for by the following museums:

 The Lapworth Museum of Geology

    This museum,operated by the University of Birmingham,re-opened last June after a￡2.7m redevelopment that was designed to restore it to its 1920s grandeur（宏伟）and create three new galleries.

    It holds 250,000 specimens,ranging from dinosaur skeletons to volcanic rocks.
The National Heritage Centre for Horseracing and Sporting Art

    Officially opened by the Queen in November,this complex is home to the National Horseracing Museum,the Fred Packard Museum and Galleries of British Sporting Art,and a yard for the Retraining of Race horses charity.

    It is also home to two of the Queen's former race horses and a virtual Clare Balding.

 Sir John Soane's Museum

    Housed in the former home of 19th Century architect Sir John Soane,this gallery and museum has completed a￡7m restoration intended to open up "lost" areas and return it to how it looked when he died and left it to the nation in 1837.

    That includes creating 33 percent more space and putting 10 percent more objects on display.

Tate Modern

    Eighteen years after it opened on London's South Bank,Tate Modern had a record 5.8 million visitors in 2017. That was partly down to the opening of a 10-storey extension,the Switch House,and exhibitions of photographs owned by Sir Elton John and art work by Georgia O'Keeffe.

    A bite from a tsetse fly (采采蝇) is an extremely unpleasant experience. It is not like a mosquito, which can put its thin mouthpart directly into your blood, often without you noticing. In contrast, the tsetse fly's mouth has tiny saws on it that saw into your skin on its way to suck out your blood.

    To make matters worse, several species of tsetse fly can transmit diseases. One of the most dangerous is a parasite that causes ＂sleeping sickness＂, or ＂human African trypanosomiasis＂to give it its official name. Without treatment, an infection is usually fatal.

    Like so many tropical diseases, sleeping sickness has often been neglected by medical researchers. However, researchers have long endeavored to understand how it avoids our bodies' defence mechanisms. Some of their insights could now help us eliminate sleeping sickness altogether.

    There are two closely-related single-celled parasites that cause this deathly sleep: Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense and T. b. gambiense. The latter is far more common: it is responsible for up to 95% of cases, mostly in western Africa. It takes several years to kill a person, while T. brucei rhodesiense can cause death within months. There are still other forms that infect livestock.

    After the initial bite, sleeping sickness symptoms often start with a fever, headaches and aching muscles. As the illness goes on, those infected become increasingly tired, which is where it gets its name. Personality changes, severe confusion and poor coordination can also happen.

    While medication does help, some treatments are toxic and can themselves be deadly, especially if they are given after the disease has reached the brain.

    It is worth noting that sleeping sickness is no longer as deadly as it once was. In the early 20th Century several hundred thousand people were infected each year. By the 1960s the disease was considered ＂under control＂ and had reached very low numbers, making its spread more difficult. But in the 1970s there was another major epidemic, which took 20 years to control.

    Since then, better screening programmes and earlier interventions have reduced the number of cases dramatically. In 2009 there were fewer than 10,000 cases for the first time since records began, and in 2015 this figure dropped to fewer than 3,000, according to the latest figures from the World Health Organisation. The WHO hopes the disease will be completely eliminated by 2020.

    While this decline looks positive, there may be many more cases that go unreported in rural Africa. To eliminate the disease completely, infections have to be closely monitored.

    More problematically, a series of new studies have shown that the parasite is more complicated than previously believed.

    Sleeping sickness has always been considered —— and diagnosed —— as a blood disease, because T. brucei parasites can readily be detected in the blood of its victims.

    "Don't answer it," I said to Sam. Our door in the inner city is constantly knocked on; our previous door in the suburbs rarely so. Sam has a full-time job and cannot spend his days answering requests to fix leaking baths or carry cash to the bank.

    Sam opened the door and it was Mervin.

    "There's a bird on the second floor," he said. "It's in trouble."

    Sam followed Mervin upstairs. Mervin pointed and turned to let Sam look. It was a pigeon, the most common of all birds, the bird most likely to foul (弄脏) your newly washed car. And it wasn't flying away. It was stamping in circles. As Sam bent to look, Mervin coughed, "Number two."

    Sam asked him to repeat that. "Number two," Mervin said. "The pigeon has been sitting in his own number two, and now it's stuck to his foot."

It had rained for five days, and the bird was young. It could have been sheltering in a     wet nest of its own waste, which had then dried on its foot, preventing it from flying away. The pigeon moved in a few more circles. Sam bent to take another look. Mervin said, "All right, then." and walked away.

    "Why does everyone think you must solve the problems around here?" I said to Sam when he returned with his story. "It's a bird. Just leave it on the stairs, and let nature take its course." Sam didn't agree. Then he went to the garage and emptied the cardboard box containing our imported camping mats. He returned with the gray pigeon in the box. He showed the bird to our children and they decided to keep it.

    They put its foot in the warm water bath and got rid of its waste. Immediately the pigeon erupted in a bomb of feathers and began flying.

    Mr. Brown was a writer. He wrote many books, and he thought they were quite good. He lived in the city. One morning, he went to a small town near the city to visit a friend. He went there by bus. When he got to the town, he saw a bookshop not far from the bus stop. As it was early, he decided to go in and have a look. There were many books in the shop. He was very happy that all the books in the shop were written by him. "Where are other writer's books?" he asked the man in the shop. The man looked up at him and answered. "Oh, they are all sold out."